Risk controller
One of those fabulous men and women whose job is to make sure the institution they represent doesn’t unwittingly poke itself in the eye.
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Risk Anatomy™
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People in these departments:
These poor people are the wrong side of an asymmetric option: no risk controller ever got credit for approving a deal that was colossally profitable, but plenty were eviscerated and left to dangle outside the city walls for neglecting to stop one that wasn’t[1] so you shouldn’t begrudge them the outlandishly risk-averse behavior in which they will inevitably indulge.
After all, we spend large parts of our daily life catering for contingencies that will never happen. Look upon a control function as a sort of insurance against risk. You pay a cost/premium upfront (in time and organisational resources) to have someone manage the risk. But are these meaningful contingencies or just comfort blankets – paper tigers and imaginary monsters that, as individuals we are professionally incentivised to treat as real?
The collective noun for a group of risk controllers is a palaver.
See also
- Over-processing - how risk controllers are incentivised to create waste in the negotiation process.
- Chicken licken
References
- ↑ This is, of course, outrageous hyperbole. No risk officer was so much as gruffly reprimanded for not anticipating the forthcoming global financial crisis: the circle of escalation saw to that.