A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management (Short Guides to Business Risk)

Many organisations have spent small fortunes to set up risk processes and supporting tools which then fail to deliver the expected value. This is because rational processes don't work well when trying to get groups of people to agree what is risky, why and what to do about it.

If you need to make sound decisions in important but risky situations; work with groups to identify, prioritise and respond to risks, deliver value and, along the way, ensure the credibility of the process and the resilience of your organisation, A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management is for you. It sets out a very practical approach to how the risk management process can deliver value through effective facilitation. It brings together Ruth Murray-Webster's expertise in the human aspects of risk and risk attitude and Penny Pullan's wide experience of the facilitation of project workshops to cover five main areas:

• avoiding pitfalls - how to makesure you are better prepared, better able to use your knowledge with groups and better able to avoid unsupported or skewed results;
• an understanding of risk management - to refresh your own knowledge and provide the basis for knowledge and ideas you can share with your group(s);
• understanding your role - whether you are a full-time facilitator or a line manager with the need to improve risk management, you'll learn the skills you need and gain an understanding of how best to develop them;
• tried and tested tips for each step of the risk management process - proven practices showing how you can use the right mix of workshops, small groups and individual work to keep people engaged and get results;
• running risk workshops - the whole area of making workshops work.

This book is illustrated with practical examples from the authors' experience and their findings from interviews and surveys to help you get the best from your groups when they're working together, both face-to-face and virtually.

Dr Penny Pullan is Director of Making Projects Work. Penny is a highly-qualified project manager, facilitator and trainer, with a broad experience both inside multinational companies and as an external consultant. Penny is experienced in facilitating risk workshops and equipping others to do so. See www.makingprojectswork.co.uk

Ruth Murray-Webster is Director of Lucidus Consulting Limited. Ruth is a highly-qualified and respected business consultant, with broad experience in managing organisational change in a cross-cultural context and across a wide range of sectors, and a particular interest in the human aspects of effective change management. She is co-author of two earlier Gower books, Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude and Managing Group Risk Attitude. See www.lucidusconsulting.com