Join our conversation on Managing Risks in this Age of Uncertainty

You think risk management is not important? Think again and join the conversation!

The 2016 proxy statement from IBM includes a full page discussion on corporate governance. Roughly a third of that page is devoted to the topic of risk management. To quote a few key lines: “At IBM, we believe that innovation and leadership are impossible without taking risks. We also recognize that imprudent acceptance of risk or the failure to appropriate identify and mitigate risks could be destructive to stockholder value.”

This is music to my ears! At the Manhattanville School of Business, we live by this “tag line”: Managing risk for organizational growth and sustainability. You can’t afford not to.

IBM’s statement raises three important points that are near and dear for me. First, there is no success without risk. I could go even further to say that there’s really nothing—and I really mean nothing—without taking some risks. Doing nothing means your firm risks being put out of business just as much as it would by taking reckless action.

Second, creating new things, stretching horizons, seeking new opportunities, promoting innovation and leading new initiatives requires taking risks. Third, and just as important, wantonly taking risks, not assessing risks in advance would be imprudent and inappropriate.

Similarly, Consolidated Edison, a premier power providing company in New York State discloses in its 2016 proxy statement the active oversight responsibility of its board of directors for risk management and specifies that “Management regularly provides reports to the Board and its Committees concerning risks identified through the Company’s enterprise risk management program.”

Many other companies are also intelligently risk aware, many have or are considering implementing enterprise-wide risk management programs (ERM). A corollary is that risk management is not just for financial services companies. I’m using IBM and Con Ed as examples here because they are large, widely known non-financial companies that are not start-ups.

Managing a company’s risks is a critical activity, but no one says that it is easy. On June 7, we’ll be hosting a no-holds barred discussion on Managing Risks in an Age of Uncertainty! Join Stamford-PRMIA and the Manhattanville Institute for Managing Risk and share your views by registering here: http://www.prmia.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=6818

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