The first thing people learn about risk management is the definition of a hazard:

A hazard = Something with the potential to cause harm

The second thing people learn about risk management is the definition of a risk:

A risk = The chance that a hazard will be realised

OK so its not so difficult.  But already we’ve introduced two terms that sort of compete for the same linguistic idea in most people’s heads and really its just jargon.  Unnecessary jargon in my opinion.  Jargon just excludes people who don’t know the insiders language.  (Its designed to be that way, conspiracy buffs.)  So lets chuck it out straight away here at the beginning.

Lets just call it bad stuff.

Bad stuff might be your bank’s shares getting wiped off the stock market, or falling over an electrical cable on the floor, or falling off your motorcycle, or your rocket missing Mars and heading off towards the infinite blackness of space.  

Bad stuff might happen in the future.  Some bad stuff is foreseeable.  That bad stuff you can do something about.  Other bad stuff comes plain out of the blue and wasn’t foreseeable.  Except after its happened.  Thats hindsight not foresight.  And anyway by then its too late.

This blog will be mostly concerned with foreseeable bad stuff that stands a good chance of happening.  Hence the title.  Less Bad Future Stuff.

First of all you will excuse me if I am little coy about introducing myself.  I don’t have any dramatic reasons for not telling you who I am.  I’m not a foreign spy or an international drug lord nor a propogandist transmitting subversive messages out from a pirate radio ship out at sea.  I work in the field of occupational safety & health.  What could be less glamorous than that?  I do however work for a very large organisation that might not always want to be associated with my own personal views about the wonderful world of risk and that for now is probably a very good reason to remain quietly anonymous.  Aside from my personal identity I can tell you a bit more about myself.

First of all I’m English and live in the UK as you may grasp from various cultural references that crop up as I post.  I work as an advisor to a large international organisation regarding safety and health risk management issues.  In terms of my professional credentials I’m a Chartered Member of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and also a Chartered Environmental Health Practitioner (EHP) registered with the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH).  For quite a few years I worked in a number of British local government departments where I enforced forced environmental, food safety, and occupational safety law upon an often unsuspecting crowd of small, medium, and large business enterprises. When I remember those days I shudder thinking of those poor managers who I visited with no prior appointment.  How important I felt as I shoved my personal interpretation of rules and regulations down their throats.  Perhaps this is some way of dealing with my professional guilt.  Hey World, I’ve changed!

Nowadays I spend my time on the other side of the regulatory fence dealing with occupational risks for around 5000 employees and an insane number of other voluntary workers spread around the UK and the Republic of Ireland.  I’ve given in my sheriff’s badge and walked off into the sunset to try to turn around the culture of this big organisation.  I didn’t realise when I set out that essentially I’d be trying to market common sense, nor how much blood would be spilt trying to do it.  But you see, common sense isn’t all that common these days…