ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) pressure is mounting from multiple fronts for organizations to implement ESG reporting. ESG has the momentum and force to become a significant measurement of an organization's integrity.
The decision by Meta, Facebook's parent company, to withhold its latest multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) model from the European Union marks a significant moment in the ongoing dialogue between Silicon Valley innovation and European regulation. This move, following a similar decision by Apple, underscores the growing challenges tech companies face in navigating the EU's evolving regulatory landscape.
"No man is an island, entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." - English Poet John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Conditions (1624) found in the section Meditation XVII.
Consider this example: one organization was spending 200 hours building a report for the board on risk events that have happened. All the information was trapped in spreadsheets that they had to aggregate, tabulate, and build this report from. Every year, another 200 hours—it now takes them a minute. The last year they did it this way, they found out they had risk issues that started eleven months back. That is not managing risk: that is reacting to it well after the fact.
In today's landscape of governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC), there's a prevalent but often misguided approach that begins with compliance rather than governance. If we were to parse the acronym logically, one might expect it to be CRG, or even Cr (intentionally lowercase), reflecting the common tendency where compliance takes precedence over governance and strategic performance considerations. This approach, while common, can lead to fragmented risk management efforts and overlooks the foundational role that governance plays in setting objectives and guiding risk mitigation strategies.
The last few years have shined a light on GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) processes and shifted many attitudes towards risk. Yet, many organizations are left with numerous questions: What are the best practices to identify, analyze, monitor, and manage risks specific to your organization? Do these risk activities support future business growth, and should you implement ESG controls or reporting?
The landscape of Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) is undergoing a profound transformation as organizations contend with rapid change, complexity, and interconnectedness. In this evolving environment, traditional approaches to GRC are proving insufficient, necessitating a shift towards more agile, resilient, and integrity-driven frameworks.