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The Case for Strategic Risk Management

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At last week’s RIMS 2019 in Boston, a group of risk professionals got together for the panel session “NextGen ERM: Strategic Risk Management” to discuss the advantages of strategic risk management (SRM) and the challenges to successfully integrating it into organizations.

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The panel examined several major organizations that have taken shortcuts with training or even rushed to out-duel a competitor, failing to consider the long-term impact on strategy, reputation and market-share. Blockbuster, Kodak and Sears failed to innovate, and these once-thriving name brands are now prime examples of SRM’s benefits.

“Blackberry is one such company, but there are countless examples of organizations that have overlooked the long-term strategic impact of their actions,” said Marian Cope, owner of CopeRisk LLC.

Despite recent corporate missteps tied to failures in long-term strategic analysis, as recently discussed in Risk Management, risk professionals still face resistance to their SRM initiatives. “Demonstrating the value of SRM has to be a priority for risk professionals if they hope to gain buy-in from leadership,” said Rick Roberts, director of risk management and employee benefits at Ensign-Bickford Industries and a former RIMS president.

One of the value propositions of SRM—and an easy one for leadership to support—is the focus on taking advantage of risks that can accelerate the achievement of strategic objectives. “Artificial intelligence is an example of a disruptive technology that is impacting many industries. But, if your organization is aware of it, understands its usefulness and has developed a plan for it, it can give you a competitive edge,” said Marian Cope, owner of CopeRisk LLC.

But the case for an SRM initiative should not just be made with cautionary tales of organizations that did not use SRM. “Don’t just share failures, it’s also important to share SRM successes,” said Ellen Dunkin, senior vice president, general counsel and chief risk officer at Amalgamated Life Insurance Co. “Even Amazon and their business model that gives consumers almost instant access to their purchases has adjusted its strategy and started to open brick-and-mortar shops.”

According to the panel, the risk professional should ideally be involved in strategic planning from the get-go. “Some organizations have a chief risk officer that participates in the preparation as well as the strategic planning and decision-making discussions. Unfortunately, that’s not the norm,” Cope said.

The panel identified the next-best option for risk professionals, which is to work from the strategic objectives established by the organization. From there, they need to analyze the business model, identify, assess, and prioritize the risks that can derail or accelerate achieving the strategic objectives, facilitate the development of appropriate risk responses, and then align such objectives, risks, and risk responses with operations.

An effective SRM program will incorporate plans for a risk strategy, communications strategy, implementation, and training with the goal of integrating strategic risk management into decision-making processes. “The risk professional is going to require support from others in the organization too.

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They’re going to need risk champions to vouch for them, as well as a final presentation that includes achievable and measurable deliverables that demonstrate the value of the process,” Roberts said.

SRM can be a stand-alone program or a component of ERM. Regardless, the panel noted that SRM is vital to the long-term success of organizations as alignment of strategy and operations results in the identification of opportunities to accelerate achievement of strategic objectives and prevents operational blunders that will trigger strategic risks (e.g., substantial reputational harm). Accordingly, SRM as a stand-alone program allows risk professionals to add more value while streamlining the process.

“SRM is the next generation of ERM and identifies external and strategic risks as opposed to the more granular view for ERM. It allows the team to bring the top 10 key risks to leadership, with a focus on the top two to three as opposed to overwhelming them with the full risk register that could include 100,” said Ellen Shew Holland, higher education practice leader for Hanover Stone Partners LLC and president of Strategic Risk Frameworks LLC.

Ultimately, the group agreed, SRM will help fully integrate risk management programs into an organization’s business model and the value should be evident in each positive step the business takes toward achieving its strategic objectives.

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Saint Joseph’s University Wins Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge

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BOSTON—Students from Saint Joseph’s University won the Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge at RIMS 2019. Comprising team members Joseph Angelina, Katherine Branson, Ashley Myers, Daniel Tan, and academic advisor Michael Angelina, the winners earned $4,000 for the risk management program they developed and presented at the conference here in Boston this week. Second and third place went to St.

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Mary’s University and Butler University, which won ,000 and ,000, respectively.

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The case study for this year’s challenge came from Robert Zhang, RIMS board director and the risk and compliance director for IKEA China. Zhang tasked the students with identifying the top five risks of integrating new physical and digital commerce options for customers.

In determining a winner, the fine print proved critical, with the best presentations specifically focusing on the core part of the prompt: given digital transformation and shifting consumer preferences, what are the key risks involved as such a massive company innovates and evolves?

The winning team took a useful, strategic approach to risk management that could be flexible for the company to adapt and use going forward.

“They provided a true strategic view of IKEA’s risks as they transition from traditional brick-and-mortar into a multi-channel retailer, and they provided IKEA with a strategic framework that can be built out with tactical options,” said Andrew Bent, risk director at Sage and one of the challenge judges.

This year’s Spencer-RIMS Risk Management Challenge drew more entries than ever before, with teams from 28 schools initially submitting papers on the case study. And the competition was strong—according to Louis Drapeau, who served as a judge, they could not pick a top eight submissions, as anticipated, so they invited nine teams for the in-person presentation rounds here in Boston.

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Poise and pertinent PowerPoint slides reflected the strong presentation skills of the top three teams, Drapeau noted. RIMS CEO Mary Roth had a similar impression, praising all of this year’s participants as impressive aspiring additions to the risk management community. “Beyond the remarkable presentations delivered by each university team, our Spencer-RIMS Risk Challenge students continue to demonstrate the highest-degree of professionalism and an exceptional grasp of sophisticated concepts,” she said.

How a Strong(er) SRM Program Could Have Helped Boeing

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A strategic risk management (SRM) program is designed to assist organizations in identifying, prioritizing, and planning for the strategic risks that could impair or destroy businesses and reduces the chances of these kinds of crises. And while hindsight is 20-20, an SRM program – or a more effective one – could have helped Boeing avoid some of its recent high-profile crises.

Between October 2018 and March 2019, two crashes involving the Boeing 300 737 MAX 8 models resulted in the loss of 346 lives. Since then, Boeing has:

  • had a possible criminal investigation commenced against it,
  • lost $22 billion in market value in the week following the Ethiopian Airlines’ crash in October,
  • had more than 300 737 MAX 8s grounded worldwide,
  • sustained significant reputational harm,
  • received demands from airlines seeking compensation for lost revenue,
  • been sued by crash victims’ families, and
  • had sales orders cancelled or suspended.

This is a crisis from which it may be difficult to recover.

One could trace back some of the risks to its decades-long rivalry with Airbus and an effort to remain viable.

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When American Airlines indicated it was close to finalizing an exclusive deal with Airbus for hundreds of new jets, Boeing sprung to action. The New York Times reported that Boeing employees then had to move at “roughly double the normal pace” to avoid losing “billions in lost sales and potentially thousands of jobs.”

An SRM program would have required an assessment of the business model and the associated risks, including competitors, long before the call from the CEO of American Airlines. The risks would have been prioritized and this information would have been factored into strategic plans that would have included responses to material risks.

During the scramble, Boeing mirrored Airbus’ operations and mounted larger engines in existing models.

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 The objective seemed straightforward: Make minimum changes to avoid the need for training in a simulator, decrease costs, and build the redesigned model quickly. But a risk was that mounting larger engines changed the aerodynamics in the aircraft, requiring a consequential need for new software, a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) which was supposed to prevent stalling. Boeing’s view was that pilots did not need to be trained on the software and federal regulators agreed.

However, in an effective SRM program the C-Suite would have been advised that the strategic and life safety risks were material and that training for pilots was indeed necessary.  In addition, all such risks would have been assessed to determine whether they could be used to obtain a competitive advantage.

For example, including vital safety features in the base cost of aircraft (as opposed to charging extra for them) and requiring a focus group of pilots with no financial relationship with Boeing to test the newly designed 737 MAX 8s and the MCAS system would have been a way to solidify Boeing’s reputation for safety first.

An SRM program, which monitors progress in achieving strategic objectives with a focus on continuous improvement, would have looked at the Indonesian Lion Air and the Ethiopian Airlines crashes as an opportunity to confirm that Boeing puts safety first by grounding the aircraft. Instead, Boeing urged the U.S. to keep flying its jets until after 42 regulators in other countries had grounded them and appeared to care more about economics than life safety. Only seven months ago, Boeing was synonymous with efficient jet planes and commercial aviation – it was a reputation that took decades to build. Now, the company has a long, uphill climb to resolve its many challenges and rebuild its brand.

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An SRM program cannot succeed without full support from the C-Suite as it has to be integrated into the business model and decision-making processes in order to be effective, and in time we will learn more about what risk management protocols were followed across Boeing’s organization.

At RIMS 2019, Marian Cope will lead a panel of industry experts in discussing reasons to transform an ERM program into a SRM program or develop a SRM program in NextGen ERM:  Strategic Risk Management. The session will take place April 29th at 1:30 pm.

RIMS ERM 2018: Earning the ‘Mandate’ and a ‘Seat at the Table’

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MONTREAL – More than 300 risk management professionals and students attended the 2018 RIMS ERM Conference on Monday and Tuesday in an effort to gain insight from, and network with, the industry’s enterprise risk management leaders. Wisdom, data, and motivation within the ERM space were on tap during all the sessions and workshops.

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On October 29, Martin Vilsoe, partner of the Implement Consulting Group, opened the two-day event by highlighting the importance of ERM’s worldwide capabilities and how to operationalize the best ERM practices. Vilsoe said that risk managers need to “earn the mandate” to work with ERM, and focused on the idea that risks can equal opportunities.

He said that ultimately the risk manager’s job when implementing an ERM framework is to “enable brave decisions” and to maintain an organization’s best direction. With a visual aid of a freighter and individual boats in an ocean, he rhetorically asked: “Is your framework similar to a supertanker or 15-speed boats going in separate directions?”

He also spoke to the importance of risk management’s value to an organization without the sole reliance on analytics.

“Risk management’s purpose is to show value. If it is about value, then we better bring it,” he said. “We don’t always communicate that. There’s a big difference between calculating and measuring value versus communicating value. You can do it without having complete proof – you shouldn’t lie to people, but you should tell them you’re doing something great for the organization.

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”

He encouraged the audience to consider their current roles as a consultant – and the importance of “winning customers” in this alternate role. This involves some sales prowess, he said, and the ability to tell a core story or narrative that describes what you do to engage with stakeholders. Build a core story around the ERM program and send different messages to different stakeholders around your core story.

“I don’t see enough of this in risk management programs because of the idea that it is ‘too big,’ or ‘I can’t communicate it,’” he said. “You can do it. We have to move past that mentality.

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“The misconceptions is that risk management is about IT systems. And if you’re thinking as a risk consultant, be aware that putting stuff in systems will not help you manage your risks. Your ability to facilitate awareness, promote decisions and execute them, will.”

Day 2

Dovetailing on the idea that risks can become opportunities, October 30 opened with “Advancing Risk Management: Having A Seat At The Table,” presented by Laura Cisi, the Clorox Company’s vice president of global risk management, and Soraya Wright, founder and CEO of SMW Risk Management Consulting LLC.

In a fireside chat-style setting, the duo used Clorox – a 105-year-old company – as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of its ERM initiatives.

A 25-year veteran of the risk management industry, Cisi has been with Clorox for the past four years and said her ERM initiatives evolved from being viewed as the “insurance department” to a “strategic business partner,” with Wright’s collaboration with Cisi’s team to take the company on its ERM journey.

The duo said its ERM framework was built on routines, which provide “an outline that enabled us to use [it] to use as a tool,” for decision-making and assessing its critical risks as well, such as embracing a change in its formula during the manufacturing process.

“We decided to convert from chlorine to high-strength bleach,” Cisi said. “That risk bubbled up through our ERM committee and the actions that needed to be taken, and the methodology behind that came up through ERM.”

ERM was also a key influence when assessing the decision in 2014 to close Clorox Venezuela and cease operations in the country. “‘Should we be the first to exit?’” was the question on stakeholders’ minds for a long time before they discontinued operations, Cisi said. The company was required to sell more than two-thirds of its products at prices frozen by the Venezuelan government. As a result, Clorox Venezuela had been selling its products at a loss, causing ongoing operating losses despite attempts to reach a pragmatic solution with the country’s government. “Looking back, it was a good decision.”

Ultimately, the risk manager’s seat is one of many at a table occupied by executives, stakeholders and the C-suite. Cisi and Wright advocated not for being the loudest one there – but for bringing sound ideas and options. And perhaps coincidentally, Cisi and Wright’s approach seem to be putting Vilsoe’s mantras of engagement and alignment into practice.

“I think every day we get to demonstrate ERM, and not something we just do annually. For example, the ways we engage with product development and business development – we used to be thought of as compliance… and a department that said ‘no,’ Cisi said. “To shift that conversation to create more open engagements where you say ‘I’m your partner and it’s my job to identify these risks. Ultimately, it’s your business decision as to whether or not you go forward with them.”

It was then, she continued, that the risk management department was being consulted on the potential for new products by executives and other groups.

“That was when the conversation shifted from risks to opportunities,” Cisi said, adding, “and that was something they could relate to.”

RIMS members can access the live, uncut audio from “A Seat At The Table” via RIMScast.

An all-access RIMScast episode featuring conference speakers is available here.