ABSTRACT
Do team members on your project know that senior management support the practice of risk management? If so, how do they know this? How and when was it communicated? While the discipline of risk management is now mature, its integration into projects is not automatic. While the inclusion of PRM as one of the nine knowledge areas in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)2 published by PMI3 has been of assistance, in many organisations and on many projects, the adoption of risk practices still has to be “sold”. The merits of risk management have to be spelt out repeatedly. In many cases, successful risk management is dependent on the visibility of senior management’s commitment to establishing a risk-conscious organisation – the “tone at the top” as it is commonly referred to these days. This visibility can apply to all aspects of project management, not just risk management (see Case Study 14 below). For risk management to be effective across a project, there needs to be a collective belief that risk management is a fruitful and a productive use of time, and that it will pay dividends in both
the short and the long term. Human resource management adopts an analogy for explaining the creation of such a shared understanding. They describe the need for a process of “evangelisation”, the process of winning acceptance through the organisation of a common purpose and a shared mission, and, in addition, that this shared mission is achieved through the broad adoption of certain processes and procedures. It is often referred to as the winning of hearts and minds, an idea that has been a common thread in management thinking for most of the twentieth century. Evangelisation works through three key concepts: “a shared belief”, “apostles” and “parables”.
