I want to take an example from our real life to showcase how integrated risk management works in real life situation.

Case Study:

A man with mild hypertension was asked by the Doctors to take precautions, reduce salt intake by a third, start excercises and walk for about 45 mins a day. The man, who was very committed to ensuring that he controlled his hypertension with lifestyle change, took the following steps. 1. He reduced his salt intake to almost negligible levels. 2. He changed from regular milk to low fat milk 3. He straight away went for walks upto 5kms daily. After a week, everything seemed to be going on well, but the blood pressure remained more or less around the previous levels. Infact, one fine day, he his blood pressure reading triggered feeling of uneasy and ultimately resulted in full blown high blood pressure that had to be controlled. Starting anti-hypertension medicines did not reduce the uneasiness, discomfort, anxiety etc. The man was not sure why he was feeling weak, dizzy at times, uneasy despite the fact that many told him that symptoms of hypertension are not these as experienced. He could not sleep in the nights.

The real diagnosis and the interplay of various risk factors

So, looking back at what went wrong. Dwelling deep into the case points us to many interesting factors on what actually led to high blood pressure. Drastic salt reduction instead of by one third resulted in unwanted affects of deficiency of salt. The weakness, cramps etc were due to salt, but the man all time time thought of these as side affects of hypertension. Similarly reducing body fat, low fat diet etc made him feel weak. Both these conditions came in disguise of hypertension and could not have been treated properly if the real underlying cause of uneasiness, discomfort was not known.

The message as it applies to integrated risk management

Many a times, the risk event as we see it is a combination of many risk factors. We know how to handle each risk factor in isolation and we know how it will impact the situation. But we rarely know how these risk factors interplay in a combined sitution. We all know reducing salt reduces hypertention, but we did not know if was the cause of dizziness during high blood pressure. the situation could not have been mitigated if salt intake was not increased, someone that many would overlook. Similarly, when a risk event happens, we look for the obvious cause and try to mitigate by taking actions that normally work well when these risk factors are in isolation. But when these same factors appear in an integrated fashion, using the same risk management approach is not helpful. the interplay of each factor has to bee considered and appropriate action taken.