In the cattle corridor of Uganda, there’s an old saying: “He who leaves his kraal gate open invites the hyenas to feast.” One evening in Kiruhura, I watched a young boy, barely ten, tie a thin strand of banana fibre across the gate and claim the cows were safe. “That is how papa does it,” he said. By dawn, three cows were gone. No alarm, no lock, and just misplaced confidence disguised as tradition. This is how most boards handle risk.
They assume the presence of a “risk register” is enough. That someone somewhere is doing the real watching. Like that banana fibre, it looks secure until the wolves come. And they always come. You know, there are many types of wolves these days of AI!
Boards are not in place to review risk management reports. They are there to interrogate risk assumptions. Not to ask, “Have you done the heatmap?” but “What are we blind to?”
I witnessed this first-hand in one boardroom. I had been called to evaluate the enterprise risk framework for a mid-tier financial institution. The ED presented a slick dashboard: red, amber, green, pretty slides. Then the audit chair asked, “When did we last test our business continuity plan?”
“Who is accountable for cyber resilience?”
Fingers pointed sideways. The board had become passive observers in a casino, applauding lucky wins and blaming operations when the house lost. That’s not governance. That’s gambling.
True board leadership means acting as risk mitigators, not risk spectators. You do not just ask what could go wrong. You ask who profits if it does, you follow the incentives, you trace the silence, and you read what’s not in the report.
Because risk isn’t a dashboard, it’s a discipline.
In my experience as Mr. Strategy, my take is that if your board is not directly challenging risk appetite, revisiting emerging threats quarterly, and walking through worst-case simulations, you don’t have a board. You have a cheer squad waiting to be shocked.
Stop tying banana fibres. Build real fences.
Bring Summit Consulting to test your board’s real risk posture. Let’s move from rituals to resilience, from luck to leadership, and close the kraal together.
Register for the Future Ready Board course: https://learn.summitcl.com/course/certificate-in-effective-directorship/
