Page 92 - IRMSA Risk Report 2020
P. 92
6.2
A FUTURIST ’ S PERSPEC TIVE
GR AEME C ODRINGT ON
WHERE IS Y OUR HORIZ ON ?
The biggest corporate failures of 2019 provide salient examples of the importance of the risk function within our
organisations. Internationally, two examples stand out: WeWork and Boeing.
WeWork collapsed spectacularly just before a planned IPO amidst stories of completely out of control spending, a dodgy
business model and a flaky CEO, Adam Neumann. Boeing may or may not have had adequate systems in place to prevent
two of its planes from crashing due to faulty designs being rushed to market, but after the worldwide grounding of their
737 MAX fleet, their CEO, Dennis Muilenburg seemed incapable of either fully acknowledging the impact of the crisis on
the business or taking decisive enough actions to adjust Boeing to their new reality.
Both CEOs lost their jobs by the end of the year, leaving their companies to deal with significant damage to people,
reputation, strategy and operations. It will take both a long time to recover.
In South Africa, we have a multitude of examples from recent years of just how quickly seemingly stable organisations can
be damaged and even collapse – sometimes by their own decision making, sometimes by external forces beyond their
control, and often by both at the same time.
The question for risk officers is whether any of this was preventable, and what the role of the risk function is in a world that
is increasingly unstable, unpredictable, fast-paced and disruptive.
The answer lies in a fundamental rethinking of risk and strategy in the 2020s.
MICR OSC OPES AND BINOCUL ARS
My work over the past 20 years as a futurist has changed a lot. Two decades ago, the job mainly involved tracking trends,
and being just a few months ahead of the marketplace in noticing new technologies emerging. My presentations back
then were filled with images and videos of new tech, and futuristic predictions of what the home and office of the future
would look like. There was real value in these predictions, both in activating people’s imaginations about the future and
helping them identify business opportunities in their markets.
In the last few years, our team at TomorrowToday has shifted quite significantly in response to the needs of our clients.
It is now much less important to predict trends, and way more important to prepare for whatever the future might
bring. No-one has ever been able to predict the future anyway, but these days it is even more obvious that we need a
longer-term focus, with more emphasis on systems thinking, integration and preparation for whatever might happen.
Spotting upcoming trends is way less important than helping people to scan the horizon constantly, ask better questions,
experiment more, increase the diversity of inputs they gather, and probably most importantly, learn how to unlearn.
Today the job of a futurist is a lot more about understanding systems of change, and analysing unintended consequences,
third and fourth order implications, structural shifts in the very foundations of society, and changes to the rules for success
and failure in every aspect of our world. In other words, we’ve needed to stop focusing on the individual ‘bits’ and start
analysing the whole system. We need to stop predicting and start preparing for the future.
I liken this to moving away from the microscope and picking up binoculars. Both are needed – a focus on detail and
specific issues, as well as the ability to scan the horizon and see the whole scope of the landscape in front of us.
This is also true of risk management. In addition to managing individual risks, the task of the corporate risk manager
increasingly involves analysing the whole system in which the organisation exists and making all possible risks visible to
the organization’s leadership.
And that’s where 2019’s corporate failures alert us to a necessary shift in focus. WeWork, Boeing and most South African
organisations that recently experienced crises are filled with clever and conscientious people. None set out to fail.
From what we know at the moment, none of them were deliberately reckless (although looking back now, we can see
where things went wrong and systems were broken). The complexities of doing business in the new realities of a VUCA
(Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous), digital, connected world require different approaches to leadership, risk
and strategy.
9 1