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Read some of our core beliefs

Here are some articles and other publicly-available content authored or co-authored by Martin Pergler available for download. In addition, I regularly make brief posts or post longer articles on LinkedIn; see in particular my posts and articles there. ​
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  • When to think about risk, an invited article in Strategic Risk Magazine's "Changing Risk" series (2022), stressing that risk-informed thinking needs to go well beyond a standardized, periodic process driving merely towards Board signoff. (The article should be open access, but some people report that it's sometimes paywalled - so here is a pdf).
  • It's time for governments to start properly risk managing their COVID-19 crisis response, an op-ed (joint with Colleen Flood, published Jan 2022) in the Globe and Mail, calling out 3 mindset shifts to better respond given continuing uncertainty. (Republished as part of the Royal Society of Canada's COVID publication series). 
  • A semi-quantitative catastrophic risk likelihood prioritization framework for the metallurgical industry, an article and conference presentation at the MetSoc 2020 COM Conference of Metallurgists (Canada). How to combine techniques from process safety and operational risk assessment such as bowtie method and LOPA (layer of protection analysis) with "bounded subjectivity" techniques such as the Delphi method for risk prioritization; applicable more broadly than metallurgy. Joint work with engineering and development consultancy Hatch, Ltd. 
  • Preparing your company for uncertainty in Trump world, a short opinion piece that was going to be published in a Canadian business paper in February 2017, but then ended up on the cutting room floor after a sudden change in editorial policy. It's a short, readable version of my thoughts on the importance of scenario planning in risk management.
  • Explore your opportunity landscape by harnessing your risks (a webinar I presented for GARP, the Global Association of Risk Professionals, with Brenda Boultwood of MetricStream, in November 2015).  Risk management in a company is a team sport, and when done well is much more about unlocking the confidence to pursue opportunity rather than just nailing down what might go wrong. (Registration required to access, but you don't have to be a GARP member.)
  • New ideas in Enterprise Risk Management across industries (slides from talk at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Business Master of Finance Speaker Series, June 2015.) 5 themes of ERM today and what they might lead to.​
  • Stress testing, scenarios, and extreme events (slides from invited presentation at Kuwait ERM conference, March 2015).  Fat tails/extreme events, regime change, scenario planning, stress testing: how do they all come together? Natural resources/nonfinancial institution focus, as opposed to regulatorily-driven financial stress testing efforts.
  • Making better decisions about the risks of capital projects (McKinsey on Finance, May 2014). Example emerging practices at a single-project as well as portfolio level from the oil & gas sector, but more broadly applicable. 
  • Strategic commodity and cash-flow-at-risk modeling for corporates (McKinsey Working Papers on Risk #51, November 2013). ETRM/CTRM (energy/commodity trading and risk management software) can give very granular insight on certain risk positions, but for many nonfinancial companies, the holy grail is quantifying commodity, macroeconomic, and other risks across the company with a more strategic focus.
  • Value of risk through informed tradeoffs, based on a talk at the Cambridge University Centre for Risk Studies Annual Summit, June 2013 (YouTube interview). Often the value of better risk management comes not from "negative event avoidance" or compliance, but through better risk-return tradeoffs that allow for more confident risk-taking.
  • The hypotenuse and corporate risk modeling (McKinsey Working Papers on Risk #49,  April 2013). A slightly tongue-in-cheek look (with nods to W.S. Gilbert and Tom Lehrer) on how not to go overboard in risk modeling, touching on some simple but powerful math in the process.
  • Concrete steps for CFOs to improve strategic risk management (McKinsey Working Papers on Risk #44, April 2013).  CFOs are stewards of a company's value, capital, and risk-bearing capacity. What does that specifically mean regarding risk management, especially where there is no C-suite level CRO?
  • ERM: What's different in the corporate world and why (McKinsey Working Papers on Risk #40,  December 2012. Based on invited presentation at the GARP annual conference in February 2012). The title says it all...
  • Risk oversight practices: insights from corporate directors (The Conference Board Director Notes, September 2010.) Corporate directors from different industry sectors describe their journeys and challenges in improving risk oversight.
  • Risk: Seeing around the corners (McKinsey Quarterly, October 2009). The central idea of risk cascades - 2nd and 3rd order indirect effects of risks that can often swamp the first order effects, and important drivers of nonlinearity that contributes to Black Swans. 
  • Reducing risk in your manufacturing footprint (McKinsey Quarterly, April 2009, based on a presentation at "Real Options Valuation in the Global Economy", Rio de Janeiro, July 2008).​ Risk and flexibility go hand in hand to create value - example from an industrial company where taking on new risks actually reduced overall footprint riskiness, provided the flexibility were explicitly captured.
  • And, as something a bit different, a transcription of an interview, I did for Will Bachman/Umbrex's podcast, "Unleashed, how to thrive as an independent professional". 
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