Understanding Business Risks

“Let me ask my manager.” “We’re waiting for approval.” “Can I call you back tomorrow once I confirm?” Those three lines nearly cost me my #business. They’re how leads quietly die when everything still runs through the founder. It feels like control, until it becomes the bottleneck. -> Momentum stalls, -> Decisions pile up, -> and your best prospects go cold while your inbox warms up. This is what we call 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿-𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆: every decision, approval, and solution needs you. If your team pauses when you’re offline, you don’t have a system; you have a single point of failure. 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳: ·      Can the business run without me for two weeks? ·      Can I take leave and stay on Do Not Disturb? ·      Can my team and our systems deliver without constant oversight? If any answer is “no,” you’re not just busy, you’re blocking #growth. You need a structure that closes deals when you’re asleep or OOO. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝘅 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁: 🔸Assign ownership by outcomes. One owner per metric, visible to all (e.g., Lead response SLA: <2 hours — Maria). 🔸Document the 20% processes that drive 80% of results. Short, skimmable, 1 page each. 🔸Set a decision ladder. What’s decided solo, what needs input, what truly needs you. Default to action. The key is to remember that you must build people, processes, and accountability. Then, watch your business run & scale without you in the middle of everything. What’s one approval you’ll remove this week to speed things up?

How do you measure the true value of a project vendor beyond cost? I remember during my days as a project manager; we had taken an 11-day production shutdown at a plant for a few machines rebuild jobs. But, one specific (non-critical) task risked crossing the deadline, and delays were not an option. Each day of downtime meant ₹10s of crore in lost production. Our existing pool of vendors unanimously stood at — ‘cannot be delivered within 11 days‘. This challenged us to explore new vendors from the market. We did assess multiple and zeroed in on one. The new vendor quoted a 30% premium over the others and also sought success fees if they had delivered within the 11-day period. That premium, though in a few lakhs per day, was negligible compared to tens of crores at stake. The vendor delivered on time. That decision reinforced a principle that stayed with me: always explore the market & consider overall costs while assessing project vendors. In procurement, focusing solely on immediate costs often leads to suboptimal vendor selection. While budget constraints and limited vendor pools create pressure to minimize upfront spending, this approach overlooks crucial factors like delivery timeline adherence, quality standards, and operational efficiency. The true value of a high-performing vendor manifests in reduced delays and fewer quality issues. Though challenging to quantify pre-project, these benefits significantly impact business outcomes. Successful capital expenditure procurement requires balancing financial constraints against long-term business value through comprehensive vendor evaluation frameworks. My learnings as a project manager and even richer experiences at Venwiz have driven our product development on 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 to meet the project needs. And, our platform has played a key role in helping companies assess vendor capabilities, technical expertise, financial stability, past experiences, and reliability in order to balance upfront cost vs overall impact. In my experience, choosing the cheapest vendor might feel like saving money— like in many other cases, in capex projects or critical projects too, it often could be an expensive mistake! #CapEx #Venwiz

Climate Risk = Business Risk 🌍 As climate impacts intensify, the connection between environmental risk and business risk is becoming more direct and more difficult to ignore. These risks are no longer theoretical. They are affecting assets, operations, and financial planning across industries and regions. Severe weather events such as storms and floods are damaging infrastructure, halting operations, and increasing the costs of repair, insurance, and downtime. Heatwaves are lowering workforce productivity and raising the incidence of heat related health issues, particularly in sectors dependent on physical labor or lacking adequate climate control systems. Droughts are limiting access to essential inputs like water, disrupting industrial processes and increasing operational costs for water intensive sectors. Sea level rise is placing facilities, warehouses, and offices in coastal areas at risk of flooding, requiring significant investments in adaptation or relocation. Wildfires are interrupting transportation networks and regional supply chains, resulting in logistical delays, inventory disruptions, and increased delivery costs. Increased climate variability is making business planning more uncertain. Fluctuating weather patterns complicate forecasts, investment decisions, and long term strategy development. Energy infrastructure is also affected. Extreme temperatures and natural disasters are disrupting electricity and fuel supply, creating additional risks and increasing energy expenditures. Insurance markets are responding. Coverage in climate exposed areas is becoming more expensive or unavailable, leaving businesses with greater financial exposure and limited risk transfer options. These risks highlight the need for companies to integrate climate considerations into core decision making processes, from operations and procurement to finance and long term strategy. Addressing climate impacts is not a secondary issue. It is essential to maintaining competitiveness and resilience. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg #risk

🚨The greatest drop-off is from Product Details Page To Cart Page, so we must improve our Product Details Page! Not so fast ✋ In today's age of data obsession, almost every company has an analytics infrastructure that pumps out a tonne of numbers. But rarely do teams invest time, discipline & curiosity to interpret numbers meaningfully. I will illustrate with an example. Let's take a simple e-commerce funnel. Home Page ~ 100 users List Page ~ 90 users Product Display Page ~ 70 users Cart Page ~ 20 users Address Page ~ 15 users Payments Page ~12 users Order Confirmation Page ~ 9 users A team that just "looks" at data will immediately conclude that the drop-off is most steep between Product Details Page & Cart Page. As a consequence they will start putting in a lot of fire power into solving user problems on Product Display Page. But if the team were data "curious", would frame hypothesis such as "do certain types of users reach cart page more effectively than others?" and go on to look at users by purchase buckets, geography, category etc and look at the entire funnel end to end to observe patterns. In the above scenario, it's likely that the 20 cart users were power users whilst new & early purchasers don't make it to this stage. The reason could be poor recommendations on the list page or customers are only visiting the product display page to see a larger close up of the product. So how should one go about looking at data ? Do ✅ Start with an open & curious mind ✅ Start with hypothesis ✅ Identify metrics & counter metrics that will help prove/disprove hypothesis ✅ Identify the various dimensions that could influence behaviours - user type, geography, category, device type, gender, price point, day, time etc. The dimensions will be specific to your line of business. ✅ Check for data quality and consistency ✅ Look at upstream and downstream behaviour to see how the behaviour is influenced upstream and what happens to the behaviour downstream. ✅ Check for historical evidence of causality Dont ❌ Look at data to satisfy your bias ❌ Rush to conclude your interpretation ❌ Look at data in isolation - - - TLDR - Be curious. Not confirmed. #metrics #analytics #productmanagement #productmanager #productcraft #deepdiveswithdsk

Today's outages is a great reminder of the most dangerous mentality that pervades our digital world... The belief in the 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹 cloud provider or centralized service. As such, we said bye-bye to: 😵 Canva 😵 Coinbase 😵 Substack + many more... Today, a significant chunk of the internet, from crypto exchanges to creative platforms, slowed or stopped because of a single point of failure within a major cloud system. 🐘 This event isn't an anomaly; it's a recurring alarm that both investors and entrepreneurs must stop snoozing. The consolidation of the internet onto a handful of hyperscale cloud providers has created unprecedented efficiency and scale. However, it has also created a critical single point of failure, hiding enormous risk under a veneer of convenience. Let's break this down into something more tangible! For Investors: 🪙 Systemic Risk: A company that relies solely on one centralized infrastructure for its entire operation is subject to systemic, unmitigable risk. A 3-hour AWS outage can erase millions in value and severely damage brand trust. 🪙 Due Diligence Must Evolve: Beyond reviewing financials and market share, investor due diligence now requires a deep dive into a company's operational resilience. Ask: Where do you run your core services? What is your failover strategy? How quickly can you move and rebuild this? For Entrepreneurs: 🪙 The Cost of Convenience: Building on a single big cloud is fast, but it compromises your operational independence. You are essentially renting a dependency. 🪙 Reputation is Resilience: In a competitive landscape, your users will forgive occasional technical difficulties, but they will not forgive a total shutdown due to poor planning. Operational resilience is now a core part of your customer value proposition and brand integrity. For the record 💡 a material workload is any application or service whose failure would cripple your business (e.g., core transaction database, user authentication, or primary website). These workloads require a strategic approach that rejects the too big to fail assumption. So next time, you're thinking about hedging all your bets onto a single company, 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿: 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗥𝗢𝗜. 😉 The investment and engineering communities must pivot from prioritising sheer scale and convenience to demanding operational resilience because today's downtime isn't just a technical glitch... it's a financial and strategic failure. #buildbetter #scalefaster #failless Mangrove

7 Risk Management Failures That Shook the Banking Industry: Part 1 🚨 Risk management isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about survival. Yet, history shows us that even the biggest institutions have failed—often not because risks were unknown, but because they were ignored, misunderstood, or badly modeled. Here are 7 major failures every Risk Professional should know: 1. Barings Bank (1995) The collapse of a 233-year-old bank due to one trader—Nick Leeson. Unauthorized derivatives positions + lack of segregation of duties = complete disaster. 👉 Lesson: Operational risk can kill faster than market risk. 2. Long-Term Capital Management (1998) A hedge fund backed by Nobel laureates failed due to excessive leverage and correlation breakdowns. 👉 Lesson: Models fail when assumptions fail. 3. Lehman Brothers (2008) A central player in the Global Financial Crisis collapsed due to high leverage and exposure to subprime mortgages. 👉 Lesson: Liquidity risk is invisible… until it’s too late. 4. AIG Financial Products (2008) Massive losses from selling CDS without adequate capital backing. 👉 Lesson: Counterparty risk + mispriced credit derivatives = systemic risk. 5. JPMorgan “London Whale” (2012) A trader, Bruno Iksil, took oversized positions in credit derivatives leading to $6+ billion losses. 👉 Lesson: VaR models can be gamed if governance is weak. 6. Wells Fargo Fake Accounts Scandal (2016) Employees created millions of unauthorized accounts to meet aggressive targets. 👉 Lesson: Culture risk is real risk. 7. Silicon Valley Bank (2023) Failure driven by poor interest rate risk management and concentration risk in deposits. 👉 Lesson: ALM is not optional—it’s foundational. What’s the common thread? ✔ Weak governance ✔ Over-reliance on models ✔ Ignoring tail risks ✔ Misaligned incentives Risk doesn’t fail. People, processes, and judgment do. If you're building a career in Risk Management, don’t just learn formulas- learn from failures. Because in this field, history is the best teacher. 💬 Which failure do you think had the biggest impact on modern risk frameworks? 🔗 Link to Part 2: https://lnkd.in/gY28dBE8 #RiskManagement #Banking #FinancialRisk #MarketRisk #CreditRisk #OperationalRisk #FRM #FinanceCareers #RiskProfessionals #BaselIII

Interest Rate Risk: Why It Matters Even When Rates Are Stable Interest rate risk often hides in plain sight. When rates are volatile, it is top of mind. But when they stabilise — or appear to — many assume the worst is over. This assumption can be costly. Understanding interest rate risk requires more than tracking central bank decisions. It requires recognising that repricing mismatches on the balance sheet do not disappear just because the market quietens. In fact, those mismatches often deepen during calm periods, masked by stable net interest margins or temporary accounting gains. There are two main types of interest rate risk that every bank must manage: Repricing Risk (or Gap Risk): This arises when assets and liabilities reprice at different times or on different terms. For example, fixed-rate mortgages funded by short-term customer deposits create exposure if rates rise — the funding cost increases, but the asset yield does not. Basis Risk: This emerges when two instruments reprice from different benchmarks. For instance, a bank might hedge SONIA-based assets with 3M LIBOR derivatives (historically) or hedge variable-rate loans using swaps indexed to a different benchmark than the underlying cashflows. These risks are rarely symmetrical. A bank might be positioned to benefit in one scenario but be significantly exposed in another. And while earnings-at-risk models can show the short-term impact, economic value measures often reveal the longer-term story — particularly for banks with large maturity mismatches. So why does this matter today? Because balance sheet positioning over the past five years has shifted dramatically. In the ultra-low rate environment, many institutions leaned into fixed-rate lending, chasing margin through duration. Now, as central banks hold at higher levels or begin to ease, the embedded rate sensitivity in those positions becomes more apparent. Here are three reasons interest rate risk still deserves attention: 1. Lagged Effects: Interest rate risk is often slow to materialise. Hedging costs roll off, floors expire, and behavioural assumptions (like early repayments) shift when rates stay high for longer than expected. 2. Policy Uncertainty: Central banks are not done yet. Rate cuts may not come as quickly or deeply as markets expect. Any surprises — especially on inflation or employment — can quickly change the path and catch institutions off guard. 3. Capital and Liquidity Impact: Earnings volatility affects capital. Rate risk also interacts with liquidity risk, as seen in 2023 when deposit outflows coincided with unrealised losses on securities portfolios. These are not isolated risks. They compound. Managing interest rate risk is not about predicting rates. It is about being prepared for multiple scenarios. This includes regularly stress testing key assumptions, assessing both short-term and long-term exposures, and ensuring risk appetite aligns with strategy, even when rates are steady.

Stress is part of life — and certainly part of work. But cumulative stress, the kind that builds up day after day and leads to burnout, is not inevitable. It's preventable —when we combine our own daily resilience practices with environments that support us. And that starts with both individual actions and leadership decisions. At Thrive Global, one of the ways we support this is through the Entry Interview. Almost all companies conduct an exit interview when an employee leaves — quizzing the employee about their experience, what worked, what didn't work. But what if managers understood these factors when it could make the biggest impact: on the employee's first day instead of their last? That's the idea behind the Entry Interview. Basically, it's a conversation between a new hire and their manager on day one that starts by asking what's important to them outside of work. For parents, it might be taking a child to school. For others, it might be logging off at a certain time one night a week for a physical therapy session or for a fitness class. It's about acknowledging that we take our whole selves to work, and that nobody should have to choose between being successful at their job and being fulfilled in other parts of their lives. When we know what matters to someone in their personal life, our regular check-ins become deeper and we're more likely to know how they're faring at work and in life as their needs and priorities evolve over time. It's not just good practice. It's a data-backed leadership strategy. According to Gallup, employees who strongly agree that their employer cares about their overall well-being are: ➡️ 3x more likely to be engaged at work ➡️ 71% less likely to report experiencing a lot of burnout ➡️ 5x more likely to strongly advocate for their workplace ➡️ 5x more likely to trust their leadership ➡️ 36% more likely to be thriving in their lives overall Preventing burnout isn't just about what our workplace provides — it's also about the small, intentional choices we make to prioritize recovery, set boundaries, and build connections. It doesn't require massive overhauls. #StressAwarenessMonth

The Risk Register: Your Early Warning System in Construction Projects In construction, surprises are rarely good news. That's why PMI's Risk Register has become my go-to tool for turning uncertainty into manageable action plans. What is a Risk Register? It's a living document that captures identified risks, analyzes their potential impact, and tracks response strategies throughout your project lifecycle. Think of it as your project's immune system—constantly scanning for threats and opportunities. Real Construction Scenario: During a recent construction project, our Risk Register saved us from what could have been a major setback. Here's how we used it: Identified Risk: Concrete supplier capacity constraints during peak construction season Analysis: Probability: High (70%) Impact: Critical (could delay structural work by 3-4 weeks) Risk Score: High Priority Trigger: Supplier's schedule booking rate approaching 85% Response Strategy: Primary: Secured contracts with two backup suppliers at locked-in rates Secondary: Adjusted pour schedule to off-peak periods where possible Contingency: Identified alternative concrete mix designs pre-approved by engineers What Actually Happened: Six weeks into structural work, our primary supplier had equipment failures. Because we had our Risk Register actively monitored with clear triggers, we activated our backup supplier within 48 hours. Zero delay to the critical path. Other Construction Risks We Routinely Track: 🔹 Weather-related delays (especially for exterior work) 🔹 Underground utility conflicts 🔹 Material price escalations 🔹 Labor shortages in specialized trades 🔹 Permit approval delays 🔹 Soil conditions differing from geotechnical reports 🔹 Adjacent property owner complaints Key Success Factors: ✅ Weekly Reviews – Risks evolve; your register should too ✅ Assign Owners – Every risk needs someone monitoring triggers ✅ Quantify Impact – Use time and cost impacts, not just "high/medium/low" ✅ Track Opportunities – Not all risks are threats; some are positive (early material deliveries, favorable weather) Bottom Line: Reactive project management is expensive. Proactive risk management through a well-maintained Risk Register transforms how you handle uncertainty. You're not eliminating risks—you're preparing for them. The best project managers I know don't have fewer problems; they just see them coming from further away. How do you approach risk management in your projects? What's the most valuable risk you've identified early? #ConstructionManagement #RiskManagement #ProjectManagement #PMI #Construction #ProjectRisk #Leadership #PMP

💡 If it takes weeks to resolve a payroll error, what message does that send your workforce? Employees expect payroll to be correct. And when something goes wrong, they expect a fast fix. If your team takes too long to respond, it doesn’t just frustrate people, it erodes trust. Because the real issue isn’t the error. It’s the delay. 🔍 Slow resolution sparks bigger questions: 🔹 Does the business have full visibility over what’s being paid? 🔹 How many errors are slipping through unnoticed? 🔹 What else might be missed down the line? That’s why payroll resolution speed has become a strategic trust signal. One that affects your brand, culture, and compliance reputation. So what’s holding businesses back? ❌ Old systems that don’t surface the right data quickly ❌ Manual processes that slow down investigations ❌ Teams stretched too thin to prioritise accuracy But we’re seeing a shift. Forward-thinking organisations are: ✅ Equipping payroll teams with real-time access to pay data ✅ Automating compliance checks to reduce human error ✅ Embedding structured response systems that close issues quickly The result? A better employee experience, and a much stronger risk posture. In today’s environment, how you respond to errors matters just as much as preventing them. 🟡 Payroll is more than a function. It’s strategic too. How confident are you in your organisation’s ability to detect and fix errors, fast?