Nothing tastes as good as home cooking—especially when it concerns a business system, operation, product, service, or risk management system that the owner, business team, or decision-makers cooked up within the company’s four walls. Unfortunately, in the business world, continually feasting on home cooking can be a major problem. Businesses become blind to new risks and new techniques for managing risks. They tend to believe they are okay and have it under control. This often happens when companies make a new investment and then forget to manage the investment. The worst cases occur when firms forget to maintain their existing programs or models. Models may be implemented but not checked and improved, people may be trained once but not continually (so new people never get trained), or processes are put in place but are altered gradually or not even followed after a while.

Failure to maintain systems becomes even more troublesome if the organization has developed its own risk plan, no matter how basic. If a risk situation arises, decision-makers will assume they have the tools and measures in hand to deal with it.

It’s okay to work in-house, but it is important to ensure that a company doesn’t implement processes without following through on them. Companies always need to review, upgrade, test, check, and be prepared.

Make sure people within the organization understand the need to seek an outside solution. Bring people on board by including them in the process of identifying risk-sensitive areas and seeking outside solutions. Use them to help arrive at a solution that will integrate seamlessly into your business.