Senior Leadership Training: Disruptive Events, Integrated Risk and Cybersecurity topics (SLT)

There are many competing priorities for the time and attention of every organization’s senior leadership team. Diversification of experience, age, gender, nationality, demographics has remarkably transformed the performance of most organizations. Despite deriving significant value from this dramatically improved collective IQ, most organizations still have skills, capabilities and experience gaps across their leadership teams. The lack of practical experience or deep understanding of specific areas of strategic growth, operations, or risk categories can dramatically impact the quality of the decisions made by these individuals and groups.

In the 2018 NACD Private Company Governance Survey, 80% of boards reported they need to improve their understanding of risk and opportunities, and 71% seek to improve their contribution to strategy development. These responses reflect the widely accepted belief that risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. The percentages seem high given the role being surveyed, but how much confidence could anyone have on setting a strategy for anything if only 20% of the respondents felt they had a well-informed picture of the associated risk? In comparison to the previous year, there was only a slight increase in the number of hours dedicated to director education when that averaged increased from 18.7 to 21 hours annually. Most felt they spent the correct amount on core oversight activities, but over 50% believe that more time should be spent on board improvement activities and preparing for the future. 58% would like to spend more time on director education, but considering the 2016 version of this same report indicated that only 52% of directors were reimbursed for director education, how would any organization expect this rapidly increasing knowledge gap to close?

This knowledge and experience gap is only compounded by the fierce competition for top talent and a steady increase in regulations. Nomination and Governance (Nom\Gov) Chairs are keenly aware of these issues, and many have addressed this challenge by bringing in new directors with different skill sets that more closely align with the future strategic direction of the organization. Others have formed new committees to more narrowly focus on critical issues such as data privacy, environment/governance/social (ESG) and cybersecurity. Risk Neutral has decades of experience working with clients in small groups or paired up with individual leaders to provide tailored training on most risk-related topics. Our reputation is based exclusively on the quality and application of the knowledge we transfer to our clients to assist them in addressing their most challenging issues. We can only maintain this unique capability by committing a significant percentage of our annual revenue to staff development, training, certifications and volunteering our time and resources to support verticals we serve.