Implementing countermeasures


There’s not much point in spending time and effort identifying and quantifying our risks and thinking about the countermeasures that we can implement to address them if we then do nothing else. We can assess risks until the cows come home, but it’s what we then do about them that really matters, otherwise it’s all been a bit of a waste of time. In order to make our business more resilient we now have to make some decisions and take some action. It may seem blindingly obvious, but it’s an often overlooked fact that merely writing down our risks in a risk register (see page 78) won’t actually protect our business or make it any more robust. So we now have to turn our attention to implementing some of those countermeasures and deciding how much time, effort and money we want to invest in mitigating our more significant risks.


No business, no matter what its size, has limitless resources to invest in risk management. In any case, there’s little benefit and little sense in spending a fortune addressing a risk which is unlikely to happen and which would have minimal or no impact even if it did. On the other hand, if a risk is likely to occur that has the potential to cause significant harm or put you out of business then a substantial investment (in money, time or other resources) may be needed to reduce the likelihood and/or the impact to an acceptable level, or serious consideration should be given to whether it’s a risk that’s worth taking at all. The countermeasures that we choose must therefore be appropriate, pragmatic and cost-effective.


Once we’ve selected the countermeasures to be implemented, it’s important that the implementation process is properly managed. It may be that some countermeasures are fairly quick and easy to implement, whereas others may require significant effort, cost or time. The latter type will probably need to be managed as a formal project, with all that that entails. Either way, it’s important to allocate responsibility for implementing specific countermeasures, whether to a particular director or manager, a project manager or a member of staff. Often, risks are not properly mitigated because it was wrongly assumed that the proverbial “someone else” had dealt with it.


CHAPTER 5 75


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