In my last piece, The Inevitability of Failure, I wrote about something most leaders quietly know but rarely say out loud—failure isn’t an interruption of the journey, it is the terrain. That article opened the door to a conversation I’ve been having with myself for decades, long before GRC became my lens for understanding how organizations move through uncertainty.
Every crisis begins with a moment of disbelief. The thing that wasn’t supposed to happen suddenly has, and the assumptions that felt so comfortable a day earlier now feel paper-thin. That’s when risk management either shows up or falls apart.
Technology does not create good risk management. Strategy does. Risk, by its nature, is not the enemy. As I often remind listeners on the Risk Is Our Business podcast, the company that avoids risk altogether is already obsolete. The task isn’t to eliminate uncertainty, it’s to orchestrate it. To take the right risks, at the right time, with purpose, visibility, and confidence.
In an era defined by disruption, resilience is no longer a side conversation in boardrooms, it is the conversation. Cyber incidents, technology outages, geopolitical instability, and supply chain fragility are not “if” events; they are “when” events. Regulators, investors, and customers all demand that you show us not only that you can take the hit, but that you can recover, adapt, and continue to deliver.
EY’s latest Global Risk Transformation Study draws a sharp line between organizations merely enduring volatility and those converting it into strategic momentum. In today’s NAVI world (nonlinear, accelerated, volatile, interconnected) the margin between thriving and stumbling is defined not by luck, but by leadership mindset and structural alignment.
In a universe where regulations multiply faster than Tribbles and risk events arrive with all the subtlety of a falling whale, it helps to have a guide. A few weeks ago, we published Don’t Panic A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the GRC Technology Galaxy, a friendly reminder that the GRC universe is vast, strange, and occasionally full of Vogon-level bureaucracy.
The future of GRC is not simply digital, it’s decisively autonomous. It’s not just about processing power or clever dashboards. It’s about cognitive capability woven into the operational fabric of the organization—fluid, contextual, and self-directed. It’s orchestrated intelligence with agency.