The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Speak the Same Risk Language | Foundations Friday S5EP4

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

On this Foundations Friday, How to Speak the Same Risk Language, we break down how project managers and emergency leaders can align around a shared risk language. Whether you're using a THIRA or a risk register, the goal is the same: identify what could go wrong, how bad it might be, and what to do about it. Real teamwork starts when everyone sees risk through the same lens.

Please dial at your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum. And let's get started with the People Process Progress Podcast. Hey, y'all, happy Friday and welcome back to the People Process Progress Podcasts, Foundations Friday edition. Let's get this one short and useful, something you can take with you in the next week. So earlier this week, we talked about how project managers and emergency folks can actually speak the same language when it comes to risk.

Sounds like a stretch. I happen to have lived in both worlds, but one group is dealing with budgets and timelines, the other is planning or floods or mass vaccinations. But here's the thing, we're all trying to answer the same basic questions here. What could go wrong? How likely is it?

How bad could it be who needs to know and Most importantly, what's our plan to deal with these things? So whether it's a delayed workday rollout or running an emergency response with limited resources, it's still risk We're still being smart. We're planning right before it hits. We're not just gonna wait and be totally reactionary So here's one thing that I'd love for you to do is grab your emergency planning folks, your project leads, get them in the same room or on the same call, do a quick crosswalk,

nothing fancy, right? Pick one project risk, one emergency risk, it would do a crosswalk, right? So for project managers, look in your risk register. For emergency managers, look in your THIRA, the threat hazard identification and risk assessment, or whatever tools you've got. And I'll bet you start to see some real overlap.

You might call something an impact rating. They might call it a capability target. You've got mitigation plans. We've got desired outcomes. It's the same mindset. It's just different words in different worlds. So start matching these up, and you don't have to do this. I think it's most applicable probably if you're

in public safety or emergency management and you're given a project. Less likely if you're a project manager to then go work with emergency management folks, but the crossover that I talk about on here a lot is there. So, and then if you want to take it up a notch, build a dashboard, right? Continuously be looking at these things.

So it doesn't need to be anything super special. It could be color coded, there's Google Sheets, go look at those, Red, Yellow, Green, Stoplight, who owns what, what's the trigger, what are we gonna do? It's a quick reference, right? And you change them as things happen, particularly, let's say you're in public safety emergency management and you're working a special event

or an incident, you can be changing these on the fly, they get real time. So it's fancy or it's simple, whatever works for you, right? So here's your move for next week. Schedule the conversation, give yourself 30 minutes, get one person from each side, one risk each, right? You're not trying to change the world, you're just trying to conversation

to make things smoother down the road when stuff happens. So when you're leading a project or responding to a crisis, risk is risk. Right, if we can talk about it the same way, then we're already building that bridge and we're already understanding each other's worlds between public safety, incident management, emergency management, special event planning,

program management, it's all one big world and I'm trying to open that window for all of us to see together. So remember, keep those people first, keep working those combined processes, and we will all make progress together. Godspeed, y'all.