Post by Lori Hebert on Aug 18, 2021 14:32:20 GMT
1. Is Risk ever acceptable? If so, how much risk is acceptable?
Risk is acceptable, inevitable, and often necessary for growth and opportunity for any organization. The question of how much is acceptable would be determined by the organization, depending on how well they understand and have planned for the risk, what the financial bandwidth is for absorbing that risk and how their plan of action is laid out will determine how much they can take on.
2. How would you assess your program/company’s overall risk appetite?
To be candid and in my opinion, Granite Pathways is currently risk adverse after suffering two major contract losses 2019-2020. The quote from Jim Collins on the last reading I believe summarizes what Granite Pathways has been through and where we are headed, “Companies that survive periods of great tumult and duress have an incredible fabric of values”. Our Leadership are collectively working on rebranding, seeking out new opportunities and moving out of the “status quo” mindset we have been “stuck” in.
Strength to Succeed is a workforce who continue to want to do better and more for families in New Hampshire, we recruit, hire, and develop folks who think outside of the box, and we encourage this risk-taking mindset. We also approach the work strategically, continuing to ask do we fully understand the risk exposure, are they appropriate for what we can handle, what are the risks we might not consider and what is our plan to either mitigate or survive the exposure.
3. Is operating without risk a smart business decision?
No, I believe and think the readings confirmed this, if we are not open to taking on some risk, there is an opportunity to miss out on growth opportunities and possibly the opportunity to continue to operate.
4. Given its growth, what are some risks that The Fedcap Group faces? (include reputational, financial, structural etc.)
Fedcap faces all the above from their domestic to their international growth. I feel that this risk is communicated well across the organization which is empowering program leaders and the workforce to shift to forward thinking within risk management.
5. How do we engage staff in understanding and actively managing reputational risk?
For Strength to Succeed, the program has operational, reputational, and financial risk factors in our daily work. From recruiting to hiring, Field Supervisors and I have candid conversations with candidates about the level of risk involved with the program. We hire a workforce who understands the risks from day one. We assess these risks daily through staff activity logs, aggregate reporting, data collection, survey collection and supervision. All program staff are also part of local community groups, attending these groups allows us to keep a tab on our reputation in the field. The program has also set clear expectations for every role within the model, we have clear policy guidelines, standard operating procedures and practice model guidelines that support identifying risk along with plan of action to mitigate and address. We are also a fluid program, we continue to assess our practice and policies from the field to leadership, we all understand the need to pivot as new threats to the work come to light.
6. Discuss a specific example of reputational risk that is directly relevant to your program/company?
Granite Pathways Strength to Succeed launched July 2018. Granite Pathways Youth Treatment Center and Doorways programs launched in 2019 while we were building our unique peer led programming in child protection. Granite Pathways lost the Youth Treatment Center contract in 2019 and the Doorways contract during 2020, both losses were highly publicized throughout New Hampshire. The timing of these contract losses could not have been worse for our new and still developing program!
Our program, which was excelling operationally in 2020, were faced with an audit based on the other program losses, and during a Governor and Council meeting to discuss the expansion of services for Strength to Succeed we faced some reputational backlash during the hearing.
However, I believe that Strength to Succeed was awarded the expansion due to several factors:
• from day one we did not just report on delivered services, we had impact and outcome data for families
• immediate outreach to staff, funders, stakeholders, participants, community partners
• the program staff were already imbedded in local community action groups which allowed us to keep a pulse on the reputation in the field
• and mainly our program’s ability to take what the other programs had missed and incorporate it into our practice and policy plans.
Risk is acceptable, inevitable, and often necessary for growth and opportunity for any organization. The question of how much is acceptable would be determined by the organization, depending on how well they understand and have planned for the risk, what the financial bandwidth is for absorbing that risk and how their plan of action is laid out will determine how much they can take on.
2. How would you assess your program/company’s overall risk appetite?
To be candid and in my opinion, Granite Pathways is currently risk adverse after suffering two major contract losses 2019-2020. The quote from Jim Collins on the last reading I believe summarizes what Granite Pathways has been through and where we are headed, “Companies that survive periods of great tumult and duress have an incredible fabric of values”. Our Leadership are collectively working on rebranding, seeking out new opportunities and moving out of the “status quo” mindset we have been “stuck” in.
Strength to Succeed is a workforce who continue to want to do better and more for families in New Hampshire, we recruit, hire, and develop folks who think outside of the box, and we encourage this risk-taking mindset. We also approach the work strategically, continuing to ask do we fully understand the risk exposure, are they appropriate for what we can handle, what are the risks we might not consider and what is our plan to either mitigate or survive the exposure.
3. Is operating without risk a smart business decision?
No, I believe and think the readings confirmed this, if we are not open to taking on some risk, there is an opportunity to miss out on growth opportunities and possibly the opportunity to continue to operate.
4. Given its growth, what are some risks that The Fedcap Group faces? (include reputational, financial, structural etc.)
Fedcap faces all the above from their domestic to their international growth. I feel that this risk is communicated well across the organization which is empowering program leaders and the workforce to shift to forward thinking within risk management.
5. How do we engage staff in understanding and actively managing reputational risk?
For Strength to Succeed, the program has operational, reputational, and financial risk factors in our daily work. From recruiting to hiring, Field Supervisors and I have candid conversations with candidates about the level of risk involved with the program. We hire a workforce who understands the risks from day one. We assess these risks daily through staff activity logs, aggregate reporting, data collection, survey collection and supervision. All program staff are also part of local community groups, attending these groups allows us to keep a tab on our reputation in the field. The program has also set clear expectations for every role within the model, we have clear policy guidelines, standard operating procedures and practice model guidelines that support identifying risk along with plan of action to mitigate and address. We are also a fluid program, we continue to assess our practice and policies from the field to leadership, we all understand the need to pivot as new threats to the work come to light.
6. Discuss a specific example of reputational risk that is directly relevant to your program/company?
Granite Pathways Strength to Succeed launched July 2018. Granite Pathways Youth Treatment Center and Doorways programs launched in 2019 while we were building our unique peer led programming in child protection. Granite Pathways lost the Youth Treatment Center contract in 2019 and the Doorways contract during 2020, both losses were highly publicized throughout New Hampshire. The timing of these contract losses could not have been worse for our new and still developing program!
Our program, which was excelling operationally in 2020, were faced with an audit based on the other program losses, and during a Governor and Council meeting to discuss the expansion of services for Strength to Succeed we faced some reputational backlash during the hearing.
However, I believe that Strength to Succeed was awarded the expansion due to several factors:
• from day one we did not just report on delivered services, we had impact and outcome data for families
• immediate outreach to staff, funders, stakeholders, participants, community partners
• the program staff were already imbedded in local community action groups which allowed us to keep a pulse on the reputation in the field
• and mainly our program’s ability to take what the other programs had missed and incorporate it into our practice and policy plans.