John Paling has achieved some minor successes in a diverse variety of careers during which time he moved from his original home in England to become a citizen of USA. As he seemingly stumbled through his careers, the common factor in his choices has remained his passion to be learning new things, relating them to his “Lessons from Nature” and then sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge with others.
The Risk Communication Institute has clients from a very wide variety of disciplines; from many medical and pharmaceutical organizations, to (taking some unlikely ones) the US Army chemical weapons sites, to ski resorts, to paper manufacturers to nuclear power stations.
Once familiar with the academic subjects of risk assessment and risk management, it becomes clear that ALL of life is full of decisions that involve the balance of risks and benefits.
See riskcomm.com.
Most folk just use their gut to make their decisions but often feel that they would really like to understand the likelihoods of their options better. And to answer those questions, risk communicators from all manner of organizations can find help and guidance from John Paling’s unique approach incorporating visual communications. One of his most popular topics suggesting a need to put risks into perspective is “Can Living Kill You?”
It became clear that there were many situations where the public understood there was some unlikely possibility that some specific thing in the news may be harmful but that common sense required that, before panicking, people wanted some way to put that worry into perspective. In practice it is unliklely that we really were “Up to Our Armpits in Alligators.”
In today’s world it is clear that ready access to the internet has meant that anyone can post complaints and adverse criticisms of an organization’s products or services such that potential customers or clients decide to spend their money elsewhere. As such, reputational risks can easily come to be a financial burden for companies and individuals. The risk communication Institute is now active in this sphere and seeks to guide organizations to take seriously the consequences of complaints that might easily metastasize to become major ongoing financial headaches.
Unexpectedly, having the US Environmental Protection Agency as a client for his environmental presentations lead to John developing simple new tools to enhance public understanding in a vast new area of knowledge that lead him to additional new careers. The EPA had recently become better funded but the staff there felt the agency was being asked to work on topics that the public felt were big environmental risks rather than what the experts at the EPA really knew were the biggest environmental risks.
Most recently, he has expanded his consulting services to include “reputation risks”, an economically important new field that has grown enormously as a result of reviews on the internet.
All these services are backed by books, instructional presentations and an extensive website.
