17 May 2015

Feeling Vulnerable: The Risk of the Unknown...

There are Operational Risk Management (ORM) professionals down range today.  They operate in the shadows continuously in some facet of the OODA Loop.  Whatever the specific mission may be and from most any Lat/Long on the planet, these professionals are paid to "Think-Outside-The-Box" as the cliche says.  What is it that these ORM professionals fear the most?  Feeling vulnerable.

You may have had this feeling in your life at some point.  Whether those early days in high school when the jocks are ganging up on the geeks in between classes or in that special relationship with the opposite sex.  What about all those days, weeks or years when you were aspiring to get that next great job in the organizational hierarchy?

Were you ever politically vulnerable?  When you have the feeling that you are vulnerable, that could have several implications.  Psychologically and physically.  The question has to be asked.  As a person, what is vulnerable?  Your Ego.  Emotions.  Relationship.  Finances.  Health.  Career.  Reputation.  Or even your life, or the lives of people you are charged with to keep safe and secure?

Feeling vulnerable is not what humans like to have swirling around in their head when they go to sleep at night or wake up in the morning.  As an Operational Risk Management (ORM) professional, our job is to experience all of those feelings on a select and continuous basis.  We do this so that we know what impact these feelings will have on us, our family, friends, neighbors and co-workers.  How will each and all of us behave, under each of these special circumstances of vulnerability?

Why do we want to experience and record the behavior of individuals, systems and even the unexpected natural event from mother nature?  So that we can be more predictive and ever more resilient.  This improves our self-confidence and our ability to become more adaptive.  In life and in our chosen vocations, in your local town or the federated state.  In the nation or continent we live. The Operational Risk Management (ORM) professional is forever learning and testing, in order to survive another day.

When the sounds and smells of your particular battlefield have dissipated, or the feelings of the intravenous (IV) needles taped to the inside of your forearm are gone, your vulnerabilities are changing. When the touch of your loved one on your shoulder makes you cry, you realize that you too are now on your way to surviving another day.  Together.

Godspeed!

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