Positive Risks - An Oxymoron?

Sometimes I think people really over-think some things.

Since I have been working on my masters degree I have had the privilege of purchasing extremely over-priced books and reading page after page of theories and formulas on how I should act, and what I should do under every situation possible.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have learned a lot of great information, and I know it will definitely help in my future endeavours, but sometimes I run across things that appear to be way over the top.

Recently, my homework involved a chapter on risk management. One of the topics talked about negative and positive risks.

Positive risks? Really? This is an attempt to sound pretentious, because that’s the dumbest damn thing I have ever heard.

Throughout history, a risk is something that can potentially cause an undesirable result. By its very nature a risk is a negative thing that should be mitigated if possible.

While reading article after article on this so-called, “positive risk” crap, I found it amusing that almost every article slapped on the fact that a positive risk was an opportunity.

So why the heck don’t we just look at risks and opportunities, instead of negative risks and positive risks?

Reference SWOT analysis, which is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This makes infinitely more sense then positive risks!

From my perspective, as someone who does not posses the lofty qualifications from professional project management associations, this is just an attempt to sound important by someone just making up their own definitions of words that clearly goes against any of the traditional definitions.

I have run across this numerous times at various jobs where one intelligent idiot comes up with something and everyone else just nods their head. Nobody has the stones to tell them that it’s an idiotic plan.

So I’m here, as an unprofessional observer of project management risk analisys, to tell the industry to resist continuing to follow the notion of a positive risk. Call it what it actually is, an opportunity.

Currently you are all taking an asinine journey into buffoonery by pretending that this is some new and exciting term. By embracing this nonsense you are just confusing a subject that is already bloated with charts, graphs, tables, and theories. Making up your own foolish definitions for existing words has hit a new level in mystification of the topic.