Lehman Brothers couldn’t manage risk properly because its risk management functions were buried in corporate hierarchy. Make no mistake: the team’s risk assessments were not incorrect because they disregarded the idea of risk management entirely—in fact, Lehman Brothers had several formal mechanisms to Detect, Assess, and Respond to risk—they were

Unable or unwilling to calibrate for important factors like communication, structure, and bias, we remain vulnerable to threats.

While Stephanopoulos may seem to have been needlessly obsessed about where he sat, his anxiety illuminates a stark truth: by losing influence, you risk losing effectiveness. The structure of an organization informs who can work with whom, who exerts influence, and who is subject to power. Healthy Risk Immune Systems acknowledge this very fact, and

Is your organization positioned to adapt to changing conditions? Does a preoccupation with efficiency inhibit your ability to adapt? What other factors inhibit your ability to adapt to changing conditions? The Bottom Line Every threat is different—so too must be our responses. Constantly changing threats demand continuous adaptation.

From an organizational standpoint, narratives set norms and standards that do much to drive behaviors.

Detect threats. Assess the risk they represent, based on our own vulnerabilities. Respond to avoid or mitigate any negative effects of the risk. Learn so that we are well prepared if the risk reappears.

One of his favorite sayings was about assigning clear responsibility: “If three people are responsible for feeding the dog—the dog is going to starve.” If you’re not sure who’s responsible, it’s time to figure it out. If you’re a leader, and unless you can confirm others have the responsibility—you probably need to assume you do.

Another way to think of the Risk Immune System is like a series of interconnected dials, or gears, where the movement of one affects the shifting of all. Leadership is the wrench that orchestrates everything.

Petrov also considered the fact that the blaring “missile strike” warnings were coming from a single source: Soviet satellites. For the threat to be authentic, Soviet ground-based radars, while slower to detect an attack than satellites, should have been serving as a second source confirmation—but they remained silent. Finally, Petrov remembered