The Difference Between a Risk and a Problem

One of the simplest ways to improve how a project runs is to start talking about risks before anyone has a problem to solve. 

In project management terms, the distinction is straightforward: 

A risk is something that might happen. An issue is something that already has. 

The difference matters because identifying something while it is still a risk gives you something valuable: time to decide what to do about it. 

Consider two projects happening inside the same law firm. 

A litigation team has a filing deadline six weeks away, and the client's approval is needed before the motion can be finalized. 

At the same time, an operations team is preparing for an office relocation six weeks away. Department leaders need to approve final technology and equipment requirements before orders can be placed. 

In both cases, the approval is still pending. So the teams are managing risks. 

Once an approval deadline passes and the filing schedule or equipment installation begins to slip, the situation changes. The risk has become an issue, and the team has fewer options because some of its available time has disappeared. 

That is why good risk management often starts well before anything has actually gone wrong. 

Risks frequently show themselves through small signals. Questions keep coming up because the scope isn't quite clear. A decision takes longer than expected. Someone critical to the project is stretched across several priorities. Internal deadlines start moving. Different stakeholders appear to be working from different assumptions. 

Any one of those may turn out to be insignificant. But together, they give the project team useful information. 

The next step is deciding what deserves attention. 

A practical way to do that is to ask two questions: How likely is this to happen? And how significant would the impact be if it did? 

That probability-and-impact thinking helps separate a meaningful project risk from something that simply needs to be watched. 

For example, an approval that has been delayed on previous projects and could jeopardize a major deadline deserves more attention than a minor error in an internal project update that's likely to be caught during normal review. 

That sounds obvious when you see the examples side by side. In practice, though, teams have limited time and attention. When every possible risk receives the same level of focus, resources can get pulled toward lower-impact concerns while more consequential risks continue to develop. 

Once the team understands the risk, it can make a deliberate decision about how to respond. 

Sometimes the best response is to avoid the risk by changing the plan. If one person's approval could hold up the entire project, perhaps another authorized decision-maker can be identified in advance. 

Other times, the team can mitigate the risk by reducing its likelihood or impact. That might mean moving an approval earlier, building additional time into the schedule, establishing interim checkpoints, or assigning someone to monitor the risk. 

Some risks can simply be accepted because their likely impact is small and the project can absorb them. 

And some need to be escalated because solving them requires authority, resources, or influence outside the project team's control. 

What changes when teams work this way is the conversation. 

Instead of discovering a problem and then figuring out what to do, the team can say earlier: Here's the risk we're seeing. Here's how likely we think it is. Here's what it could affect. And here's what we'll do if it continues. 

That creates clarity around another important question: Who is watching it? 

A risk that everyone sees but no one owns can still become a problem. So effective risk management also means assigning responsibility, communicating with the right stakeholders, and having a contingency plan for the risks that matter most. 

This is one reason I think project management skills are useful well beyond people who carry “project manager” in their title. 

The same thinking works when an attorney team is managing a filing. It works when an operations team is coordinating an office relocation. It works during a document-management rollout, a technology upgrade, or another cross-functional project. 

Across all of those situations, the useful questions are remarkably similar: 

• What could affect this project before it reaches the outcome we're trying to achieve? 
• Which risks deserve our attention now? 
• Who owns the response if something changes? 

Asking those questions early won't remove uncertainty from a project. It gives the team more time to make thoughtful decisions while there are still choices available. 

And that may be the most practical benefit of risk management: seeing something early enough to do something useful about it. 

That probability-and-impact thinking, along with the four ways teams can respond to risk, is at the center of the Risk Management module in our new Project Management series. The series includes versions for attorney and business services audiences, with examples tailored to each learner group. It also covers project management foundations, the project lifecycle, and strategic planning and prioritization as part of Professional Essentials, SkillBurst's library of 175+ professional skills modules for law firms. 

See it for your team: Preview the Project Management series: skillburst.com/project-management-series or explore Professional Essentials: skillburst.com/professional-skills 

Preview the Project Management series: skillburst.com/project-management-series or  

Explore Professional Essentials: skillburst.com/professional-skills