Risk Assessment Goals: Raise Understanding and Prompt Planning

[Editor’s Note: Too often the media, us included, focus on crisis response. While that’s critical, of course, for this month’s Crisis Interview we decided to concentrate on risk and risk assessment, though we include other topics too. Our crisis pro is Jim Moorhead, APCO Worldwide’s newly minted North America crisis practice lead. The Harvard undergrad and Columbia Law School alum assumed the post after Kelly Stepno, a good friend of Crisis Insider, was named MD and leader of APCO’s North America Midwest team. In addition to five years at APCO, Moorhead was a MD at Burson-Marsteller, an attorney with Steptoe & Johnson, an investment banker and a political consultant.]

Crisis Insider: Let’s dive into risk assessment. What’s your approach?

Jim Moorhead: When you do a risk assessment, you’re really holding up a mirror to the company and saying, ‘What is most likely to occur and be high impact? And are you positioned, as a company, to mitigate those risks? To respond quickly and intelligently to those risks and recover well from them?’

With a risk assessment, we really are working on two levels. One, does the company understand its risks?