INTRODUCING: PAUL HOPKIN From annoying Jeremy Clarkson to being labelled obdurate by the HSE, IRMs new technical director has had a varied career. Sush Amar gets the lowdown F or me, being a secondary school teacher was worse than poking yourself in the eye with a pair of scissors. Its an initially surprising statement from someone who clearly enjoys bringing academic subjects to life. But the fact that, more than 30 years later, Paul Hopkin can still reel off the duration of his career as a secondary school maths and physics teacher as 63 weeks and four days reveals what an endurance test the experience was. The kids didnt want to be there, and the structure and rigidity of the teaching culture didnt help. The teaching materials were very dry I hope theyre more engaging now they lacked context and engagement. They just werent designed with relevance to their students in mind. The pursuit of relevance has been an enduring motif of Hopkins career ever since, and it was certainly key to his work as IRMs lead examiner for the International Certificate between 2007 and 2013. Now hes determined to bring out the relevance of risk management to a new audience. After escaping teaching, Hopkin became a government safety inspector with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). He thrived. Being out and about, visiting workplaces, talking to bosses and their staff it was great. Getting people to understand why requirements existed and applying common sense to find practical solutions that worked for them was very satisfying. But the political and economic climate of the UK in the 1980s was changing. As de-industrialisation in Britain spread, cutbacks in the HSE also began to bite and the culture changed. When his boss called him obdurate, he knew it was time to leave. His next role at Sedgewick brokers (now Marsh), as a product health and safety consultant, gave Hopkin his first taste of the private sector. I loved it. The culture, the sheer variety of customers and the novelty of being a welcome visitor, as opposed to that bloke from Elf n Safety. A growing number of Hopkins friends and colleagues started to set up their own consultancies, singing the praises of independence. Four years later, Hopkin took the plunge himself. The concept of being your own boss was attractive, he remembers. But in reality, if you didnt watch it, youd be working seven days a week. And I wasnt watching it. There was less technology around in those days, people had meetings and talked more directly to each other. Im gregarious, and I found myself feeling quite professionally lonely. Upside IRM has a genuinely international perspective, a broad range of expertise, especially in the financial sector, and is commercially varied MIKECPHOTO / SHUTTERSTOCK Hopkins next role as loss control manager for BET (now Rentokil) exposed him to the American approach to risk management. The CEO was American, six foot five inches and an ex-marine, Hopkin recalls. He ran an extremely tight ship and these days would probably have been accused of bullying. I didnt like his methods, but I liked his results. The American experience of loss control had crossed the Atlantic more or less intact. The focus was on the upside of risk, and how enterprise risk management (ERM) could make a positive contribution and add value. The concept was relatively novel then. Hopkins next key role was as head of risk management at the BBC, responsible for overseeing everything from health and safety to broadcasting continuity. They used the ERM approach, complying with Turnbull even though they werent obliged to. The BBC is a fascinating organisation culture-wise. Its 20,000 very intelligent, competent, motivated people who are completely unmanageable. They divide into: the talent star presenters; the creatives producers and writers; craftsmen the camera crew and technicians; and then the suits those responsible for compliance and risk management, like me. It was incredibly difficult to manage all these different cultures and behaviours cohesively. Paul Hopkin was previously head of risk management at the BBC Gear change The reality is that risk management professionals dont always align themselves with the success of the wider business as much as they could It was at the BBC that Hopkin incurred the ire of Jeremy Clarkson. Hopkins book, Fundamentals of Risk Management, quotes Clarksons writing in a column in 2004: Health and safety is now so out of control that I find it nearly impossible to do my job. On Top Gear, we refer to the BBC health and safety people as Prohibition Officers from the PPD or the Programme Prevention Department. And I was the chief Prohibition Officer, Hopkin grins. After three and a half years of negotiating the unique politics at the BBC, Hopkins next role was with Rank Group, as director of risk management. Cinemas, holiday company, casinos, film labs in LA the brief was incredibly diverse. I had to go out to LA regularly and, again, I was dealing with the hugely different behaviours from the different cultures. While the Hollywood people initially seemed impossible and the casino people appeared to be compliant, it was actually a lot more complicated than that, he explains. Actually, the gaming people would play along with you, but purely from a compliance mentality. All they wanted was to achieve compliance they werent that interested in the wider uses of risk management. Whereas the Hollywood folk, if you could convince them of the merit behind your suggestions, they got the message, embraced it wholeheartedly and acted on it. The problems of boards failing to prioritise risk management, which is currently exercising IRMs chair and chief executive, are nothing new to Hopkin. The boards didnt really get it. They had to be persuaded of the relevance. That was an exercise in education. Perhaps my old teaching experience came in useful, because we did make considerable headway with the risk assessment workshops and communications work. And the fact that, for example, a Hard Rock Caf would burn down from time to time because of blocked kitchen ducts probably didnt hurt in getting the message across. Hopkin came to IRM after nine years as Airmics technical director. I liked the technical challenge, he says. Drawing on and understanding the problems of the membership, their practical knowledge and experience, and seeking to share it. During Hopkins tenure, Airmics technical output increased dramatically and the issue of relevance was again to the fore. The role involved drawing on the membership for their knowledge and translating that into a digestible format, relevant for our audiences and making sense of a huge amount of information. It was during this time that Hopkin wrote the seminal textbook Fundamentals of Risk Management. Impressions So what are Hopkins impressions of IRM? IRM is actually a much more confident organisation than it may sometimes appear to outsiders. It has a genuinely international perspective, a broad range of expertise, especially in the financial sector, and is commercially varied. My role here is to support education and qualifications and IRMs technical and research work. Again, its about making explicit the relevance of what IRM does and the relevance of risk management itself. Risk managers can be a closed community. We can spend too much time arguing technical niceties with each other and forgetting about the wider world. And yes, boards need to be more aware of what we can do for them. But the reality is that risk management professionals dont always align themselves with the success of the wider business as much as they could. Less navel-gazing and more crossing the floor into the boards world is needed. What Id like to see and what IRMs forthcoming Certification will support is the journey across three stages in the life of risk management. First, its a governance activity in many ways, then it needs to have an influence and then, finally, risk management needs to lead the strategy. And leading the strategy is two steps beyond where too many risk managers are still at right now.