Levels. Levels? Yeah...
Seinfeld fans may remember this short exchange. Kramer might have been on to something and it had nothing to do with interior design. In my research and work, I've been butting up against a few theoretical roadblocks. But I am starting to think that these roadblocks are actually different levels. Internet guru*, Merlin Mann often observes that people need to solve the right problem at the right level. And now, I'm starting to think that is exactly what I need to do.
Identifying the different levels has been my task of late, and it is a task in need of completion.
This is where I'm at so far...
I was initially running with a military-style strategic/operational/tactical taxonomy. Specifically, strategic being the highest level and involving long-term, executive-level decisions through to frontline, troop-level decisions at the tactical level.
But these terms come loaded, so I've been looking elsewhere. Although, I don't think there are any terms left which don't carry some form of baggage.
So I've started down this road:
Executive - the highest level; involving the executive oversight or governance of the organisation; typically strategic although may be concerned with lower level issues from time to time.
Management - obviously, somewhere between the executive and the shopfront; probably characterised best as the level where enabling work gets done - things like personnel management, information management or hardware management.^
Operations - the real do-ers; practical actions taken in the extremely dynamic, real world.
I've been visualising this arrangement as something like this:
It's all about levels
So what does this mean?
I believe the point of recognising the existence of the different levels is to accept that within each level, different objectives exist. As such, different tools and techniques may be required.
In thinking about this problem, I realised I posted something related to this before. In that post, I used different risk evaluation techniques at the different levels. While the overall risk management process should be consistent across all levels, the details differ because the objectives, contexts, and decisions differ.
At the highest/executive level, the context was related more to assurance with the decision about whether to accept the determined level of risk or to do more. As the risk picture changed, the executive decided to do more and directed the management level to produce a plan. At this level the risk evaluation methodology was quite different and quite tailored to the wildlife management context and the set of decisions required at that level - what to do about the various bird species.
Different Levels of Risk Assessments
I hinted at a third level of risk management but, to be honest, I haven't really seen that level employed in the real world in this context. OHS practitioners would be familiar with Job Safety Analyses (JSAs) which are a very operations-level activity which I thought would be similar to what I was thinking here.
I guess the moral of this rather rambling post is that I am becoming more and more convinced that an all-encompassing "enterprise risk management system" is not a simple case of having the same small set of tools for all levels. Instead, you need a framework that recognises the different levels (the different contexts, objectives and decisions) and creates linkages between these levels. My immature thoughts at this stage centre around the decisions and their resulting actions being those connections.
For example, the risk management being carried out at the lowest level may itself be a risk control measure for the next level up and so on. This becomes a bit circular but we might as well accept that it's turtles all the way down, people!
There may be more to come on this one, but right now, its bedtime!
* He would so hate that title ;)
^ Safety management? I'm not too sure. I've been pondering this lately as well and when that thought is half-finished, I'll post it here too.
