There are various risk management frameworks that became popular but pretty much all cover the stages of risk identification, measurement, mitigation/management, monitoring and reporting. Directly or indirectly, governance is attached to or included in the framework.
The security provided by a framework that is considered best practice is one of the reasons why egregious failures in the risk management process occur: “I have listed a lot of risks, quantified them in some way, listed various mitigation measures, responsibilities and reporting lines, produced a beautiful report, so all must be fine” could be one of those self-assuring sentences that go through one’s mind. But risk management is also a mindset, a bunch of intuitions, not always rational or analytical, in part (but not only) summarised in the increasingly popular expression “corporate culture”. This is why it is important to enhance the formalised internal risk management process with tools that are common-sense but not necessarily mainstream or common.
From brainstorming methods to post- and pre-mortem analysis and groupthink awareness, there are various techniques to improve and strengthen the various links of the risk management chain while making sure that risks and rewards are balanced, as required in life and in business. The catch? While they are easy to describe, they are hard to implement, because of the significant intellectual, organisational and managerial effort required to run them regularly and to the point where they provide a result. Here is where an external coach helps, providing framework and support through the whole process, and likely more unbiased views (which may from time to time hurt someone, but that is the whole point).