Balance, Opportunity and the Path to Victory!!!

Alternate title: Finding our role in the tipping point.

"If I could find the right spot, I could balance the Earth." - loose translation of a quote from Archimedes.

I grew up with the idea of balance popping up every time I told someone my birthday. Probably more often than that because the balance is the symbol for Libra.
 
At some point I came to the conclusion that balance really was a good thing on its own and not just because I was told it was my nature as defined by some placement of the stars on my birthday.  Or maybe it was better than whatever caused me to get trapped in the blind alley where I was stuck at the time.  So I started balancing.  Since I was trapped in a deep hole at the time and I'm not the type to do things half way, I balanced EVERYTHING!  And that worked for a while.  It did get me out of the hole.  Unfortunately,  I quickly found that being in too much balance had me stuck on the couch or in a small, easy job with little challenge.  Although my life was less trapped and less likely to be trapped, in other ways I was actually more trapped. 

So I took a big, life transforming chance (Thanks Marc!!) and got on a bus and travelled 2 days across the home of the greatest risk takers on Earth and jumped feet first into the Internet explosion.  

As I got comfortable juggling some small new challenges and taking risks, I noticed that I could handle a lot.  So I started taking on bigger risks.  I noticed the bigger risks weren't so tough if I applied lessons I'd learned and developed or discovered systems to maintain sight of the boundaries and some balance (can you say "work-life" anyone?).   At first I started creating structure to manage those risks so they didn't manage me.  Then I noticed that business people everywhere were doing the same thing, sometimes without thinking as widely or deeply as my approach and position as "the security guy" gave to me.  So a career was born!!

So what is my answer to Archimedes?  "Why would you want to?!"  Achieving goals takes risk.   The trick/skill/art is to know how far to stick your neck out so it is "grabbing an opportunity for growth" and not "running from a fear".  Without seizing every possible opportunity, no business or person will be as successful as they might become.  In my chosen career, that "grabbing the opportunity for growth" is the perspective I think we security/audit/risk managers have to bring to the table to support the business.

To get that view, we have to ask some vital questions of ourselves and the organization.

• How do we get enough of a view and as wide as possible within our role to be able to see the balance point between risk and reward?
• How do we help the team see the opportunities in the risks so the leaders can see where they can shift the balance toward accepting risks that will keep us moving towards our mutual goal?  

With the goal in mind,  our mission is to achieve a clear vision of the IMPORTANT risks that are leaning past that balance point and remind the team at the right time to avoid the blind alleys or missed opportunities for strategic victory.  If we do our job right, the balls in the air are more likely to arc to the right spot at the right time so we all win.   Note: The toughest choice for us is to decide which are IMPORTANT.   More on that later...

Without our talent and skill, the business would be harder to balance and management's acceptance of risk would be harder to justify.  Also the business strategies would be more of a gamble with a higher likelihood of failure.   If the business experiences too much failure, the boss is more likely to become the next Scrooge or Caesar and bring you and the company down causing us and our teammates to lose our jobs.

Now hopefully you see some of the interrelationships and dependencies across the enterprise when it comes to risk management and that every business needs a risk juggler to help everyone see the lay of the land and achieve victory.