Before the dust settles.

You’re in the midst of a meeting, you have a handful of calls to make, your colleague needs a favor, your inbox is full, and the one risk you never thought about crushed your project.

I have no idea how to help you with most of those problems, but I can help you solve your risk identification so next time your project doesn’t fail. Here are my top three ways to identify risk for your project. Horizon Scanning- have the team look on boundaries of the project and try to identify all the Spectares of the project. Spectares being an acyrnom for Social, Political, Economic, Commercial, Technology, Regulation, Environment, and Security. Brain Writing- this might be one of the best for coming up with a parallel process of ideas and having each persons voice heard. Give each person in the team a handful of blank cards, tell everyone the scenario, and then have the team write as many card filled ideas as possible. After everyone is finished toss each card into a bucket and randomly pick one. Read it aloud and see if it triggers any new ideas amongst the team. Pre-Mortem- invite the team to think about a finished project, but everything that could go wrong - went wrong. Have the group look at what were the fatals risks to the project.

Hope this helped!

“By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail.”- Ben Frank