If you are looking at the Risk Coalition’s recent publication, Raising The Bar, and thinking about what this means for the capabilities and experience of Chief Risk Officers in the future, you would be well advised to read the excellent paper ‘How to Hire a Great CRO’ prepared by Ulrich Seega.
https://theirm.org/media/8461/how-to-hire-a-great-cro.pdf
For me the key messages from Ulrich’s paper and the Risk Coalition guidance are that CROs hold a complex and challenging role combining functional expertise and behavioural competencies. I have picked out certain key competencies, drawn from the Institute of Risk Management professional standards.
Collaboration and partnering
Despite holding a governance role, CROs need, day-to-day, to be working in partnership with other members of the executive, partnering to help leaders manage the risks facing their business, to ensure a successful outcome.
Influence and impact
CROs typically hold limited positional power and generally recognise that wielding this power needs to be done with care in order to maintain effective working relationships. Generally CROs need to operate more subtlety, having meaningful conversations with peers an shaping discussions through effective influencing styles.
Innovation and catalyst
An interesting aspect is that to be credible and valued a CRO has to provide input to business strategy from a broad basis and not just from a down-side perspective. There is a perspective in terms of helping the organisation to take appropriate risks where these are necessary to maintain resilience and a sustainable business model.
Building capability
A CRO is not alone, and has to nurture and develop a credible and skilled risk function to support them, provide succession and also cover for any gaps in their own experience.
Courage and confidence
Finally, when all these efforts fail, a CRO has to be prepared to speak up and surface issues to the Board Risk Committee in an appropriate and timely manner. This implies having built those relationships so that the Committee members and chair are prepared to listen and support them at those moments of truth.
Also read my earlier blog of CRO being ‘chief responsibility officer’:
Alex Hindson - Chief Risk Officer, ArgoGlobal (https://www.argolimited.com)