Risk Management Reports

I’m always intrigued with the machinations of the human mind, especially when it comes to solving problems. For more than fifty years I’ve been addicted to crossword puzzles, slowly gaining an expertise that now allows me to complete at least the Monday through Thursday word tests in The New York Times. On Fridays and Saturdays I require the help of my Copy Editor, and we share Sunday’s longer puzzle.

Friday, June 27, 2003 was a typical day for me with a difficult puzzle. I started after lunch on our porch in Maine, making little progress during the first half-hour. The page showed numerous “s” and “ed” endings plus a few lightly penciled guesses (I use a pen for Monday through Wednesday, shifting sensibly to a pencil for the harder late-in-theweek puzzles). Then a phone call derailed me for the afternoon. I returned to the project at 5 p.m., with a tot of rum to stimulate the senses, completing the top left and bottom right in twenty minutes, after which I found myself stymied again. I put the puzzle aside a second time.

The Boston Red Sox intervened after dinner, but they scored ten runs without an out, going on to a total of fourteen runs in the first inning. With the game’s conclusion foregone, I picked up the puzzle, finishing in twenty minutes all but the upper right-hand corner, which continued to be incomprehensible. Finally, at 9:30 p.m., after an hour of reading, I finished it off with ease in less than ten minutes, wondering why what was so obvious then had been so difficult earlier. My elapsed time: 80 minutes of struggle. Not world-class but, like the tortoise, I did finish.

The point of this tale is that the human mind works strangely. By bringing a fresh and uncluttered mind to bear at different times, we can more readily solve difficult problems. A judicious pause or break can refresh our ability to untangle the knots. Is this a new insight? Hardly, but the message requires repetition, especially in a world that wants immediate results. Good work takes time and repeated assaults.

I learned a variation on this theme while serving in the U. S. Navy in the late 1950s. One evening at sea, closing the coast of Japan, I stood on the bridge with the ship’s navigator searching the horizon for the flash of a lighthouse that marked a major course change. We knew it would be just off the port bow. The navigator suggested that I would have better luck in sighting the light if I looked not directly at the point where I expected it but to either side of that point, using my peripheral vision. It worked. I spotted the light before the lookouts, and I learned a lesson in both physics and human nature. We often reach objectives not through direct approaches but through the indirect. It is similar to tacking a sailing boat upwind.

I use both approaches for writing and editing Risk Management Reports. If I try and create ideas for a forthcoming issue directly, my mind often balks. If I search to one side or another, ideas inevitably pop up. The peripheral mind is often more creative than its direct cousin. After I draft the initial text, I re-read it at least three different times. Microsoft Word reviews spelling and grammar. Then it goes to the Copy Editor who, over a sushi lunch, reads (and often savages) the draft, returned to me stained with green wasabi and soy sauce. I give it two more separate readings and manage to catch a few more mistakes and to improve a few words. These multiple readings, over a period of five days, are the same fresh views that help solve crossword puzzles and other problems.

Frequent pauses and breaks in the action, combined with the application of different perspectives, sometimes peripheral, can add real value to your risk management process. Risk scenarios and their responses will benefit, refreshed by multiple intuitive and experiential insights. Take time to solve your puzzles. Try to sight the future using oblique views.