I think this is probably the #1 risk, but nobody talks about it in surveys.
It’s the risk of poor decisions.
Who can argue that this is not only likely to be devastating to any business, but it is not uncommon?
Are organizations, their management and members of the board, doing enough to:
- Recognize it as a huge risk?
- Address it with process and policy?
- Monitor its incidence and the effectiveness of decision-making processes?
Is your risk office recognizing it? Are they doing anything about it?
Is your internal audit function seeing this as the significant risk it is? Is it being adequately addressed by their work?
I want to share a couple of articles to consider.
The first is by my good friend, Mike Jacka.
Writing a blog for the internal auditor, in Decision, Decisions he boldly states:
There is no more important process than how decisions are made.
He shares his experience performing an audit of how some strategic decisions were made about how the organization would use social media:
…there was an immediate knee-jerk reaction from leadership that our conducting such audits was not a good idea. In fact, “No way!” best summarizes their reaction.
The crux of their argument? “Who do you think you are to conduct audits that question our strategies?!!” After the rolling and shaking subsided, we…
