Risk Management – Top Down or Bottom Up?

The problem that many organisations face when reporting risk profiles to say the Governing Board is that they find that many risks in the risk management system that have been identified are operational .

This reason is that in many cases the CEO has on delegated the responsibility to implement an enterprise wide risk management framework to a senior manager who in turn may have again on delegated this responsibility. As a consequence the process is in effect from a bottom up perspective and lacks the strategic inputs from the Board and in some cases the Executive. I call this a bottom up process.

Heres the tip, make sure your process starts its cycle top down

Start with the Board , then CEO and Executives . Then you have the strategic input and you can add the operational context from other managers and staff . Use the risk wheel approach to keep your risk management process fresh and alive by validating it with reference groups