REBOOTING the Strategic Risk conversation

Sue, the CEO, looked around the table. Everyone had their heads down scrolling through email and their various messaging apps. Looking at their faces she could sense they were all sitting on a backlog of unread messages and discussions pulling for their attention.

She took a breath. They had just closed a particularly critical meeting where they had gone deeper than they previously had on the tension on their current service levels and costs on confronting the workforce disruption the whole industry was experiencing. The conversation had been well led by Judith, the COO, yet she had to acknowledge to herself that it had been quite taxing as the team started to scope up the extent of the challenge they needed to confront to lift themselves from their tactical responses. (For more depth on this topic read further here www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/confronting-workforce-disruption-we-now-feeling-bernie-kelly/ )

Taking another breath Sue decided not to launch into the Quarterly review and sign off of the Corporate Risk Register as was scheduled. They had an established pattern of Adam, Head of Risk & Compliance, opening up the heat map coloured table, that had grown organically over the years, and facilitating conversation on a point by point basis. When reviewed, the document was then filed with the new date and made available on the shared drive to both the Executive and the Board. No one liked seeing too much “red” on the report.

“Adam, do you mind if we stand back from the document today and we all reflect on our shared accountability for strategic risk and where we see gaps in our current practice as a leadership team? I appreciate you have been flagging some of your concerns and this would be an opportunity to give space to that conversation.” said Sue.

Adam nodded positively as he had been concerned for some time, with all the shifts in the environment and ways of working, that as an organisation they had not been going deep enough to confirm the assumptions they were building on were still solid.?(For more on this read further here

www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/clear-indicator-you-scoping-transformative-work-bernie-kelly/

Jamie, who had recently had his title upgraded from Head of Strategy to Head of Strategy and Transformation, added there is a blurring of what are Operational and Strategic risks in our discussions and our reports. It would be useful to see both clearly and have shared understanding of the distinction. (For more on this read here

www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/leading-today-tomorrow-reframing-flying-plane-working-bernie-kelly/

Judith, the COO, agreed with Jamie and added, “We tend to not give ourselves the time to work on the bigger systemic challenges and then we become overwhelmed with the pressing issues of the month. This is becoming a dangerous cycle in itself!”

www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/waiting-lag-indicators-shifts-always-seem-so-sudden-bernie-kelly/

Praveen, the CFO, shared how it is really difficult to measure some of the topics in the strategy and acknowledged we tend to fall back to financial lag indicators. By the time the lag indicators are clear it is often too late for the team to have as many options.

www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/you-stuck-wrong-side-metric-black-hole-transformation-partner/

Seeing the nods around the table, he went on to explain excitedly that there was active conversation among wider industry CFO colleagues and Business Transformation leaders that there is a need to update the planning methods used to support the full Executive team in strategy implementation as volatility and complexity increase.

www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/volatility-increases-your-cfo-expanding-planning-bernie-kelly/ and www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/what-seeing-more-clearly-uncertain-world-transformation-partner/

and www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/editing-out-complexity-critical-finding-roadmaps-find-bernie-kelly/

Jacquie, Head of People & Culture, who had been positively supporting her colleagues as the discussion went around the table, agreed and added that she had also been engaged in wider industry conversations that some of the benchmarks that the functional areas and even the industry have been using were becoming limiting.?www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/industry-benchmarks-limiting-your-next-move-transformation-partner/

They agreed it is like we need to REBOOT our conversations around Strategic Opportunities / Risks.

Sue said she had been at a conference recently where Bernie Kelly shared that a good starting point was to do a fresh Strategic Factor Analysis with the team, noting that each factor includes Opportunities + Risks. The presentation quickly revealed many topics we had not been looking at, and also brought a proactive opportunity to seeing things differently to the many organisations caught on the treadmill of their Corporate Risk Register.

“Is that like P.E.S.T or PESTLE?” asked Praveen. “Yes,” said Jamie, “various forms of this have been used in Strategic analysis since the 1960s. Sometimes you hear people call out one or two of the factors, sometimes Consulting firms have branded a particular acronym. STEEPLE is useful for a broad scan in the modern context.”

What has been your experience?

Bernie

This article is part of the Transformative Teams topic.

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Bernie is known for building capability and confidence in leaders who need to transform organisations that are continually reshaping to survive and thrive.

His career in whole of enterprise and cross-organisation shifts, and then 10 years Business Transformation Diagnostics, Training, and Mentoring across Australia and SE Asia.?Currently working with leaders who are focused on accelerated development and re-imagination of industry value systems. He loves contributing to leaders, teams and networks successfully transitioning to the next phase.?

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In 2020 Bernie authored Traction: Building Change-fit Leadership Teams.

Bernie welcomes connecting with and talking to leaders tackling the challenges of team and network transitions.

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