Let's talk risk

Let’s talk risk.

A significant part of the work we do as strategists and leaders is risk identification and mitigation. Here’s an example.

As experts we know what happens when, say, we push off content creation & operations work until the tail end of a website replatforming project, after design and development is done. It harkens back to the old way of doing things: make a container for the content and then “just” put the content in… with a mad blitz during QA when content creation and authoring is happening, and no plan to evolve and change things after launch.

It’s a pickle.

So what happens? In my experience, lots of questions about why decisions were made, the constraints, the message and framework, how existing campaigns tie in… lots of basic, essential questions. But also: surprise. We may hear of new, very necessary requirements. We may learn why things were the way they were, too late to do anything about it. There are true risks introduced there centered around rework, increasing risk to the timeline (“Can we still get this done on time?” “What do we need to do in phase 2, which will never happen?”) and budget (“Why do we now need 5 more people to get this done?”) It also brings risk into the team’s morale, which never feels great!

Sounds bad. So how would I mitigate risk in this example?

I would empower the content team to be informed and involved right up front, with strategy, tech, and creative, in defining requirements for the design system. In my experience this approach has been very successful: content working closely with these experts to map out what’s needed and what’s possible. Risk shifts away from getting work done (“Will we have time to do all of this?”) into ensuring people are collaborating well (“When can we talk about achieving our mutual goals?”), which *tends* to be much more manageable.

This framing and positioning allows us to ask better questions. And I like better questions since they get us to better outcomes. So in the end, I view risk identification and mitigation as a path to stronger understanding. It’s essential to doing great work.