Risk Management

This week, Ricardo discusses the 18th edition of the Global Risk Report, published annually by the World Economic Forum. This report presents a ranking of global risks and threats, both short-term and long-term. From an operational standpoint, the project or initiatives we are working on can be severely impacted by events that happen far away. Ricardo draws a parallel between the positioning of our project from the global perspective.

This episode concludes the 2022 podcast series as Ricardo looks back on the year's events. Ricardo says that 2022 was, in some ways, a different year. Maybe because we recently emerged from the lockdown situation caused by Covid, society stayed in something like a "limbo" state. In particular, he emphasizes three noteworthy aspects of the year 2022: The first is about unpredictability:

This week, Ricardo talks about the PMI Summit 2022 in Las Vegas, the world's premier project management conference. He talks about the energy of being with thousands of people and networking opportunities. Keynote speaker Amy Webb discussed emerging trends in project management in her opening address to the congress. While giving her presentation, Amy Webb brought up the following points:

This week, Ricardo discusses three prominent businesspeople whose incoherent actions hurt those who had put their faith in their ideas: Elizabeth Homes of Theranos, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, and Elon Musk of Twitter. These persons share many characteristics, including a remarkable charm that has garnered them widespread adulation and the impression that they possess superhuman abilities.

This week, Ricardo discusses TRL, or the Technology Readiness Level, a method developed by NASA in the 1970s to ensure the reliability and safety of the technology they used in their projects. In terms of safety, the higher the TRL number, the more developed the technology is. All the things that come at the outset of studying a new technology—empirical research, a scientific concept, an article, an idea, etc.—are related to the first 3 stages.

In 1968, the government of the Manitoba— a medium-sized province located at the geographic center of Canada—completed what was, at that time, one of the great engineering marvels of the developed world: the Red River Floodway.

The floodway is a 47-kilometer-long earthen channel used to divert surging water from the notoriously flood-prone Red River around the City of Winnipeg (Manitoba’s capital). The idea for the channel was first proposed by a government commission following the devastating flood of 1950 that completely submerged Winnipeg, requiring more than 100,000 people to be evacuated and causing damage that would amount to, in 2022 dollars, more than CA$11 billion. Even though the benefits were many, most political leaders shied away from the project. Most, but not all.

Building Resilient Organizations - Best Practices, Tools, and Insights to Thrive in Ever Changing Contexts is another book of the serie that Brightline™ Initiative has produced in partnership with Thinkers50 .

In our tumultuous times, understanding and achieving resilience have never been more important. Some organizations have resilience in their DNA and the book is focused on identifying what sets these enterprises apart, exploring the nature of resilience for organizations. Ricardo Vargas was one of the participants, he wrote the chapter “Beyond Resilience: Leaders Must Urgently Embrace Antifragility”.

This week, Ricardo discusses the PESTLE technique, which is used to assess the external factors: political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental, that may have an impact on a project or business.

This week, Ricardo discusses decision-making processes in the context of projects, the "governance" component of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) acronym. He explains that knowledge of governance, the organizational framework used to oversee projects, is crucial for effective decision-making. This structure and processes are used to make decisions about approving changes and planning the next steps based on project findings.

Why the Fear of Being Left Out (FOMO) Is So Dangerous for You and Your Projects … This week, Ricardo talks about FOMO, or "Fear of missing out," which is the anxiety we have when we don't feel included in a specific scenario, causing us to feel unmotivated and have low self-esteem. New technologies, cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence are just examples that can make us feel out of date and like we are falling behind.

Five whys (or 5 whys) is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The technique laid out by Taiichi Ohno is to ask "Why?" exactly five times, to find exactly one root cause. (Wikipedia).

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the connection between Chaotic Systems and the behavior of risks in the project. Chaotic systems are highly disordered and unpredictable, where minor changes in initial parameters cause drastic changes in the future. Consider the global shipping crisis.

This week Ricardo discusses the impact of inflation on the project risks. In the past, countries with weak economies were more likely to experience inflation; however, today, countries with stronger economies, like those in Europe, are experiencing relevant impacts of inflation. The ability to complete projects may be heavily impacted by inflation, which presents a significant issue for project managers.

In this week's episode, Ricardo addresses the Passion Economy. There is a "passion economy" when you make money doing something you enjoy. The biggest illustration of this notion is the digital influencer, who may share information, expertise, and insights about a topic they find fascinating and monetize the content through a YouTube or TikTok channel, for example. However, the process is not as simple as most people believe.