How time flies. Another month has passed and it’s time for another blog review. This month it’s RISKCZAR’s BLOG by Trevor Levine, a blog that is based on his almost 20 years of experience in financial, operational and enterprise risk management (ERM), and process improvement. In other words,  a heavy-weight risk champion, but this is not a heavy-weight blog. It is a fun blog to read, for laughing more than learning, or rather “learning through laughing”. It is a blog that will make you smile. It is a blog that will make you realize that risk doesn’t have to be serious, because treating it too serious may make you end up in one of Trevor’s blog posts.

Trevor Levine

When presenting himself, Trevor writes this on his About page:

I am not a quant, an academic or an accountant but just a guy who likes writing about risk management in a way that anyone would understand. You will not see any Greek letters or equations in my posts because that side of risk management doesn’t interest me too much nor is that the audience I am trying to reach. I prefer the lighter side – while goofing on the misfortunes of those who failed to practice proactive risk management – just to make the point and make you laugh.

And indeed, that is exactly what his blog is about.

Blog Highlights

Here are some samples of what you can find on riskczar.com:

Recently he seems to be struck by “Harry Potter”-fever, because he has no less than four posts on Voldemort, including Voldemort as Risk Manager of the Year.

Lord Voldermort would make an excellent risk manager because when he identifies a risk, he assesses it and treats it immediately.

In the post Trevor comes up with four reasons why Voldemort makes and excellent risk manager. That said, I’m not sure I would want Voldemort as my own risk manager.

In Reputation Risk: Is Delta Airlines the Mel Gibson of Aviation he looks at some technically correct but perhaps morally questionable practices at Delta Airlines:

When Delta Airlines took over Northwest Airlines and their Detroit hub, they added Saudi Arabian Airlines to its SkyTeam Alliance of partner airlines. As a result of Saudi’s discriminatory policies, Delta will ban Jews and holders of Israeli passports from boarding flights to the Kingdom.

After this story came out, Delta of course had to defend itself by blogging: “We, like all international airlines, are required to comply with all applicable laws governing entry into every country we serve.”

I for one would like to know how Mel Gibson fits into this. What did I miss?

In The risk of driving: juice boxes and Howard Stern he pokes a bit fun at the ban of texting or phoning while driving, citing other distractions that may be far likely to cause a crash:

But after the phone risk is addressed, I think parents are still equally distracted by crying babies, infant siblings fighting in the back seats and the dreaded right-arm-reach-around to retrieve a juice box that recently fell that drips its red punch all over the beige floor mats when you squeeze it too hard.

As someone whose baby daughter was born 7 weeks ago I can only attest to that. Besides, holding and attempting to soothe a crying (read: raging) baby certainly adds to the risk of “crashing” something at home as well.

In Freshly ground typo risk he recalls the story of a “minor” typo in a cooking book:

An Australian publisher is reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta with “salt and freshly ground black people.”

Penguin Group Australia’s head of publishing, Bob Sessions, acknowledged the proofreader for the Pasta Bible should have picked up the error, but called it nothing more than a “silly mistake.”

Not sure how “silly” this is, but here in Norway the most famous brand for spices and herbs since 1952 was actually named “Black Boy” up until last fall, when they decided that while an established brand, it is perhaps not the best name for a brand these days. As I remember from my childhood, even the packaging featured the picture of a black boy, as can be seen in this article from a Norwegian newspaper who wrote about the name change. That said, their homepage URL is still blackboy.no.

Enterprise Risk Management

Trevor has a section devoted to the topic of enterprise risk mangement or ERM, where he lists 10 proofs of value of ERM, highlighting that while risk management is often seen as a mere expense, it does have a value. Interestingly, “resilience”, I topic I care about a lot was recently added as #10:

“While ERM is not a panacea for all the turmoil experienced in the markets in recent years, robust engagement by the board in enterprise risk oversight strengthens an organization’s resilience to significant risk exposures.” – COSO

I agree. Risk management and resilience definitely go hand in hand.

Conclusion

If you want to read about risk management in a fun and entertaining way, riskczar.com should be on your reading list. He’s been blogging since 2005, although regular posts first started in 2009, so there’s bunch of humorous posts for you to sift through.

Links

• riskczar.com: RISKCZAR’S BLOG
• linkedin.com: Trevor Levine

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