Did Someone Say Agile?
Bryan Whitefield
I empower leaders to cultivate high-performance teams making faster and better decisions | Recognised expert in strategy and risk | Expert facilitator and trainer and sought-after mentor | MAICD, MRMIA & CCRO
Recently I was running an education workshop for a group of 35 leaders from a financial services organisation. We looked at their risk culture survey results, their organisation’s value statements, the behaviours they see from staff and the behaviours they will need to portray as leader, to continue to build a strong culture of accountability for the management of risk.
What caught their attention the most was this slide, when I explained that risk management done well delivers a more agile organisation. One where staff are able to make better decisions, faster, within a sound understanding of the organisation’s appetite for risk.
I said to them that I used to say the purpose of enterprise risk management was to build resilience in an organisation. I then asked them: “What makes a small business resilient?”. They were a smart bunch, the second suggestion from the audience was “agility”. I replied: “Exactly, and that is what Risk Leadership delivers”.
I went on to say that Risk Leadership is not leadership by the risk function – although they play a pivotal role. It is about their leadership. I had their attention and from there the review of culture, values and behaviour was done with vigour.
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Interestingly the case study we used during the workshop was one of their major IT projects which is being run with the Agile Methodology. My message to them… the Agile Methodology is a form of risk management. Yes, identify risks and put in a light governance model, but don’t overdo it and “throw the baby out with the bath water”. It is all about embracing uncertainty, not trying to control it with an iron fist.
For more on embracing uncertainty, I would encourage you to read my latest book Risky Business: How Successful Organisations Embrace Uncertainty, including my commentary on the Agile Methodology in the first chapter: An uncertain world.
Creating Value By Navigating Uncertainty, Veteran
2 年Of course the other problem with the modern take on risk is that its discourse is too often internalised. The focus on objectives, by which the effect of uncertainty might be judged, means conversations, controls and actions are heavily weighted towards the organisational 'me'. In my recent MSc dissertation I looked at an alternative and complimentary view of risk that proposes looking at it through the lens of [business] relationships. It helps provide an alternative colour to the risk discussions and supports agility in business relationships and the formulation of trust. Just a thought.
Risk | Compliance | Quality Assurance | Audit and Policy | Member of RIMA
2 年Do you run this workshop for NGO’s?
Finalist - Risk Team of the Year. Insurance Executive and ERM Leader: Supporting Sectors to Thrive.
2 年Agree! And yet a great deal of risk management is still about building frameworks focused on linear processes and colour charting on heat maps that slow the organisation down and add very little value and no agility.