Recently, I have been talking to the CRO of an organization about helping her, her team, executive management, and the board develop more mature and effective risk management practices.
We have been planning a visit where I would talk to each of the above in separate sessions.
Perhaps the most important is a two-hour meeting with the board. The CRO and I had planned for me to share with them some of the principles of effective risk management, based on what is considered world-class (and discussed here), and the governance of risk management by the board.
I was distressed when the CRO relayed to me a request by the chairman of the board.
He wanted me to include, in that same two-hour slot, a discussion of eight sources of ‘geopolitical’ risk. These are all issues of local rather than broader significance and effect. (For example, one was the liquidity of the local government and its ability to provide citizens with essential services; another was the incidence of crime in the region.)
Let’s leave aside the point that I am most definitely not the best person to discuss these local issues (I live thousands of miles away) and their potential effect on the organization.
Let’s focus instead on the point that the chairman wants to spend a lot (perhaps most) of the time talking about eight sources of…
