Why 90% of Risk Managers Never Planned to Be Risk Managers

Here's a dirty little secret the risk management industry doesn't talk about at conferences: almost nobody in this field planned to be here.

Walk into any RIMS Riskworld event, grab a coffee, and ask the person next to you how they ended up in risk management. Nine times out of ten, you'll hear some version of: "I fell into it."

After interviewing more than fifty risk managers for the Brick by Brick podcast, Jason and I discovered something counterintuitive: this accidental path isn't a bug in the system. It's a feature.

 

The Outsider Advantage

Traditional insurance professionals think in coverage lines and policy forms. They see a construction project and immediately start calculating premiums. But the accidental risk managers? They bring fresh eyes from manufacturing floors, administrative offices, and finance departments.

Diana Rich, Director of Risk Management at Foundation Building Materials, started her career looking at gory claim photos that veteran adjusters used to initiate new hires. Instead of being deterred, she got curious. "I would kind of look at it like, oh, this is awful. I wonder how this happened."

That curiosity—the need to understand the how and why behind failures—is the common thread among successful risk managers. They don't just want to transfer risk. They want to understand it, dissect it, and prevent it.

 

The Skills That Actually Matter

The best risk managers share qualities that have nothing to do with formal education:

• Intellectual curiosity—they want to understand how things work and why they fail
• Systems thinking—they see connections between seemingly unrelated events
• Communication skills—they translate complex risk concepts into business language
• Relationship building—they understand that risk management is fundamentally about people

The fundamentals of vendor risk management require both technical knowledge and interpersonal skills that outsiders often bring.

 

The Implication for Hiring

If you're building a risk management team, stop looking exclusively for people with risk management degrees. Look for curious problem-solvers who've demonstrated pattern recognition in other fields. Understanding where your compliance program stands helps you identify which skills to prioritize. The accidental risk manager might be your biggest competitive advantage.