course | Enterprise Risk Management & Strategic Decision Making

Connecting Risk with Enterprise Objectives
 

Reframing Enterprise Risk Management
 

• Understand ERM as a decision capability rather than a standalone risk process. 
• Connect uncertainty, risk, opportunity, performance, and organizational objectives. 
• Identify where risk insight can influence strategic and operational choices. 
   

Building the Enterprise Risk Landscape
 

• Map significant risks against strategic objectives and value drivers. 
• Distinguish enterprise-level exposure from isolated departmental concerns. 
• Develop an Objective-to-Risk Map for a simulated organization. 

Understanding Enterprise Risk Exposure
 

Looking beyond Individual Risks
 

• Analyze relationships and dependencies between strategic, financial, operational, technology, and external risks. 
• Identify risk concentrations and potential cascading effects across the organization. 
• Recognize how one risk response may increase or reduce exposure elsewhere. 
   

Prioritizing What Matters
 

• Evaluate risks according to their potential effect on organizational outcomes. 
• Consider velocity, persistence, uncertainty, and interconnectedness alongside impact and likelihood. 
• Complete Enterprise Risk Portfolio Exercise involving competing exposures. 

Testing Strategy under Uncertainty
 

Challenging Strategic Assumptions
 

• Identify critical assumptions embedded in strategies, investments, and major initiatives. 
• Examine how changes in market, technology, resources, regulation, or operations could affect expected outcomes. 
• Distinguish robust assumptions from those requiring closer monitoring. 
   

Using Scenarios to Explore Outcomes
 

• Develop plausible scenarios around significant uncertainties. 
• Evaluate how different scenarios change risk exposure and strategic performance. 
• Complete a Strategic Scenario Challenge involving a major organizational decision. 

Making Risk-Informed Strategic Choices
 

Comparing Strategic Alternatives
 

• Evaluate alternative decisions through risk, opportunity, return, and uncertainty. 
• Identify trade-offs rather than attempting to eliminate all risk. 
• Determine what additional information would materially improve a decision. 
   

Bringing Risk into the Decision Room
 

• Structure risk information around the decision being considered.
• Communicate uncertainties, dependencies, and potential consequences without overwhelming decision-makers. 
• Complete an Executive Decision Simulation comparing strategic alternatives under changing conditions. 

Building Adaptive Enterprise Risk Management
 

Turning Risk Information into Intelligence
 

• Develop forward-looking indicators for significant enterprise exposures. 
• Recognize signals that assumptions, risk conditions, or expected outcomes are changing. 
• Escalate meaningful changes without creating unnecessary reporting noise. 
   

Keeping ERM Connected to Strategy
 

• Refresh risk priorities as objectives, decisions, and external conditions evolve. 
• Use lessons from outcomes and decisions to strengthen future risk judgement. 
• Complete an Adaptive ERM Simulation in which participants reassess an enterprise strategy as new risks, opportunities, and information emerge.