Pay Attention! - The title of one episode of the National Geographic Channel’s series called Test Your Brain.  The progamme explores how our attention selects the things we see, hear and interact with in the world.  It shows the ease with which illusionists can distract victims to relieve them of their valuables conditioning them and gaining their trust whilst furtively emptying their wallets. 

Yes you may say observing the distractions is what makes an illusionist entertaining, but this programme makes you think about your own cognisance of what is in front of your eyes and your ability to process multiple inputs of information and still function correctly.  The programme demonstrated the frailty of the human brain where even the most ardent self-proclaimed multi tasker could not effectively perform an everyday task whilst mentally processing and responding to information requests and all the time having multiple distractions thrown at him. 

So it is with managing the data we have to deal with at work, throughout the day we are bombarded with data, with information processing requests and we have to assimilate it all in order to perform our roles at work.  Coping with this in itself is job enough but then add life’s distractions from the trivial do you want a coffee to reacting to potentially harmful business events in the financial world around us it's little wonder that mistakes are made.  Reliance on human brains and manual process is fraught with risk of distraction and dealing with the normal can be prone to error or omission.  Focus on just one thing and you will miss the changing events around you, if you do not manage the distractions that pull your attention elsewhere there will be a potentially heavy cost. Risk management systems have compensate for how our brains function, to organise and structure the information we have to process, to filter out the distractions and put the risk manager in full control.