Issue Four: Modeling Growth and Innovation Part 2

This issue covers the 3rd and 4th of the 10 steps risk leaders can take to optimize their programs and by extension the resiliency of their organizations.

Strategy and Innovation

Number three: be strategic and innovative. Ask for your organization’s strategic plan. Figure out what data you may own in risk management that could help the organization either meet its strategic goals or identify a problem early on so that there’s time to correct it. Do you have a strategic plan for your own work? Do you come back from conferences and implement things you’ve learned, or do you jump back in to the everyday press of emails in your inbox? Allowing your inbox to set your priorities will keep you from being able to grow and mature your program. Block out time for strategic planning for yourself and your department. Adopt the mindset of ‘how might we’ when looking at ways to improve your programs.

Leverage risk data

Number four: use your data, all of it! We collect so much data in risk management and we struggle with how to mine that data for important insights. Consider as part of your risk program strategic planning whether you can borrow some of the data experts that likely already work in your organization. You can talk to them about the kinds of data you have and the questions you might be able to answer by analyzing that data. If you’re working with a broker or a TPA, see what resources they have available. They likely already have a lot of your data and may be able to help you do a more sophisticated analysis than what you can do internally. If you have the luxury of the budget, hire your own data staff member. And pester your risk management information system vendor about their plans for making your data more actionable at a strategic level for your organization. The appropriate use of artificial intelligence tools will likely be a game changer for risk management professionals. Use some of your strategic planning time to investigate how you can learn about these tools and how your organization may already be using them.