Risk management: how to identify, assess, and mitigate risks?

Dealing with a new project always brings a mix of feelings, such as excitement and fear. At the same time that the initiation of a project brings good doses of adrenaline to the brain, it can also cause anguish. After all, it is not possible to know how all the steps of the project will be. The feeling worsens when there is an unforeseen event, something that was not calculated by the team.

These events that take the team by surprise cannot be avoided, but they can be overcome. It all starts with the management process. When a new project starts, managers need to talk to the team about possible failures. That doesn’t mean that the team will make a mistake or that it is a negative, but it is necessary to be prepared for the best or worst of surprises.

Surprises can have a less negative impact if managers, as well as the team, are prepared to deal with them. That is why it is necessary to have an intelligent and rational management process to look for possible flaws in a project. In the topics below, we will give tips on how to look for these small errors that go unnoticed.

Idealization

It is very important that managers, when accepting a project, have a meeting with the team, but not just to delegate functions. It is important to talk about project expectations and how it can be carried out in the best possible way. An alignment between expectations and reality must be done, thus avoiding work overload for some team members, which also avoids frustrations and errors in execution.

If managers have an idealization far beyond the capacity of their employees, then frustration becomes a certainty and the project will be compromised in a negative way. The manager needs to share his or her ideas and expectations with the team, so it is possible to know what they can deliver and how they will deliver. 

Having an unrealistic expectation will make the project run risks that will compromise its success. An example is accepting to carry out a large project that requires months of execution to be done in a few weeks. This will lead to risks for the team and dissatisfaction of the client.

Surprises

As discussed at the beginning of the text, surprises cannot be avoided, but they can be predicted. One way to do this is to save all drafts and ideas related to the project. Having all these documents saved, it is possible to recycle an idea that was discarded at the beginning of the project execution or to evaluate where the project structure was lost. Deleting this history can bring risks, such as losing a suggestion made by the client or teammates.

A surprise may have already been foreseen in a project execution draft, so it is important to keep this type of document and also share it with colleagues who are working on the same project. When this is done, it is possible to find a solution to the problem in a faster and more practical way, once again avoiding work overload. The chances of the project being successful increase. 

Work overload is one of the main reasons for leaving professionals. Some have a burnout report, which is exactly the excess of work that can appear because of poor planning or management done in the wrong way. If the professional constantly deals with negative surprises, then there will be an emotional overload, which is negative personally and professionally.