A non-quantitative approach to risk management

We’ve been on a mission here at Institutional Real Estate, Inc. to help build on and enhance the body of knowledge surrounding risk and risk management within the realm of real asset–related investing. Much of our work on this topic, led by Randall Zisler, chief investment strategist and research director of the Institute for Real Estate Operating Companies, has focused on the search for, and greater understanding of, more useful data and analytics. But not all approaches to risk management need be quantitative.

The Kepner-Tregoe (KT) organization in the United States advocates the use of what it has termed “rational process” when it comes to priority setting, problem solving, decision making and planning. This management consultancy has trained thousands of key executives at Fortune 500 companies and elsewhere in these processes over the past 40 years.

More specifically, in their classic book, The New Rational Manager, KT founders Benjamin Tregoe and