27 August 2023

Observation: Sensory Informed+Aware+Ready (SIAR)...

In a focus to be more innovative in your particular business or vocation, which of your own human senses are you using most effectively today?

  • Sight.
  • Sound.
  • Smell.
  • Touch.
  • Taste.
  • Pain.
  • Hunger.
  • Thirst.
  • Pleasure.

Anything else?

How well are you using your complete observations that combine these senses with other brain functions to create new insights, new intelligence or safety knowledge?

How many steps are there from your front hallway up to your second story in your residence? If you know the answer, why?

Your observation skill sets are combining human senses and other brain functions to provide you with new insights, knowledge and domain awareness.

Or you may already know the answer of how many steps are in your home because you are handicapped or blind.

You many also know the moment that someone in your house is boiling water on the kitchen stove, because of a unique smell. And you probably know who that person is.

You many know the moment a next door neighbor leaves their garage, based upon the sound of their vehicle.

We are continuously combining our sensory functions and brain functions all the time, even without thinking about it.

"Yet how observant are you really? Do you store your sensory information somewhere for retrieval later? In case you need it?"

What if you became more actively conscious about this by practicing it each day. How might this new observant talent be of a vital use to you and others?

Operational Risk Management requires multi-sensing information processing and response 24x7 by you, not just by your machines.

By you as a standalone human.

If you had to operate for a whole day without your iPhone with you on next Friday, what might you observe? What might you learn?

How might you better increase your own personal knowledge on this Friday.

With the observation of human senses of Time? Of Direction? Of Temperature? Of Weather? Of even a lack of “Knowledge” of what your friends, followers or family are doing each hour of their day.

So what?

Your future abilities of human observation will enhance your innovation capabilities as you continuously adapt to your hourly and daily environment.

Your enhanced personal “Operational Risk” skill-sets will keep you more Sensory Informed, more Aware and more Ready (SIAR) than so many others…

Onward!

18 August 2023

Objective: Utilizing Empirical Learning…

 Objective  adjective

1 a : expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.

When you were growing up in your family, perhaps sitting down for a dinner each evening at 6:30PM, what was your classic ritual?

Did your Father sit at the head of the table and your Mother on the opposite end? Was it a time of jovial catching-up on each others respective days and sharing information on topics of family interest?

Was the dialogue open minded and full of questions about the topics? Maybe it was the opposite.

Or was your Father or Mother listening and observing while adding experiential lessons to the dialogue.

Each persons age and level of experience in life has much to do with the value of a true dialogue.

Each persons ability and willingness to be truly “Objective,” enhances the value of the dialogue because it is actually more empirical.

Is the person talking, teaching or facilitating the group focused upon actual observation or actual experience?

Is the information being shared capable of verification or testing by experiment?

Is the person at the end of the table or in front of the room or the principal investigator utilizing experiential knowledge and lessons, based upon true witnessed outcomes?

How many high school and college class rooms today, do you find someone who is a true empiric?

One who relies on practical experience. An “Instructional Facilitator” who is in the back of the room, carefully listening.

With decades of experience to provide additonal context.

Learning and discovering what the day, week or hours have produced from those people who have been recently operating on the front line. Operators in the action and who have been part of the actual witnessed experiences.

How well do those who are listening and observing, utilize both “open-ended” questions to explore and expand while also utilizing “close-ended questions” to verify understanding?

Empirical  adjective
1 : originating in or based on observation or experience.
2 : relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory.

As you learn more about our own human behavior and the way our brain stores information, the questions that you will have, shall begin to change…

11 August 2023

Trust Decisions: Creating a State of Zero Surprise…

Most people believe in some form of risk management and the truth is, that it doesn’t work all the time. It doesn’t work because the human being is incapable of processing all of the possible rules of the moment, the game, in any specific scenario, fast enough.

The organization or environment you are operating within and the responsibility you are tasked with each minute of each hour of each day, requires you to make “Trust Decisions.”

There are three essential qualities of Trust:

  1. “Trust is a rules-based exercise.”
  2. “Trust decisions are fueled by information.”
  3. “Trust decisions are mathematical.”

“In a digital world where we are struggling to sustain and build trust across a global, wired landscape of human affairs characterized by reports and allegations of cyberwars, digital theft, electronic espionage, and the loss of human dignity through ubiquitous surveillance, this essential truth changes everything.”
Achieving Digital Trust: The New Rules For Business At The Speed of Light” - By Jeffrey Ritter Page 51-53

As you begin to think about your daily tasks, do you know and understand the rules?

Trust Decisions require a “Yes” or “No”. There is no “Maybe”.

Unfortunately, humans operate differently than machines and software that were designed with rules that are truly binary. Zero or One.

That is why we designed and built tools and innovations that can follow the rules at tremendous speeds using rules that we agreed upon.

How well do you know the rules that are the origin of behavior within your most trusted tool?

Is it a gondola? Is it an alarm? Is it a safety switch? Is it a software program? Is it a computer embedded in another machine?

Rules are followed. Information is gathered. Calculations are executed.

So what?

“Taking the risk” means choosing not to calculate trust and the first opportunity to do so occurs far earlier than you might ever imagine.“
“Decisions that are thorough—decisions that are to be trusted—create more wealth.”
“Achieving Digital Trust: The New Rules For Business At The Speed of Light” - By Jeffrey Ritter Page 75-77

Humans are continuously processing a combination of all three qualities simultaneously and yet you know when “Trust” is quickly eroding in your vision, your senses and your mind.

You are comparing all of these qualities simultaneously based upon your past performance and/or experiences.

Therefore, failures of people, processes, systems and external events seem to occur randomly.

Is it possible to achieve a state of zero surprise? Where all risks are mitigated and humans can achieve an environment of trust that is sustainable. We think it is. In the right environment and in a specific scenario, surprise is now almost “impossible”.

How safe, secure and wealthy do you feel today?

05 August 2023

Prediction: Another Year of Living Dangerously...

Will this be another year of living dangerously?

Security forces within your organization are busy at work, contemplating a combined strategy to address a continuing barrage of new potential threats. 

2023-2024 could very well be even more dangerous than this past year.

"Enterprise Security Risk Convergence is the "Operational Risk Management" wave of the future."

How these converged entities are forming and how they will arrive at a single focal point is based on what they both have in common. Information-based assets.

“Contingency Planners” shall be more beware. Savvy CIO's and CxO’s recognize that new threats and soaring costs are two factors driving the convergence or integration of traditional and information security functions in a growing number of global organizations.

Operational Risks span the continuum from the physical to the digital environment in our enterprise ecosystems.

Prepare your organization for the day when the efficiencies and the effectiveness of having redundant safety and security responsibilities becomes a new agenda topic at the next executive retreat.

Business desire for contingency professionals who can examine and assess the risks that organizations face as a whole, is one of the tipping points behind the convergence phenomenon.

In the end, the winners will be those contingency planners that realized that all the guards, gates, firewalls and intrusion prevention systems are nothing more than tools.

What they support is the successful implementation of a Risk Management System focused on intelligence information.

The single asset that security organizations have in common is the dynamically changing information in our contingency plans.

As the Operational Risks continue to surround our supply chains to corporate enterprises, it's imperative strategic planners look at where we are spending our money and deploying our resources.

What would happen to our preparedness, readiness and recovery capabilities if we just reallocated 5% of the corporate marketing budget to our protective intelligence and risk management budget?

If we did, then we might find ourselves with fewer calls to the Courthouse, State house or even to the (202) area code...