Your Optimal R: Integrating Risk into a Successful Business Strategy

Your Optimal R provides a practical and innovative approach for understanding the influences that shape your risks and integrating value creation and risk management into one seamless process.

The fundamental principles are:

Risk can not be avoided. It's everywhere! The good news is that virtually every risk presents both threat and opportunity - they are two sides of the same coin.

Success and failure is based on decision making; all decisions are risk decisions. Sometimes the stars and moon actually do conspire and render us helpless, but it's usually just our decisions.

A consergent approach is required. Effective decision making must involve the entire organization, not just a few specialists. This requires a common understanding, language and process.

All risk influences must be identified and evaluated to determine whether and how to optimize them. The wrong strategy, even if perfectly executed, will not achieve your objective. Doing the wrong thing well just makes you "wronger".

M. Douglas Clark has conducted pioneering research and development work in the fields of safety, risk and loss control management. He has worked in more than 30 countries and for many of the world's largest corporations specializing in accident investigation, organizational culture change, behavioral safety, management systems and risk management consultation. He has published and presented numerous related papers in international publications and symposiums. In addition to authoring Your Optimal R, Managing the Troubled Employee, and Constructive Observation and Coaching Habits, he is editor and contributing author of Det Norske Veritas' (DNV's) Practical Loss Control Leadership, and the short courses Managing Program Implementation, Practical Accident Investigation, Practical Risk Assessment, and Modern Safety Management. He was a member of the project team that developed the International Safety Rating System, and the International Process Safety Rating System. He has a masre's degree in psychology and a doctorate in theology, and is formally a Certified Safety Professional (CSP). Now semi-retired, he devotes much of his free time to writing and continuing his representation of Det Norske Veritas as Principal Consultant.