Risk management is not just about preventing surprises or bad things from happening. It has a lot to do with innovation. If your risk management department does not provide you with insights to improve your business, it is high time you changed the staff. According to ISO 31000:2018, risk management is the impact of uncertainty on corporate objectives. This means, if you do not have any set objectives, you cannot experience risk.  The starting point in the risk management process is to define the organisation objectives: what are your objectives at risk? Let us take a simple example of a…

How does risk management help with innovation? To understand the relationship, study the pictures below and answer the questions that follow: Picture 1: T Model risks Name the four risks present in the T-model above? What risks do you see? Of course, you may have noted weak frame, the car cannot run fast as it could skid, passengers are not safe due to weather vagaries, and poor navigation, etc.  Taken together, those risks make it risky to move in the car. Something must be done. And that is where innovation comes about. Now study the next car: Picture 2: New…

The coronavirus pandemic has created a sense of urgency for the digital bank. In this coronavirus times, banks are now talking about the bank 5.0 to mean a bank of the future that is highly advanced and sophisticated when it comes to anticipating and meeting customer needs. However, to win with the digital agenda, automation must be at the core of the entire banking ecosystem. In these three-part digital series, Mustapha B Mugisa, Mr Strategy explores, bank 5.0 – a digital bank of the future. An advanced digital bank keeps customers away from the banking hall. That is the kind…

I have a business partner. But we do not have any legal agreements binding us. How do I fire him or her? Never again enter into any business relationship without a legal agreement. Without one, the presumption is that you had one. Because it is your word, against theirs. A good agreement provides for entry, expectations from either side (objectives of the partnership), exit conditions, and redress in case of any disagreement. Without an agreement, review the value addition of your partner. Are you tired of him or her due to poor performance or no effort at all? Have they…

The advantage of competitive games especially football is they keep score. At any time during the match, you can look at the scoreboard and know who is leading. In performance management terms, we call it the lag indicator. That indicator that happens after the fact and not before it. To put it another way, a lag indicator is a performance measure that you see only after the fact. For example, when Liverpool did the unthinkable and made a comeback that overturned a 3 – 0 advantage to beat Barcelona FC at Anfield on 7th May 2019, many people were surprised.…

As the reality of the economic impact of coronavirus sinks in, you need to explore cost-cutting alternatives. As part of the #coronavirus recovery strategy, leaders of businesses have been conducting a business assessment to identify possible revenue leakages in terms of process redundancy and inefficiency, time, and resource wastages in unnecessary procedures and control weaknesses leading to theft and or fraud losses. One of the silent areas that lead to revenue leakage is unproductive staff on the payroll. We call them the ‘corporate fat.’ This is where the payroll is bloated by staff who do not put in their best…