How many of you are the first official "Risk Management" person at your institution? It is an interesting position to be in at a small private university. Some days I feel like I can write my own job description. Other days, I feel like I'm that round peg being crammed into the square hole. Either people have never heard of risk management or they are already doing as much risk management as they can handle. Never mind, the fact that how they define risk management usually has nothing to do with loss prevention or mitigation.
So, I got it into my silly little head to put some of my more tedious processes online. You know, get with the 21st century and save the hand cramps, I mean paper. I have managed to stump our IT people with my, not so simple, demands on how I want the computer to perform. Our IT people started touting this intranet site, SharePoint, as the next big thing!! I, of course, am barely proficient in basic Office stuff, like Word, Excel, and Outlook. IT gave me, and a few other pioneers, a short, three-session tutorial on what SharePoint is, can do, and it's importance to the future of ALL MAN KIND. (Or, at least, that's what they conned me into thinking. What can I say? I seem to be really gullible at times.)
I swear I heard something in my mind crack and break in the beginning of the second session.
I turned to my go-to SharePoint Wonder Woman, and asked "If I get my waiver processes onto SharePoint, will the users know how to use it?" "They'll just have to learn." Being the smart cookie that I am, my follow-up question was, "What if they learn how to use it before I do?" She rolled her eyes and said, "We will try to make it idiot-proof on your end." Rather than be offended, I merely smiled and said, "thanks, I appreciate that." And I really, really do! They know me on a first-name basis at the IT Help Desk.
But the level of idiot-proof that I am asking for seems to be beyond the capabilities of SharePoint. Apparently, SharePoint can't actually write the waivers from scratch. Apparently, there isn't a button I can push at the beginning of the year that will take care of all waiver issues until the end of the year. Wonder Woman really painted this picture of a futuristic world (in which I looked a lot like Homer Simpson) where I had one role to play and that was pushing that big red button in front of me. Reality is probably better, what with job security and all that...
I found this quote, which seems to be in line with my experiences above. "If you put off everything till your're sure of it, you'll never get anything done." (Norman Vincent Peale). I may not be an expert at something but it won't stop me from improving or moving forward using those new-fangled thing-a-ma-bobs, I think they're called computers.
These adventures in the cyber world are on-going. I can keep you up-dated on my progress if you're interested.
PS. My first attempt at blogging. Am I doing this right? I can't always tell.