Make It. Then, Make It Good.

Roundtables are great ideas on paper.

You gather a group of risk professionals together and discuss the topic du jour. Ideally, everyone contributes, and afterwards you have the benefit of collecting the knowledge and insights from all of the attendees.

Except, that’s not how it always works. In most roundtables, you have a couple people who are brave enough to do most of the talking. Everyone else just listens, and if it’s on Zoom, they’re listening with cameras off.

I see this all the time. Roundtables are usually well attended, but with mediocre participation. There are a number of risk professionals who attend, hoping someone else will provide them with the answer.

Risk Management is an interesting field because new risks are always emerging, and you get the chance to determine how to address it. For some people, that is the exciting part of the job. For others, the idea of trying something new…something untested, is scary. Even scarier is the idea that you’ll have to put your name on this new, untested strategy. So instead, some risk managers go to roundtables, hoping to hear someone else’s strategy.

My advice:

You have to make it before you can make it good.

There is nothing wrong with asking other people how they achieved something, but their scenario is not your scenario. They may have a different organization, different resources, different challenges. Their solution may not be a plug and play solution for you.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen risk and safety programs languish in the ideation stage because someone was afraid to launch a program before it was “ready”.

It IS ready, it’s just not perfect.

And that’s OK. Perfect is the enemy of done.

Maybe this is about more than risk management. The lesson is the same. You have to make something before you can make it good. So start making. You can always refine, course correct and adjust.

And then you can finally show up to the roundtable and have something you’re excited to share.