Risk needs attention to detail?

I always thought that roles like risk management require attention to detail.

😉What if I told you that this is NOT really about being able to see details.

❗Experience has thought me that:

👉To easily see how things are different from what they should be it is more useful to see the bigger picture first and THEN delve into details. When we are focusing too much on sub processes, specific calculations, certain metrics etc it is easy to loose sight of the context and overlook risks. It's like not being able to see the forest because of the trees. (Being too global is not a good option either because high level things might seem ok/similar)

👉To be able to manage risks proactively (I.e prevent them) it is useful to be able to see connections between things; however when you go too much into detail this becomes unlikely. When instead you zoom out, you are starting to see what can influence a certain risk area. The more you zoom out..the more you start to connect the dots and see relationships that are useful for making risk management efficient and relevant.

📌Both of these relate to one of the meta programmes that can be easily identified. I speak often about meta programmes because they are soooo useful.

👉At their core, meta programmes are ways in which we unsconsiously process information and here we are looking at the size of information blocks that one prefers. There are two opposite ends of the spectrum here: people who need details (often sequentially) to be able to understand something and people who need the big picture and can drill down from there. In between you can have various degrees of global and specific.

I believe that for senior risk roles it is best to be Global to specific (start from the big picture and go into details).

If you do however have risk roles that are mostly repetitive and focused on monitoring things in a given way than someone who is very specific might fit in.