Roads to Resilience

Advice for risk professionals on achieving resilience

The risk professionals interviewed in the research spent significant time and effort guiding their organisations towards increased resilience. Based on their own experiences 1 , these risk professionals had detailed advice for others embarking on the road to resilience. Their views covered three areas: 1. Potential barriers to resilience: risk professionals said that they were involved with “creating the environment in the organisation that brings about a fundamental challenge to the way risk is addressed and managed”; and “establishing that ownership of risks is clear – the business [should be the risk owner], not the risk manager”. The question that risk professionals said they needed to ask themselves was: “How do you mobilise your entire workforce / supply chain / contract network to manage risk?” It was recognised by risk professionals that this cultural change needed to be driven from the top. Additionally, they perceived that part of the road to resilience required risk managers to overcome “ … their natural instinct to … apply too much logic and analysis” 2. Implication for risk professionals: it was perceived that the risk manager’s role is changing significantly. Risk managers must embed the right thinking throughout their organisations, by communicating, educating and making risk and resilience issues more visible. One risk manager summarised this as follows: “The risk manager must become a valued senior provider to the business”. At the same time, risk managers should not hide behind rules and regulations. Instead, they should adapt their language and style to the audience. The advice was: “Get out from your office and engage with the workforce in their environment and remember they know more about their risks than you do, they may just not be able to articulate it”.

3. The role of tools and techniques: traditionally, risk management has had a strong focus on tools and techniques. Interestingly, risk professionals at the case study organisations did not view the application of tools and techniques as a central part of increasing resilience. Instead, they said: “Resilience is more about culture, behaviour, mindset and insights”; “Talking to people is indispensable”; and “Awareness of tools and techniques is good – imposition is bad”. It was also recognised that communication is critical because “Tools help to simplify, but are only there to articulate meaning to key decision-makers”.

1 The ideas and quotes presented here are based on the discussions at the workshop held at Cranfield School of Management on 11 July 2013. Further details of the outcomes of this workshop are given in Appendix B.

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Section 7: Implications for risk professionals