How Audit Evaluation Can Ensure Effective Decision Making Under Uncertainty

Why Should You Attend:

The webinar will emphasize the different stages that employees go through before taking action in a crisis. Building on this understanding, the instructor will illustrate to participants how best to introduce and develop practical techniques to improve the speed and quality of their decision making.

The course will further examine the six Essential Elements of Analysis (EEA) in decision making under business continuity and risk management. It will discuss probability factors that affect decision making and methods to assess the effectiveness of auditing in risk management.

The webinar will also overview seven techniques and tools that will be elaborated for participants:

1. Techniques for identifying structural versus cyclical changes in the external risk environment.
2. Techniques for spotting and harnessing cross-functional capabilities that a company has and could utilize to leverage risk management for competitive advantage.
3. Tools for stimulating the creation of options, particularly where change is occurring rapidly and the scope for risk management action is shifting.
4. Tools for stimulating the understanding of dynamic risk forces.
5. Proven tools for improving risk management strategy processes, breaking inertia, and jolting conventional thinking.
6. Techniques for identifying risks that customers, competitors and suppliers face.
7. Techniques for identifying and focusing the team’s attention on new or poorly understood risks—before it is too late.

Learning Objectives:

• How to identify transparent vulnerabilities: risks waiting to happen
• Risk management analysis tools
• 12 scenarios with unintended consequences

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• Tunnel vision and focus on risk preferences and threat identification in risk management and business continuity programs.
• Making a better decision by effective auditing programs in risk management and business continuity programs.
• Influence of effective auditing procedures in decision making under uncertainty.
• Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of auditing in risk management.
• Probability factors affecting the decision making in risk management.
• Impact of effective auditing in business continuity and risk management.
• Six Essential Elements of Analysis (EEA) in decision making under business continuity and risk management:
1. Organizational responsibilities in effective auditing
2. Identification and quantification of critical areas to minimize and prevent crisis
3. Audit checklist for business continuity and to identify any vulnerable areas
4. Methods of documentations to help risk management and business continuity
5. Resources to help risk management and business continuity
6. Best practices and standards for maintaining governance programs in business continuity and risk management

Who Will Benefit:

• Senior management
• Audit staff
• Executives with compliance responsibility
• Managers
• Risk managers and staff
• Operations managers and staff

Instructor Profile:

Geary Sikich is a principal with Logical Management Systems, Corp., a consulting and executive education firm with a focus on enterprise risk management and issues analysis. Prior to founding Logical Management Systems, Corp. in 1985, Mr. Sikich held a number of senior operational management positions in various industry sectors. He served as an officer in the U.S. Army and was responsible for the initial concept design and testing of the U.S. Army's National Training Center and other intelligence related activities. He holds a M.Ed. in Counseling and Guidance from the University of Texas at El Paso and a B.S. in Criminology from Indiana State University.

Mr. Sikich is active in executive education, where he has developed and delivered courses in enterprise risk management, contingency planning, performance management and analytics. He is a frequent speaker on business continuity issues and business performance management. He is the author of over 250 published articles and four books, his latest being “Protecting Your Business in Pandemic,” published in June 2008. Mr. Sikich is a frequent speaker on high profile continuity issues, having developed and validated over 2,500 plans and conducted over 300 seminars and workshops worldwide for over 100 clients representing the spectrum of private and public sector operations.

Topic Background:

Unpredictability is the new norm in today’s threat environment. “Because we are asking the wrong questions precisely, we are getting the wrong answers precisely; and as a result we are creating false positives.” Unless we change the decision making paradigm, we will continue to get false positives and find ourselves reacting to events and suffering the consequences of bad decision making. Disruptive events are occurring with increased frequency and they can sometimes be extremely difficult to predict; with the potential to have significant, long lasting impacts.

Good decision making is critical for all organizations. Unfortunately, the nature of decision making is not generally well understood by the individuals making the decisions. A diagnostic bias is created when four elements combine to create a barrier to effective decision making. Recognizing diagnostic bias before it debilitates effective decision making can make all the difference in day-to-day operations. It is essential in crisis situations to avert compounding initial errors.

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