In a recent episode of the CBS-TV sitcom, “How I Met Your Mother,” corporate survivor extraordinaire Barney Stinson counsels close friend and office colleague Marshall Eriksen that to avoid being laid off, he needs to fill a more popular workplace role at Goliath National Bank. He cited examples such as “Food Guy” (who always brings delicious treats to the conference room) or “Sports Guy” (the one who runs the office fantasy leagues).

Barney's point was that even if you don't work hard or perform some essential corporate function, if you make yourself personally invaluable–and fun–to your fellow staff members and managers, you are less likely to get canned.

On the other hand, he warned that those who make life difficult or at least unpleasant for everyone are more apt to get cut when push comes to shove.

For the sake of risk managers everywhere, let's hope Barney's insights are dead wrong, as I doubt many would vote to protect “Risk Guy”–the one who tells you everything you can't do, makes you jump through hoops to pass safety audits, and scares the life out of you with worst-case scenarios–from sabotage to terrorism.

As you'll see by reading this week's cover story, starting on page 12–”Risk Managers In Survival Mode”–those charged with keeping workers, products and properties safe are sweating about their job security. All the old fallacies are being revived, such as risk management not being a revenue-producing department or core function, along with the myth that a risk manager's duties can be easily outsourced.

How soon employers forget that a good risk manager can make the difference between a bottom-line profit and loss by keeping catastrophes from happening, or preventing an exposure from cascading out of control. And those who trust outsiders to handle the risk manager's job–particularly after the bid-rigging exposed by Eliot Spitzer–do so at their own peril.

It doesn't help that the value of enterprise risk management is being challenged, given ERM's failure to head off the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression. AIG, for example, boasted an extensive ERM process, for all the good it did to stop rogue traders at its Financial Products unit.

Short of coming up with some Barney-like gimmick to make themselves more popular, what can risk managers do to protect their departments from devastating budget cuts and preserve their jobs? Bill Perry, president of Logic Associates, offers far better advice in our cover story than what you heard from Barney Stinson.

However, Barney's words of wisdom shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. There is no reason for risk managers to be pigeonholed as mere numbers crunchers, safety nitpickers and insurance buyers.

The risk managers most secure in their jobs are those who take the heat off their colleagues in a crisis–the ones to whom senior executives and boards of directors confidently turn to bail them out of a tough spot, who ride to the rescue so a minor loss doesn't escalate into a major claim and a catastrophic event doesn't prove to be fatal.

Years ago, an NU risk management columnist named George Head came up with the concept of risk manager as superhero. “Risk Man” would swoop into every corner of a company's operations, protecting the organization and its staff from physical and legal threats.

It's high time we resurrected that can-do image of risk management in every organization. Who else has got your back?

Sam Friedman is NU's Editor In Chief. To respond to his column, e-mail sfriedman@nuco.com, or go to his blog at www.property-casualty.com.

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