Focus on resilience in new Risk Management program
The Strategy and Resilience for Business Leaders program has been developed and designed for managers and leaders keen to strengthen their organization’s resilience and enhance their ability to lead in uncertain times. We asked Program Director, Åsa Malmström Rognes, to tell us more about the program and how its participants will benefit.
“Managers and leaders need tools to navigate a changing world in which predictability is becoming almost a thing of the past,” says Åsa. “Management level needs to be able to identify increasing numbers of increasingly interconnected risks, and to analyze both if and how they impact their specific operations and how to manage them.”
What is the program about?
“The program addresses how to handle complex risks within your organization. Risk is nothing new, but not only have complexity levels increased, norms and institutions are being progressively weakened. And whilst you may be managing risks on an ongoing basis within your operations, you also need a strategic understanding of the bigger risk picture, how these risks relate, and their potential consequences for your organization. How do you identify and assess risks? Which risks affect you in the short and the long term, directly and indirectly? The program’s aim is to enhance the participants’ knowhow in these fields and to give them the tools they need both to manage complex risks at management level and to integrate risk management into their organization in a way that boosts resilience.”
What type of risks does the program cover?
“The program provides an holistic perspective on the ways in which geopolitical, financial, regulatory, cyber- and ESG-related risks impact the organization.”
How does the program benefit managers and leaders?
“Managers and leaders need tools to navigate a changing world and develop strategies for a more resilient organization. At the management level, leaders need to identify a growing number of interconnected risks, analyze their impact on the organization, and develop strategies to manage them effectively.”
What sort of challenges does the new risk landscape commonly pose?
“Much of what we have previously taken for granted in terms of the norms and rules governing commercial relationships is no longer a given. The last eight years have seen ever-increasing regulatory erosion and ever-rising levels of uncertainty. Changeable national and international regulatory systems mean that the green transition and digitalization are now associated with greater risk. Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. And supply chains have become increasingly uncertain, due to production disruptions, transport problems, and uncertainties vis à vis international trade. We’ve seen a shift on the part of companies from “just in time” to “just in case”, in order to ensure better preparedness. Strategies now need to account more explicitly for risk and resilience.”
How does the program benefit participants?
“We work with scenario analysis to capture the complexity of the evolving risk landscape and to develop strategies that can be tailored to different industries. The experience sharing between the participants is a core component of the program, because the risk landscape differs from one sector to another and hearing other people’s specific perspectives on identifying and interpreting risks is both challenging and beneficial. Participants leave the program with tools to build a more resilient organization.”
“OUR STARTING POINT IS THE PARTICIPANTS’ OWN ORGANIZATIONAL EXPERIENCES. THE GOAL IS TO IDENTIFY AND EVALUATE RISKS AND TO PRIORITIZE AND MANAGE THEM, AND TO BUILD RESILIENCE WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION.”
Åsa Malmström Rognes studied at the Stockholm School of Economics and worked in Asia for many years in the field of financial market development. Åsa has also worked with risks at the Riksbank and Swedbank. As a researcher, Åsa has analyzed financial markets and financial crises – with a growing focus on analyzing geopolitical risks and economic security – in addition to scenario analysis.
