Stop Managing Risk – Turn It Into Advantage
Risk is everywhere – it impacts every organization with a risk spectrum ranging from known nominal operating risks to extinction level risk with catastrophic financial consequences. It’s not if, but when and how big that every leader must be prepared to address. What is your organizational risk awareness level across all risk competencies? Leaders who don’t have solid answers and actionable plans that become operationalized and inculcated into their culture are assuming risk profiles that place both them and their organization at risk.
Our risk lens at N2Growth isn’t focused on mitigation, but on creating competitive advantage. Risk doesn’t have to be just another cost center, it can be an accelerant to growth and the key to sustainability. N2Growth’s proprietary Agile Risk Competency Frameworks (ARCF) give our clients a distinct advantage in moving rapidly to operationalize advantage rather than spending endless amounts of time and money managing plans. Risk is the lens through which the best organizations unlock hidden value and deconstruct complexity.
Ever wonder how some companies always seem to outthink and outmaneuver the competition? They don’t problem solve – they opportunity solve. Most organizations do a somewhat adequate job of managing the risks they can see (best practices), but very few understand how to map the risks they cannot yet see (next practices). Risk isn’t something to be managed, but rather it’s something that should be optimized and exploited. Understanding risk is actually the key to driving change and creating disruptive innovation.
The best organizations in the world place a heavy emphasis on risk awareness and include risk in every meaningful thought, conversation and decision. Were not talking a slow, cautionary stifling process, but rather a fast, innovative and evolved thought process that creates advantage and certainty of execution. It will literally be impossible to compete effectively without implementing a portfolio of agile risk competency frameworks across your entire ecosystem. Your organization can become highly regarded and respected as best in class when it comes to risk, or you can simply wait things out and hope the inevitable happens on someone else’s watch – choose wisely.
Risk Competencies
The best organizations apply innovation to every aspect of risk, or as we like to call them Risk Competencies:
- Board Continuity, Composition & Governance
- Brand
- Business Intelligence
- Change
- Commodity (fuel, currency, materials, etc.)
- Communications
- Compensation
- Competitive
- Complexity
- Cyber / Tech / IP
- Data / Information
- Decision
- Diligence
- Economic / Market
- Fiduciary
- Financial
- Geographic
- Human Resources
- Leadership
- Litigation
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Onboarding / Transition / Succession
- Operational
- Organizational
- Physical / Event
- Political
- Program / Delivery / Execution
- Regulatory / Compliance
- Safety / Security
- Strategic
- Supply Chain
- Sustainability
- Talent
- Terror / Threat
- Travel / ExFil
There are two types of companies, those that cede advantage to others or those that create it for themselves – Put another way, you will either use a risk lens to disrupt others or be disrupted by those who beat you to the future – the choice is yours. The greatest rewards come as a result of developing and operationalizing agile risk competency frameworks for your business. If not now – when?
TONY HORTON | Global Chair – Risk
TONY HORTON | Global Chair – RiskTony Horton is the global chair of the risk practice at N2Growth. One of today’s foremost thinkers on risk competencies and how to drive organizational change, for over 25 years, he has helped his clients re-imagine the way they work by turning risk into opportunity. Tony has successfully implemented outcome-based, cross functional, risk frameworks for large multinational companies across 5 continents. He is a former member of the Australian Defense Force’s One Commando Unit, and is FBI trained in Kidnap prevention and hostage negotiation. Tony has completed 11 Ironman Triathlons and three Ultraman Triathlons.
CYBERSECURITY ADVISORY SERVICES
Information security is a business issue and not solely a technology “thing” that’s managed by the Information Technology (IT) department. We seek to understand your business needs first, so your information security investment provides the greatest value. N2Growth Cybersecurity advisors work diligently to effectively and efficiently secure our client’s business.