Over the years, I’ve had no shortage of people ask me how they can get my job as a senior risk leader. They see the possibilities and get a strong sense that risk management just might be a pretty interesting career track. Oftentimes these folks are sitting in some insurance related sub-function within the broader industry, anything from claims to loss control to underwriting and brokerage. Interestingly, many people who have had this experience (who are essentially developing specialists in these sub-functions) have frequently found that skill transferability from these specialized areas, to their “profession,” was often fraught with hurdles.

I have seen a parallel mind-set throughout much of my career in various industries in which I sought alternate employment. Most commonly it was in the manufacturing or health care sectors that insisted that any leader in their ranks, most especially a risk manager, needed to come from within their industry. They were the true believers and were typically inflexible about this minimum requirement.  They believed their industries were just too specialized and unique for a risk manager from another industry to succeed. They would argue that they didn’t want to invest in allowing the development of the full skill-sets or that their world could or should be learned by those coming from other industries, especially for a mid- to senior-level manager.

Needless to say, I disagreed vehemently with this view and with others in the insurance industry holding these inflexible positions, often to their detriment. Happily, in the last five years, some more progressive leaders in certain industries like health care are beginning to revise these positions in favor of seeing the value in having the new eyes, ears and perspectives that can only come from those experienced in industries other than their own. A good trend indeed.

As a practical matter, I have to mention that my most recent career move into a more strategic, brand enhancing role with a third party administrator has flummoxed a few peers and friends. These folks saw me as moving in the wrong direction, when in fact I was taking a substantive leap forward into long term strategic contributions that have, in fact, been the perfect segue to where I’d wanted to move at this point in my risk career. Coincidentally, my forte since 2001 and the future of the discipline, enterprise risk management, calls for a very specific move in a strategic direction that aligns with the long term interests of enterprises and their commitment to mission accomplishment.

So is there a preferred best strategy to preparing for a career in risk management? The truth is that while many of us developed the skills and experience that have been most valuable by rotating through the various insurance industry disciplines, there are now myriad ways to find your path into risk management and make it a career. From finance to legal to audit and especially spending time in operations, all these experiences pave part of the way toward success. They are a portion of what risk leaders need most to succeed in this era of a broader more diverse practice of risk management, call it enterprise risk management, strategic risk management, international risk management or just plain risk management, as I prefer.

In fact, a successful risk manager is one who needs a broad exposure to most core functions common to almost all entities of any complexity. At the end of the day, it’s hard to go wrong in preparing for a risk career, no matter where you spend time getting knowledge about the many sources of exposure that must be “risk managed.”

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