Writing and public speaking have long been important parts of my work, whether in my consulting practice, my work at the university, or earlier in my career. They are both important levers to get policies and regulations rethought and/or improved, to change existing notions of what is possible or how things must be.
PR4P: You’ve written several books, tell us about them.
Annie Searle: My first book was Advice From A Risk Detective, published in 2011, with a second edition in 2013. It’s written for the general public, not for a professional or academic audience. It looks at how to handle personal risk at home, at school, at work, online and on the road.
There are three volumes published by the ASA Institute for Risk and Innovation in the Reflections on Risk series. The books are designed for risk professionals.
I recently finished a long chapter looking at conduct risk for the British publisher Risk Books. The book is titled Conduct Risk: A Practitioner’s Guide; and I am the author of Chapter 2, “How Does Conduct Risk Manifest and What Are Its Root Causes?” as well as a contributor to closing comments in Chapter 9 on the future of conduct risk.
I have been working for a couple of years on a book that would probably be called Executives and Risk: What Your Teams Don’t Tell You. I think the time has come on it to fish or cut bait. Do I want to spend the time to interview 5-8 chief executives in order to validate the preliminary conclusions I’ve come to? Is there time to continue to work on that book, given the challenges to our democratic way of life that we are about to experience over the next four years?
PR4P: What advice would you give to a young person who is aspiring to have a career in risk management?
Annie Searle: You must know how to read, to write and to make presentations that are clear and make it easy for your client to accept your recommendation. There’s a great deal of reading to get a real understanding of how the risk profession fits into enterprise wide strategy and decision making. It’s necessary to learn the various tools that can be applied to manage risk and to work methodically. When I teach, I say that I am training the next generation of risk managers – so naturally I recommend a program like the one I teach in.
PR4P: What keeps you up at night?
Annie Searle: Not very much. I earned the title “Princess of Darkness” about 15 years ago because of the enthusiasm I show for worst case scenarios and things that go bump in the night. If I’m going to worry, I’ll do it when I’m wide awake, usually not in the middle of the night.