Risk identification is the initial step of risk management that involves imagining potential future losses. It is a creative process that can use techniques like brainstorming, counterfactual thinking, and divergent thinking. Risk identification also involves analyzing past issues, current trends, and considering cascading failures, known unknowns, and failures of imagination to comprehensively identify risks. The goal is to create a complete list of risks without repetition.

1. Risk identification
By:
Sapna moodautia

2. Risk identification
Risk management is essentially a process of identifying, assessing and treating risk.
Risk identification is the initial and most critical step of the process that involves
listing out potential future outcomes that result in losses.
Risk management begins with identifying risks. This involves imagining the future
and is a creative process.
The following are risk identification techniques and considerations:

3. 1. Creative Processes
Risk identification is first and foremost a creative process that involves imagining the
future. It is common to include as many people as possible in risk identification
including subject matter experts from critical areas to your project or strategy.
– Brainstorming is a group creativity technique that encourages participants to
spontaneously list out ideas without overthinking them.
– Counterfactual thinking is a common type of thought pattern that goes back in time
to evaluate choices and actions that weren't made. It is typified by questions like
"what if I had ...“
– Divergent thinking is a process of creative thinking that questions and probes to
challenge assumptions and established ideas. It is often compared with convergence
thinking, a logical process of finding the "correct" answer.

4. 2. Analysis
It is a technique of risk identification based on analysis of past issues and current trends.
– Context analysis is an examination of the current situation of an organization, team, strategy,
program or project with respect to its environment.
– The MECE principle, is a method of organizing information so that it's mutually exclusive and
collectively exhaustive. It’s a common business analysis technique that aims to identify a
complete list without any repetition. For example, a team might list the actions that can be
taken to achieve a particular goal and design the list to be complete without an repetition.
– Risk impact is an estimate of the potential losses associated with an identified risk. It is a
standard risk analysis practice to develop an estimate of probability and impact. For example;
health & safety, quality of work and financial impact.

5. 3. Systems Thinking
Systems thinking is the practice of thinking through broad end-to-end impacts.
– A cascading failure is a failure that starts small but becomes large as it spreads
across a system as a chain reaction of interconnected parts. They occur in
complex systems such as economies, markets, technologies, infrastructure and
ecosystems. Cascading failures are considered a particularly difficult to predict
and damaging class of risk.
– Known unknowns are things that you know that you don't yet know. This can
be quite useful because knowing that you don't know something is a starting
point for research. Unknown things can also play into decision making as they
represent uncertainties and risks.

6. 4. Failures
Patterns of risk identification failure.
– Failure of imagination is the expectation that current and future opportunities
and risks will resemble the past. The term is associated with major failures of
risk management and strategy based on static, unimaginative and reactive
thinking.
– An unknown risk is a potential loss that is completely unknown to you. It the
context of risk management this includes any risk that is not identified and
managed.

7. Source:
https://simplicable.com/new/risk-identification