RiskMasters | Trailblazing Risk Leadership

What happens when a crisis threatens not just an organisation's operations, but the very model on which its survival depends?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Angela McConville, former Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), reflects on joining the charity just ten weeks before the first COVID-19 lockdown and facing an immediate existential challenge.

NCT's operating model depended on bringing expectant parents together through in-person antenatal education. When the pandemic made those gatherings impossible, the disruption affected the charity's income, services and ability to fulfil its purpose.

Angela describes how an organisation built around face-to-face facilitation rapidly developed the confidence, skills and infrastructure needed to deliver support digitally.

A particularly important part of the discussion concerns how leaders frame change. Rather than presenting digital transformation as an organisational objective, Angela connected the transition directly to NCT's mission of supporting parents at a time when connection and community had become even more important.

That sense of purpose helped mobilise a workforce whose capabilities and determination were already present, even if the circumstances in which they needed to operate had fundamentally changed.

In this extract:

• Why the pandemic created an existential challenge for NCT's operating model

• How resilience became an immediate leadership and organisational survival priority

• The role of purpose in mobilising people through significant disruption

• How practitioners developed new capabilities to deliver services digitally

• Why framing transformation around the organisation's mission can influence its ability to adapt

• What NCT's experience reveals about leadership, confidence and organisational resilience

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Angela McConville, When Mission Meets Reality: Resilience and Leadership in a Transforming Charity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation on organisational resilience, leadership, transformation and decision-making.

How do organisations recognise emerging risks when the evidence is still incomplete?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Angela McConville, former Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), explores how leaders can identify, interpret and respond to early warning signals before they develop into material strategic issues.

Angela explains why organisations need to pay attention to frontline observations, intuition and emerging concerns without allowing those signals to become established assumptions prematurely.

An important part of the discussion concerns the ability to distinguish between a signal, a symptom and a strategic issue. This requires curiosity, judgement and a culture where people feel comfortable sharing observations that may not yet be supported by conclusive evidence.

Angela illustrates this through NCT's experience of recognising growing concerns about birth trauma. What initially appeared as isolated observations from practitioners working in different communities gradually developed into a broader picture of an issue receiving national attention.

The example highlights why connecting signals across an organisation matters. Individually, observations may appear inconclusive, but collectively they can reveal patterns that warrant further investigation and ultimately influence strategic priorities, services and organisational responses.

In this extract:

• Why early warning signals should be explored without becoming premature assumptions

• How leaders distinguish between signals, symptoms and strategic issues

• The importance of frontline intelligence and organisational listening

• How connecting observations across different locations can reveal emerging patterns

• What NCT's experience with birth trauma illustrates about organisational awareness

• How emerging risks can influence strategic decisions, services and priorities

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Angela McConville, When Mission Meets Reality: Resilience and Leadership in a Transforming Charity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation on organisational resilience, leadership, transformation and decision-making.

How can leaders make better decisions when information is incomplete and circumstances keep changing?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Angela McConville, former Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), explores why organisational resilience depends on the ability to experiment, learn quickly and adapt without waiting for certainty.

Drawing on NCT's experience of transformation, Angela explains how the organisation adopted a test-and-learn approach, using small, low-cost experiments to explore opportunities before committing significant resources.

A particularly revealing example concerns an initiative that failed within just 10 to 15 days. Rather than treating the outcome as a setback, the leadership team celebrated what they had learned and moved on.

The distinction is important. Learning from failure does not mean accepting uncontrolled risk. It means creating opportunities to test assumptions, contain potential losses and make better-informed decisions.

For charities and other organisations operating under financial and operational pressure, this approach offers an alternative to lengthy transformation programmes that may struggle to keep pace with changing circumstances.

In this extract:

• Why leaders must become comfortable making decisions with imperfect information

• How small experiments can reduce uncertainty before significant resources are committed

• Why speed of learning can matter more than speed of execution

• How celebrating contained failures can strengthen organisational culture

• Why a test-and-learn mindset supports organisational resilience and continuous adaptation

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Angela McConville, When Mission Meets Reality: Resilience and Leadership in a Transforming Charity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation on charity leadership, organisational transformation, decision-making and resilience.

In this CPD episode of the RiskMasters Podcast, I speak with Angela McConville, formerly Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), about leadership, organisational resilience and transformation in one of the UK's largest charities.

Angela joined NCT just ten weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic fundamentally disrupted how the organisation supported parents. Overnight, a charity built around bringing expectant parents together in local communities had to rethink how it delivered its services, maintained financial sustainability and continued fulfilling its mission.

We also discuss balancing mission with financial sustainability, leading distributed workforces, navigating increasing regulatory expectations and collaborating across organisational boundaries to deliver greater social impact.

🎯 What You Will Learn

By listening to this episode, you'll gain practical insights into:

• Building organisational resilience through leadership rather than crisis response.

• Challenging assumptions that have become embedded within successful organisations.

• Using experimentation and rapid learning to improve strategic decision-making.

• Creating cultures where curiosity is encouraged and learning is celebrated.

• Recognising emerging risks before they become measurable.

• Balancing governance, regulation and organisational agility.

• Empowering distributed teams while maintaining effective oversight.

• Using collaboration as a strategic capability rather than simply a partnership model.

• Reinventing an organisation without compromising its purpose.

🕒 Episode Highlights

00:00 – When resilience becomes a leadership challenge Angela reflects on joining NCT just weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic and leading an organisation through immediate disruption.

04:00 – Protecting the mission, not the operating model

Why organisations must distinguish between their purpose and the way they currently deliver it.

08:00 – Learning faster than circumstances change

How experimentation, rapid learning and celebrating small failures strengthen organisational resilience.

14:00 – Understanding changing customer needs

Why successful organisations continually challenge their assumptions about the people they serve.

18:00 – Why leaders should communicate purpose, not simply process

Helping people understand why change matters rather than overwhelming them with operational detail.

22:00 – Structured and unstructured listening

How organisational awareness develops through formal governance and everyday conversations.

27:00 – Weak signals and emerging strategic risks

Recognising patterns before they become measurable issues, illustrated through NCT's experience of identifying birth trauma as an emerging national concern.

34:00 – Enabling rather than controlling

Why resilient organisations empower frontline teams rather than centralising decision-making.

39:00 – Collaboration as a resilience capability

How working across organisational boundaries can amplify both influence and social impact.

43:00 – Reinvention and the future of leadership

Why resilience ultimately depends upon continually rethinking how organisations fulfil their mission.

👤 About Angela McConville

Angela McConville was at the time of the interview Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), one of the UK's largest parenting charities supporting families through pregnancy, birth and early parenthood.

Her leadership spans charity governance, organisational transformation, strategic leadership, operational resilience, service innovation and collaboration, with a strong focus on creating organisations that learn, adapt and continue delivering lasting social impact.

📚 Related Resources

• When Governance Comes Too Late: A Charity Risk Case Study

• Governance in Charities and Non-Profit Organisations

• A Guide to Assessing Risk Maturity for Non-Profit Organisations and Charities

🎓 Download your CPD certificate:

https://thecpd.group/p/PSWG4GA

What happens when the assumptions behind an important decision change?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Grant Purdy explores why decision-making is fundamentally about resolving uncertainty and why organisations need to understand the assumptions on which their decisions depend.

Drawing on the work he developed with the late Roger Estall, Grant explains how good decisions begin with clarity about organisational purpose, the opportunity being considered and the outcomes being sought.

But a particularly important part of the discussion concerns assumptions.

Every decision rests on assumptions about the organisation and the world around it. Yet Grant observes that boards and executive teams rarely record those assumptions explicitly.

That creates a practical governance problem. If the assumptions behind a decision are not visible, how can leaders recognise when circumstances have changed enough to reconsider it?

The objective is not perfect certainty. Grant argues that decision-makers instead need to reach “sufficient certainty” to exercise judgement and act.

In this extract:

• Why decision-making involves resolving uncertainty
• The importance of purpose and desired outcomes
• Why every important decision rests on assumptions
• What Grant means by “sufficient certainty”
• Why boards should make assumptions explicit
• How changing assumptions can signal that a decision needs to be revisited

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Grant Purdy on ISO 31000, risk management, uncertainty and better decision-making.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation.

Has risk management lost sight of what it was originally supposed to achieve?

In this RiskMasters — The Download extract, Grant Purdy offers a provocative perspective on how the risk management profession has evolved and why he believes it needs to reconnect with decision-making.

Grant reflects on the different philosophies that developed around ISO 31000 and COSO ERM. He argues that while ISO 31000 had the potential to move risk management towards decision support, tensions remained between integrating risk thinking into normal management decisions and maintaining separate risk management processes, terminology and frameworks.

He also discusses a proposed revision of ISO 31000 around 2015 which, in his account, would have reframed the standard around helping organisations recognise and take account of uncertainty when making decisions. That more fundamental change was ultimately not adopted.

The discussion then moves beyond standards to the profession itself.

Grant questions whether risk management has become too focused on its own processes, documentation and terminology, including the difficulty practitioners still have in agreeing what the word “risk” actually means.

His central argument is clear: risk management should not become an end in itself. Its value should come from helping organisations understand uncertainty and make better decisions.

• Grant Purdy's perspective on ISO 31000 and COSO ERM
• Why integrating risk management with decision-making remains difficult
• The proposed rethink of ISO 31000 around decision support and uncertainty
• Whether risk management has become too focused on process and documentation
• Why definitions of risk continue to create difficulties for the profession
• Why Grant believes risk management should ultimately support better decisions

This extract is taken from the full CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Grant Purdy on ISO 31000, risk management, uncertainty and better decision-making.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or at aevitium.com.

What was ISO 31000 originally designed to achieve, and how did the international risk management standard develop?

In this RiskMasters — The Download extract, Grant Purdy, who was directly involved in the development of ISO 31000, explains the origins of the standard and its relationship with organisational decision-making.

Grant traces ISO 31000 back to the Australian and New Zealand standard AS/NZS 4360, first published in 1995 and subsequently updated in 1999 and 2004. The objective was to bring greater consistency to different approaches to risk assessment and risk treatment while producing information that decision-makers could understand and use.

As other countries began adopting AS/NZS 4360, Grant and his colleagues approached the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) about developing an international standard. What followed was a four-year process of discussion and compromise as different countries brought their own perspectives on risk management.

Grant explains why the resulting ISO 31000 framework sought to integrate risk management and decision-making, but also why he believes this contributed to a distinction that continues to shape the profession.

In his view, different philosophies of risk management have subsequently developed. He characterises the ISO 31000 approach as increasingly focused on decision support, while describing COSO and IRM approaches as placing greater emphasis on risk identification, governance and reporting.

That distinction leads to a fundamental question for risk leaders: is risk management primarily a process for identifying and reporting risk, or should its ultimate purpose be to improve organisational decisions?

• The origins and history of ISO 31000
• How ISO 31000 evolved from AS/NZS 4360
• The original purpose of risk assessment and risk treatment
• Why risk information should support organisational decision-making
• How the international risk management standard was developed
• The role of compromise in international standards
• Grant Purdy's perspective on different philosophies of modern risk management

This extract is taken from the full CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Grant Purdy exploring ISO 31000, risk management, uncertainty, risk matrices, governance and better decision-making.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or at aevitium.com.

In this episode of RiskMasters, I speak with Grant Purdy about risk management, uncertainty and the relationship between risk and better decision-making.

Grant has spent almost five decades working in risk and decision-making. He was a nominated expert involved in the development of ISO 31000, contributed to ISO Guide 73 and helped shape ISO/IEC 31010.

He is also co-author, with the late Roger Estall, of Deciding, a practical guide designed to help people make better decisions.

Our conversation examines how risk management has evolved, why Grant believes parts of the profession have become disconnected from decision-making, and what boards, executives and risk professionals can do differently.

“Certainty is a total illusion. It can never be achieved. Sufficient certainty is as good as we can get.” – Grant Purdy

🎯 What You Will Learn

• Why risk management should ultimately improve decision-making

• How to make decisions without waiting for impossible certainty

• Why identifying and monitoring assumptions strengthens governance

• Where risk matrices and risk appetite can create false confidence

• How AI can support judgement without replacing accountability

🕒 Episode Highlights

01:23 - What ISO 31000 was originally trying to achieve

Grant traces the development of ISO 31000 from AS/NZS 4360 and explains why creating useful information for decision-making was central to the original approach.

06:03 - Where risk management lost its way

We discuss the different philosophies that emerged around risk management and why Grant believes the profession needs to reconnect risk with decision support.

10:29 - Uncertainty, assumptions and sufficient certainty

Grant explains why decisions require clarity about purpose, opportunity, desired outcomes and the assumptions on which they depend.

16:08 - The danger of seeking certainty

Why waiting for complete information can produce analysis paralysis, missed opportunities and delayed action.

21:10 - What risk matrices can and cannot tell us

Grant explains why a useful prioritisation tool can become misleading when organisations treat it as a form of quantitative analysis.

24:20 - Governance, regulation and decision-making

A provocative discussion about the relationship between standards, regulation and consultancy, and why governance should ultimately be concerned with how decisions are made.

32:49 - Why well-governed organisations still make poor decisions

We explore unclear purpose, hidden assumptions, predetermined outcomes, insufficient challenge and weak monitoring.

36:49 - AI and the future of decision support

Grant considers how AI can broaden context, challenge bias and surface assumptions, alongside the dangers of allowing technology to substitute for human judgement.

41:01 - The future of the risk profession

Why Grant believes risk professionals should broaden their capabilities and become facilitators of better organisational decisions.

44:02 - Better decisions begin with purpose

Grant closes with the principle at the heart of his approach to decision-making.

👤 About Grant Purdy

Grant Purdy has almost five decades of experience working in risk management and decision-making. He chaired the Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand risk management committee for ten years and was a nominated expert involved in developing ISO 31000.

Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-purdy-4ba1925/

Learn more about Deciding: https://www.sufficientcertainty.com/book

📚 Related Resources

• From Approval to Impact: Repositioning Risk Appetite 

• Strategic Uncertainty Governance 

• Risk Impact Assessment: What Actually Drives Decision Quality 

• When Delay Changes the Decision Itself 

🎓 Download your CPD certificate:

The CPD Group - Accreditation: #501335

How do leaders move from recognising a Gray Rhino to actually doing something about it?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Michele Wucker, author of The Gray Rhino and You Are What You Risk, explains the five stages of the Gray Rhino framework and how they can help leaders assess where they are in responding to visible, high-impact risks.

The five stages are denial, muddling, diagnosing, panic and action.

Michele explains why diagnosing represents an important shift. Rather than simply acknowledging the risk, leaders begin asking how quickly it is developing, how significant it could become, what solutions are available, what resources are required and who needs to be involved.

The framework also considers where other stakeholders sit within those five stages. A response may depend on people who have not yet recognised the urgency of the risk or who lack the authority to act.

The conversation explores why panic can be a double-edged sword. It can finally create momentum, but it can also lead to poor decisions. Having a plan matters, but so do the mechanisms and decision authority required to implement it.

Michele also introduces the idea of a “crash of rhinos”, where several significant risks interact or arrive together, alongside smaller “baby rhinos” that may develop into larger threats.

• The five stages of the Gray Rhino framework

• How leaders move from recognition and diagnosis to action

• Why stakeholders may be at different stages of responding

• How panic can lead to action but also poor decisions

• Why multiple risks can develop into a “crash of rhinos”

The Gray Rhino framework provides a practical way for risk leaders to assess not only the risks they face, but how prepared their organisations and key stakeholders are to respond. Effective action requires diagnosis, planning, decision authority, and continued tracking and adjustment.

This extract is taken from the full RiskMasters conversation with Michele Wucker on the Gray Rhino, risk management, behavioural risk and strategic decision-making.

Listen to the full RiskMasters episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or at aevitium.com.

Risk culture, cultural differences, leadership, and risk management are closely connected to how people perceive and respond to risk.

In this RiskMasters — The Download segment, Horst Simon draws on his international experience to explore how cultural worldviews influence risk behaviour inside organisations. He discusses three broad perspectives, guilt versus innocence, honour versus shame, and power versus fear, and explains why organisations operating across cultures need to consider these differences when developing risk policies and processes.

The conversation also explores how generational differences influence attitudes towards work, organisations, mobility, and risk, creating another important consideration for leaders building an effective risk culture.

Listeners will gain insight into:

• How cultural differences can influence risk management decisions
• Why the same risk policy may be interpreted differently across cultures
• How cultural worldviews shape attitudes towards responsibility and consequences
• Why generational differences matter when building risk culture
• How global organisations can consider human behaviour within risk frameworks

This extract is taken from the full RiskMasters interview with Horst Simon on risk culture, people risk, leadership, operational risk, and the future of risk management, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at aevitium.com.