Imagine boarding a plane, the captain greets you warmly, the seats are plush, and the cabin crew offers champagne. But as you take off, you overhear the pilots say they have turned off the radar to “focus on speed and comfort.”
That’s what most executive teams are doing: flying blind. In one of my consulting assignments with a small financial institution, the CEO told me proudly: “Our strategy is to grow SME lending aggressively.” I asked, “What’s your risk appetite for NPLs in that sector?” He paused, looked at his CFO, and there was no answer.
That’s the problem. Strategy and risk live in separate universes. Most firms treat risk as a compliance nuisance, something for auditors and regulators, not as a vital lens for making smarter choices. When risk is not embedded at the strategy table, you are not making bold moves; you are, however, making blind bets.
Here’s why risk must sit at the strategy table:
a) Risk reveals the truth behind ambition. A great strategy is not just about opportunity but about uncertainty. Strategy without risk is optimism and Risk without strategy is paranoia. You need both. Risk forces you to define how much volatility your business model can survive.
b) Risk exposes resource leakage. In one retail bank, we discovered over UGX 8 billion tied in projects no one was monitoring, each approved under “strategic transformation.” Risk wasn’t involved. No root cause analysis, no post-mortem, just blind faith, that’s not transformation. That’s a waste.
c) Risk is the early warning system. When risk professionals sit in the boardroom only after the strategy is approved, it’s already too late. They must help design the path, not audit the wreckage. Risk should challenge assumptions, test scenarios, and define what failure will look like before it happens.
d) Risk converts strategy into execution. Real execution is about trade-offs. You cannot do everything; Risk helps prioritize by aligning decisions with the organisation’s risk-bearing capacity.
I always ask: “If this goes wrong, who pays?” If no one knows, you are setting yourself up to fail quietly. A bold leader does not fear risk. He invites it into the war room
In 2023, a fintech we advised scaled tenfold in revenue not because they had a fancy strategy, but because they embedded risk into every product launch. Every pivot. Every pricing change. Risk was not a department. It was a discipline.
And that’s my call to you.
If risk is not at the table, you are not leading, but guessing. So, ask yourself: is your risk officer in the room when the next 3-year plan is being written? Or do they get it as an email attachment after it’s launched?
One protects value, and the other predicts disaster. Choose wisely
