Two easy ways to begin the risk-strategy connection

First, read your strategy document. I can’t emphasize this enough. We’ve got to know our own vision, mission, strategy, etc. Note that sometimes an understanding of this will cause a repositioning of certain risks.

Second, read what they read. Boards and executives are not necessarily reading COSO’s ERM Framework or the ISO Framework. Therefore, to understand their world and problems, read what they read. Some of my favorites in this area are:

Business Models

o  Business Model Generation (Osterwalder & Pigneur)

o  Value Proposition Design

Disruption

o  No Ordinary Disruption (Dobbs et al.)

o  Big Bang Disruption (Downes & Nunes)

o  Your Strategy needs a Strategy (Reeves et al)

o  Create Marketplace Disruption (Hartung)

o  Superforecasting (Tetlock and Gardner)

Strategy (more general)

o  Strategy beyond the Hockey Stick (Bradley et. al.)

o  Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne)

o  The Lean Startup (Ries)

o  Playing to Win (Lafley and Martin)

o  Brand Resilience (Copulsky)

o  Discovery Driven Growth (McGrath and MacMillan)

o  Upside (Slywotzky)

o  Innovator’s Toolkit (HBS)

o  Geography of Genius (Weiner)

Strategic Execution

o  Achieving the Execution Edge (Bart & Schreiber)

o  When Strategy Execution Marries Risk Management (Ow)

o  Seven Strategy Questions (Simons)

o  Strategy that Works – How Winning Companies Close the Strategy-to-Execution Gap (Leinwand & Mainardi)

And from the book above “Strategy beyond the hockey stick” I found the authors had an interesting favorite list of their own:

• Strategy: A History

• The Innovator’s Dilemma

• Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

• The Art of War

• Coopetition: a revolutionary mindset…

• The Lords of Strategy…

• Antifragile: things that gain from disorder

• The signal and the noise…

• Thinking fast and slow

• Decline and fall of the Roman Empire

• On war

• The strategy of conflict