Part VIII

PART VIII: Risk & Mitigation

Chapter 12: Don’t Hide the Risk

Video: Risks & Mitigations That Actually Strengthen Your Recommendation: Don't Hide Them - Integrate Them

Risk should not be an afterthought. It belongs in your analysis because risk can affect which alternative is best.

Strategic Risk

Focus on risks that could prevent the strategy from succeeding. Rank them according to:

Impact × Probability

Start with the risks that matter most.

Risk → Mitigation

Every major risk should connect to a concrete mitigation. For example:

• Risk: Customer adoption is slower than expected.
• Mitigation: Launch a pilot before full rollout.
• Implementation: Pilot with selected customers in Month 1.
• Owner: Marketing + Operations.
• KPI: Adoption rate and customer retention.

This is much stronger than: “We will monitor customer adoption.”

The Risk Rule

If the mitigation doesn’t appear somewhere in the implementation plan, it probably isn’t a real mitigation. Risk makes your recommendation stronger when it demonstrates that you understand what could go wrong and have planned for it.