Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin - founder of Google - learned that he could be significantly predisposed to Parkinson's Disease. When asked whether ignorance might have been better, his response is that knowledge is better than uncertainty since he can now make adjustments to his life to reduce the risk and fund further research. I suspect it is this kind of thinking that puts Google where it is today; it's all about Knowledge.

Yet, many organisations prefer to either live in ignorance about the risks in their organisations or rely on subjective gut-feel rather than objective measurement to assess it.

Of course the advantage of measuring risk (operational or strategic) is that the act of measurement itself often points towards the very thing that needs to be adjusted to reduce it.

Yet many businesspeople are frightened of measurement. Why? Because it's benefits are uncertain? Because they are afraid of their inadequacies being exposed? Because they're afraid of looking foolish because they don't understand the measurement techniques?

The interesting thing is that both Brin and Gates are inherently measurers, and in both cases, it's paid when they bother to do it.