Leaders deal with more risk than they often acknowledge. Some of it is visible. Most of it is not. When issues appear, people step in to fix them, and over time firefighting becomes part of the rhythm of delivery.
The challenge is not that problems occur. It is that many organisations rely on reacting to them instead of preparing for them. Good risk planning is like wearing a life jacket when heading out to sea, while average planning is like being thrown a life buoy after you fall in. Without a plan, you have neither.
In many businesses, leaders are proud of being the ones who can stabilise a situation quickly. But when teams spend most of their time responding to issues, the organisation ends up stuck in the same cycle. Busy, stretched, always dealing with the latest problem, yet not truly moving forward.
In this article, we explore how proactive risk management shifts organisations away from firefighting and towards foresight. We look at how early signals can prevent major blowouts, how cadence builds resilience, and how executives can strengthen risk fluency across delivery teams.
The Firefighting Trap
Firefighting is often seen as a mark of competence. A contract stalls, someone steps in. A delivery slips, leadership intervenes. A supplier misses a deadline, the team escalates. Problems get resolved, but the conditions that created them remain untouched.
This creates a dangerous illusion of progress. The organisation looks busy, leaders feel involved, and work appears to move forward. But underneath, the same types of issues keep resurfacing because the underlying risks were never addressed.
Over time, firefighting becomes cultural. Teams wait for direction rather than anticipating issues. Leaders operate in a constant state of urgency. Planning horizons shorten because no one trusts that conditions will hold.
This is the turning point. If risk is always met with reaction rather than preparation, delivery becomes unpredictable, and performance becomes inconsistent.
What Proactive Risk Looks Like
Proactive risk management does not remove uncertainty. It reduces the impact of uncertainty by giving teams clarity, foresight, and structure.
It starts with three capabilities.
1. Planning with intent, not just documentation
Most organisations create risk registers. Fewer use them to inform decisions. Proactive planning means looking at the month or quarter ahead and asking two questions:
What needs to go right?
What could stop that from happening?
This reframes risk from a compliance exercise into a leadership discipline. It forces teams to think about constraints early and discuss them openly.
2. Reading the early signals
Early signals are rarely dramatic: a design query that keeps resurfacing, a supplier response that slips from hours to days, or a weekly forecast that becomes increasingly inconsistent. When these signals are raised early, issues can be resolved before they escalate into major disruptions.
Multiple studies have found that rework often accounts for around 5–10 per cent of total project costs. Even with caveats, the message is clear: unmanaged risks create costly downstream impacts. In most cases, these costs began as small, visible signals that were not escalated or addressed early enough.
Proactive organisations treat these as warnings. They surface them quickly, discuss them early, and address them before they escalate. They understand that risk is rarely sudden. It is usually slow and visible, but only to those who are looking.
3. Shared ownership across teams
Risk resilience only works when ownership is distributed. When risk is seen as a specialist function, issues escalate too late. When it becomes shared language across project teams, operations, commercial, safety, and finance, decision-making becomes sharper and mitigation becomes faster.
This shift is cultural. It moves risk from the margins of project reviews into the centre of how work is planned and delivered.
Building Risk Resilience
True resilience emerges when planning, cadence, and feedback loops come together.
1. Planning that anticipates constraints
Good planning is scenario-based, not static. It draws on data, past lessons, and collective input. It also clarifies what success looks like for the period ahead, making it easier to identify when something is drifting off course.
2. Consistent cadence
Cadence is what turns risk management into a habit. Weekly or fortnightly reviews, simple dashboards, and structured conversations ensure risks remain visible. Cadence also creates accountability. When teams know risks will be discussed regularly, preparation improves and escalation becomes timely.
3. Learning from historical patterns
Most recurring issues have a pattern. Maintaining historical risk data provides insight into where problems originate. This allows organisations to recognise early versions of familiar risks and intervene before they grow.
4. Pride in prevention, not firefighting
Teams build confidence when they prevent issues, not just when they solve them. Over time, this changes behaviours. People prepare. They think ahead. They challenge weak assumptions. They take pride in designing work that avoids unnecessary rework or cost creep.
This mindset shift is the foundation of risk resilience.
Tools That Support Risk Resilience
Resilient organisations rely on simple, consistent tools that keep risks visible and actionable.
Structured planning frameworks
Clear monthly or quarterly plans that identify dependencies, constraints, and critical assumptions.
Regular risk review meetings
Short, structured sessions that focus on patterns, early warnings, and next actions.
Data and reporting discipline
Simple, accurate dashboards that reveal trends instead of overwhelming teams with noise.
Root cause analysis of major issues
Not to assign blame, but to understand why the early signals were missed and how to prevent repeat scenarios.
One common gap is that risk reviews often exist at the project level, but not at the business level. Many organisations rigorously assess safety, contracts, and delivery but rarely apply the same discipline to their strategic or operational plans. Business risks are treated as abstract rather than operational, even though they directly affect delivery performance.
Closing
Risk will always exist. The question is whether organisations meet it with preparation or reaction.
Proactive risk management gives leaders the ability to anticipate issues, read early signals, and respond before delays, disputes, or rework appear. It strengthens decision-making across every layer of the business and builds a culture that values foresight over urgency.
Most importantly, it helps organisations move from surviving issues to preventing them.
At Shivendra & Co, we help leadership teams embed this discipline by building clear planning rhythms, defining escalation pathways, and strengthening risk fluency across delivery teams. When risk becomes visible and shared, resilience follows.
References:
Love, P. E. D., Smith, J., Ackermann, F., Irani, Z., & Teo, P. (2018). The costs of rework: Insights from construction and opportunities for learning. Production Planning & Control. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537287.2018.1513177 retrieved from https://espace.curtin.edu.au/bitstream/handle/20.500.11937/72898/73141.pdf?sequence=3