How many of you know about this new opportunity to improve your bottom line, or prevent it from being ravaged?
Many of you are thinking about or working on issues of governance, risk management, or compliance. The new buzz word for these three complimentary issues is GRC. Amazing how something becomes more expensive and important when someone can reduce the phrase to three letters. After all, you may have some version of enterprise risk management (ERM), strategic planning, risk assessment, risk management assessment, entire enterprise risk management assessment, operational review, due diligence, or scenario.
However well you rate your progress on each of these initiatives; experts now say these complimentary initiatives need to work together on an integrated basis. Benefits to you come from the fact that when you solve underlying issues in systems or processes to improve those three issues, often these changes will improve other operational areas.
Or stated differently, in this busy world where layers of management and huge numbers of employees have been fired or their work outsourced, people have very limited time and do the best they can. Add on siloed departments, inadequate reporting systems, and a rapidly accelerating world, and much more risk is taken than the CEO and C-suite officers or their board knows about is being taken. A partial list of risks may include identifying internal problems from inventory mismanagement, outdated and incomplete financial reports, and false accounting assumptions to external forces like misreading the market, losing competitive advantage and missing golden opportunities.
It is time to start planning for the future and moving out of the today only survival mindset that the current economic crisis has encouraged or even required for economic survival. If you re still thinking that you are not ready to consider investing money today to improve next years operations, think about this fact. Someone will make those management and investment decisions and find a way to benefit from leadership, change management and execution.
How much competitive advantage will that company gain over you, if you do nothing? Or why not be the person gaining the competitive advantage in your industry?
Bottom line? – What is the cost of what you do not know in your business, when you are not reaching your financial numbers and employees are full of excuses?
