Bobbie isn’t real. Not completely real anyway. But she’s probably going to seem very familiar if you’re reading this book.

She’s suddenly found herself responsible for risk management within her business, specifically completing a comprehensive risk assessment. But this isn’t her area of expertise and she’s short of resources, time in particular.

So she needs a process for conducting the risk assessment, a roadmap to help her through the process and a set of tools and templates she can utilize along the way.

But she’s starting from scratch.

You might have found yourself in this position. You might even be in this position right now and it may be why you’re holding this book. That’s maybe why Bobbie’s situation might sound familiar.

I know it does to me.

I was in this position several times for the first four or five years of my commercial career. I was learning on the job, often scrambling to find the resources I needed and I usually felt that I was missing something.

Luckily, I knew a lot of Jims.

Jim is also fictitious but Jim is an amalgamation of the dozens and dozens of people who have been patient with me over the years, teaching me everything from drilling and safety management, to finance, risk management, engineering and emergency response.

Some people were even reckless enough to teach me crisis management and corporate communications.

I hope that I can take many of these lessons and share what I’ve learned through Bobbie’s journey and Jim’s insights.

Although it’s well over 15 years since I started out in this field, I still don’t have all of the answers. However, I have developed a few tried and tested tools and techniques. Many were picked up from the Jims while others I’ve had to work out myself. The hardest lessons came mid-way through my journey when I thought I knew what I was doing but didn’t.

Something I’ve picked up along the way is that there’s a lot of unnecessary complexity in risk management but, in the vast majority of cases, simpler is better.  I’ve always felt that when the issues and questions are complicated, we don’t need to add complex systems to the mix. Therefore, I’ve tried to maintain a KISS – keep it stupid simple – approach in the book so that everything’s as simple and easy as possible.

So if you’re a Bobbie and need some help with your risk assessment, but are missing a Jim or two, I hope that their story will give you what you need to plan your assessment, understand your risks and help your organization succeed.

How to use this book

This book is a guide to conducting a risk assessment composed of three elements.

The first is the story of Bobbie’s journey and how she tackles XYZ Co’s risk assessment. The narrative form is inspired by The Goal and  The Phoenix Project, both of which take a narrative approach to processes that are relatively technical and possibly a little dry.  Moreover, there is more to success than simply being given a process to follow. That can tell you what to do and why, but it’s not always clear how you actually put it into use. So the purpose of the narrative sections (the chapters in italics) is to help put the technical elements into context.

However, The Goal and The Phoenix Project both deal with high-level principles that are easier to convey in a novel. This book is also intended to be a practical handbook that you can use as a step-by-step guide. Therefore, the second element of the book is a more technical guide to conducting a risk assessment focused on the ‘what’ and ‘why’. Many of these sections began as stand-alone articles elsewhere but these have now been pulled together into a single, comprehensive, and coordinated handbook for anyone tackling a risk assessment.

The third and last element is a set of templates and tools that you can put to use in your own risk assessment. So rather than simply tell you to ‘plan your interviews’, I’ve included the checklists I use for planning interviews and even a sample set of questions to get you started.

The examples in the book are illustrative and you can download templates for use in your own risk assessment at andrewsheves.com/beyond-the-spreadsheet-toolkit

So that’s the structure, but how do you use the book?

Well, it depends on what you’re looking for.

If you want to get a broad overview of the risk assessment and have the time, you might want to start by reading Bobbie’s story from start to finish. Then you can go back and read the ‘how to’ sections later to dig into the technical aspects.

If you need to start now, begin with the launch sequence at the end of this section. Use that as a guide and work through each section of the book, using the tools and templates available online to help you along the way.

Finally, if you just need a reminder or a refresher, feel free to jump into the appropriate section. However, if you do this, I’d advise you to take a look at the essay ‘What is Risk?’ on the blog (andrewsheves.com/blog).  This defines the terms and concepts used in the book and will avoid any confusion arising from other risk management systems and definitions you’ve encountered in the past.

But whatever you do, please engage with the book. I think of this like a cookbook: it’s meant to be pulled out and used. So the spine should be broken. There should be notes in the margins, coffee stains on the index, and page corners folded down.

In short, the best way to use this book is to use this book.