Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

In this episode, Justin interviews Ward Ching and Aaron Olson of Aon about their recent session at RISKWORLD 2026 and the book they co-authored, Strategy and Change: Finding Opportunity in Disruption Through Insight, Choice, and Risk. They discuss the dizzying, disruptive transformation in today's market, where conventional risk management frameworks, tools, and solutions have become increasingly ineffective. They explore technological innovation in terms of the new powers of next-generation microprocessors and the accompanying robustness of machine learning-based analytics. Aaron explains how he built an AI analysis agent over a weekend. Aaron and Ward discuss their book and how to use it to help you and your organization navigate disruption. Listen for insight on how to use disruption without being disrupted in the risk ecosystem.

Key Takeaways:

[:01] About RIMS and RIMScast.

[:16] About this episode of RIMScast. Our topic is strategy and change in a world full of innovation and disruption, and we will be joined by our guests, Aaron Olson and our friend Ward Ching of Aon, but first…

[:45] RIMS Virtual Workshops. The next RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep will be held on June 9th and 10th. The next RIMS-CRMP-FED Exam Prep with AFERM will be held on June 16th and 17th. Links to registration are in this episode's notes.

[1:01] Webinars. On May 28th, Zurich returns with "From Underwriting To Risk Management: What To Expect From The Growing Demand For Data Center Construction." Register for webinars at RIMS.org/Webinars or through the links in this episode's show notes.

[1:17] Folks, RIMS is back on YouTube. Our handle is @RIMSOfficialChannel. We've got plenty of videos there, including RIMScast, RIMScast Canada video podcasts, and other informative and entertaining content from RIMS. Subscribe to the channel today!

[1:36] On with the Show! Our guests today are, respectively, the Executive Vice President at Aon Corporation and a Managing Director at Aon Corporation. They are Aaron Olson, making his debut on RIMSCast, and our good friend Ward Ching, also a former RIMS-CRMP Commissioner.

[1:52] They presented a session at RISKWORLD 2026, titled "Strategy and Change: Understanding Disruptive Innovation Through Insight, Choice and Risk." They recently published a book, Strategy and Change: Finding Opportunity in Disruption Through Insight, Choice, and Risk. [2:11] We will talk about the risk management practices, philosophies, and frameworks that went into the book and the session, what it took for Mr. Olson to build an AI agent, and how you can assess whether this is the sort of business decision for your organization. Let's get to it!

[2:32] Interview! Aaron Olson and Ward Ching, Welcome to RIMScast!

[3:12] Aaron says Ward and he work together at Aon, and they work with risk managers around the world. They also do some academic work. Ward, at USC, Marshall School of Business, and Aaron, at Northwestern, just outside Chicago.

[3:25] Aaron says that for 20 years, he's been working as a member of the faculty there, part-time, teaching on the topic of the intersection of strategy and leadership.

[3:38] About 10 years ago, Aaron did some research and published a book focused on the intersection of strategy and leadership. He looked at different companies and examples to learn how individuals lead strategy.

[3:55] Ten years later, Aaron and Ward talked about it regarding the clients they work with and the challenges risk managers working in those organizations face. In the last 10 years, the world has gotten a lot more complicated and volatile, and is facing more and more risk.

[4:16] Aaron and Ward decided to do some new work. This time, it's not strategy and leadership; it's strategy and disruptive change.

[4:27] They looked at what lessons they could learn from COVID, from the supply chain, and from the unpredictable rising cost of doing business. What can we do about that?

[4:42] How can companies be successful? How can risk managers be successful? What is the changing, evolving role of risk in the midst of that?

[4:53] Ward says one of the interesting things is that disruption has always been part of the economic environment. It is now a hyper-important part of economic decision-making in every industry vertical.

[5:12] Ward's research in the disruptive innovation space started with a paper for RIMS that he did with Paul Walker several years ago on the issue of enterprise risk management tools and capabilities. Paul and Ward did the research, looking at all the tools.

[5:38] Then February 2020 rolled around, and the world went completely dark. Everybody predicted that there was exposure to a pandemic, but nobody had any thought of how it would go from ranking number 25 or 50 on risk registers to number one, overnight.

[6:14] Paul and Ward asked each other what was underneath this. Why did all of our tools fail? They found an interesting literature base around disruptive innovation. Ward says a lot, if not all, of our core disruptive events throughout history started with a technological innovation.

[6:38] Aaron and Ward went further, looking at all the disruption in the marketplace now: new silicon chips, our speed toward AI, agentic AI, the things we can do now with data that we couldn't do or see five years ago. That's creating a very interesting, disruptive environment.

[7:10] Disruption needs to be considered as part of the decision calculus for most organizations. Similarly, disruption is a new risk issue that has not been well understood, measured, or evaluated in the past. That's what Ward and Aaron were trying to look at.

[7:30] In the book and at RISKWORLD, Ward and Aaron looked at it from several perspectives: How is disruption creating advantage? How is disruption creating new opportunities? How is it changing the way we think about risk, risk management, and risk mitigation?

[7:58] Aaron says one of the things we uncovered as we got into this was that going back 10 years ago, on any given day, your average executive was maybe dealing with one crisis or issue coming at them.

[8:14] Aaron says that today, an executive coming into the office or dialing in on Zoom is probably dealing with two or three simultaneous challenges, and that has a compounding effect. Technology is an accelerant and also an amplifier.

[8:37] The combination of speed and severity means that organizations deal with an external environment that has multiple concurrent risks. Then you have internal execution risks, and they, too, are more complicated.

[8:52] Take AI, as an externality, but also inside. All kinds of new risks are surfacing as AI is changing workflows, processes, and the nature of people's jobs and work. That is a level of complexity we have not had to deal with in most of our professional lifetimes.

[9:12] Ward says most of the tools that we use to mitigate those risks are now obsolete. When you look at a heat map, it is point-specific. You look at various risks along a series of axes. These point-specific numbers or locations don't answer the question, "So what do you do?"

[9:59] You understand where the risk might be, on a frequency, severity, or likelihood scale, but if you were the CFO, you would be asking, "What investment do I have to make to move something that's at an extraordinarily high, or even uninsurable space, into someplace more acceptable?"

[10:18] Those comparative static tools don't give you enough information to make significant decisions, especially now that a problem may have adjacencies that impact a decision, so that needs to be broader in terms of its context and execution. A lot of those tools don't work now.

[10:41] A Quick Break! There are so many other wonderful RIMS events coming up in 2026. The 2026 Florida RIMS Educational Conference will be held from July 28th through August 1st at the lovely Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida. A link to the event is in this episode's show notes.

[11:02] Register now for the Second Annual RIMS Texas Regional Conference, which will be held from August 10th through 12th at the Grand Hyatt on the San Antonio River Walk. Advance rates are available through June 5th.

[11:16] The 11th Annual Chicagoland Risk Forum will return to the Old Post Office on Thursday, September 24th, 2026, in Chicago. Visit ChicagolandRiskForum.org for more information.

[11:29] The RIMS Western Regional Conference will be held from October 4th through the 7th in Seattle, Washington. Registration is open, and you can also submit a session. Visit RIMSWesternRegional.com and the link in this episode's show notes for more information.

[11:46] Save the dates October 18th through the 21st. We will be in Quebec City to celebrate the 50th Live RIMS Canada Conference. Booth sales are already open. Early-bird registration will open in June.

[12:01] Visit RIMSCanadaConference.ca for more information. Also, remember to check out RIMS.org/Canada for our spinoff show, RIMScast Canada, hosted by National Conference Committee Chair, Aaron Lukoni.

[12:15] The RIMS ERM Conference 2026 will be held on November 18th and 19th in Columbus, Ohio. Details will follow on RIMS.org.

[12:24] Let's Return to our Interview with Ward Ching and Aaron Olson!

[12:33] Aaron built the strategy agent at Aon. Aaron shares how it was done. He was a one-man team on this project. Aaron tells about vibe coding. He took a routine that he and Ward have been doing for years, and he realized that an agent could do some of that work.

[13:36] Aaron and Ward have been working together for a couple of years. On the academic side, they wrote a book and codified some of the work they do with their clients. Aaron says they took a framework and turned it into a simple worksheet.

[13:53] Aaron now uses that worksheet to prepare for clients. It's an analysis tool for what is going on in that client's industry, what key issues they need to deal with, and what insights, decisions, and risks Aaron will discuss with them.

[14:09] As Aaron started to look at agents, he realized that he didn't have to do all that work himself.

[14:16] Aaron uses ChatGPT. There's an ability within ChatGPT to create a Custom GPT. It asks you to follow a set of instructions. It isn't coding, just guidance.

[14:36] Aaron wrote out his guidance, uploaded his worksheet, and constructed prompts. A prompt is a good question to ask. Aaron preloaded some good prompts to get an agent.

[14:52] Aaron, Ward, and others use this agent, which they call the Strategy and Change Diagnostic. They input the client's name and problem, the type of conversation they want to have with the client, the situations they are focusing on, and the present disruptive changes.

[15:16] Aaron asks the agent, "What are the things we should be focusing on?" It comes back with a lot of the work Aaron would have had to think through himself. It's pulling on the logic he taught it and pulling real-time, relevant financial information from the internet.

[15:43] Aaron says it would have taken a team of people working for months to get the same result. We're living in a different world.

[15:52] Ward says that Aaron can change the persona of the agent. The agent is looking at it from one point of view. It can look at it from a different point of view or a competing point of view. All of those will generate additional insights into what the client's issues might be.

[15:14] Aaron built the Strategy and Change Diagnostic over a weekend and refined it by trying it out with some real situations. Aaron thinks this type of agent is in the future for all of us.

[16:27] Ward says, Strategy and Change: Finding Opportunity in Disruption Through Insight, Choice, and Risk, and the recent RISKWORLD 2026 session, cover disruption and disruptive innovation in a clinical way, and case studies, new tools, and responsibilities that are coming out.

[16:54] Ward talks about the necessary skills. Many people in risk management are asking what skills and capabilities they need to be successful going forward. That's a big issue. What is the impact of AI? What is the impact on data analysis and on the types of things they need to do?

[17:19] Risk professionals wonder if they should be coders, actuaries, or engineers. Ward says, the answer is yes. They need to be all of those, going forward. That's a big issue in question.

[17:28] Justin says an editorial strategy shift at RIMS is that it's no longer just about identifying risk. It's how to leverage it to do your job better. It's what you need to know now to enable you to succeed later. It's not just about the "what." It's about the "why" and the "how."

[17:52] Another Quick Break! The Spencer Educational Foundation's Risk Manager on Campus application period is now open, and it will close on June 30th. Grant awardees, colleges, and universities are typically notified in September.

[18:14] The Course Development Grant application deadline for Interval Number 2 will be on June 15th, 2026. Award notifications will be sent out in late July.

[18:27] General Grant applications are open, and the application deadline is July 30th. Internship Grant applications open on August 15th and close on October 15th.

[18:39] Links to each of these grants are in this episode's show notes. Visit SpencerEd.org for more information.

[18:48] The Spencer 2026 Funding Their Future Gala will be held on Thursday, September 17th, from 6:30 to 10:00 p.m. at a different venue this year. It will be at the fabulous Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

[19:03] Sponsorship opportunities and benefits are available now. A link to the Funding Their Future Gala is in this episode's show notes.

[19:12] Be on the lookout for some of the honorees and Spencer Board members to join RIMScast in June and July.

[19:21] Let's Conclude Our Interview with Ward Ching and Aaron Olson!!

[19:32] Aaron says this is the second book he has written and the first book he has written with Ward. They enjoyed the opportunity to bring together some things they had been doing in their respective professional backgrounds.

[19:46] The book is an investigation into what is driving us to live in a world that's more complicated and faster-moving, where risk is different, and we need to work differently because of it.

[20:01] They go into practical things with three different lenses on the issues we all face in a world of disruptive change. The lenses are insight, choice, and risk. They get to the practical aspects of what that means for us.

[20:15] They address success in a world that's more complicated, is moving faster, and has a lot more volatility that's not going away. They use case examples. They look at real organizations. What happened to GE over the last decade? How did they navigate changes in their industry?

[20:35] How did S&P Global evolve from a very different business a decade ago? They were McGraw-Hill, the publisher. These are real companies that have faced real challenges, and they've taken proactive approaches that have evolved the way they do business.

[20:52] The book brings it down to individuals and how you lead through that kind of change. There are practical things and a few tools to use.

[21:05] Ward adds that it points to some additional literature to think about.

[21:09] Clayton Christensen at Harvard did a lot of interesting work associated with the innovator's dilemma, in which he was asking the question, "How do organizations that have been innovative throughout their lifespans, when they continue to be innovative, fail?"

[21:28] Ward says it has to do with disruptive elements in the marketplace. It raises the question of how you, in risk management, can help the organization think slightly disruptively to help it push through the biases and barriers that might cause it to have difficulties going forward.

[21:40] The issue of understanding disruptive innovation is part of the new toolkit that the next generation of risk professionals is going to have to have, sharpened up, with a strong acumen around, to help their organization succeed going forward.

[22:09] Those are some of the more subtle elements of the book. It also talks about a risk ecosystem as opposed to separate distinct property and casualty, wealth, well-being, and more.

[22:27] They're not in separate locations; they're in an ecosystem. The data is showing us how they interact with each other. New skills, new capabilities, and new perspectives are highlighted in the book.

[22:44] Special thanks again to Aaron Olson and Ward Ching of Aon for joining us here on RIMScast! Remember to check out their book Strategy and Change: Finding Opportunity in Disruption Through Insight, Choice, and Risk. It is available worldwide right now.

[22:57] If you are looking for the slides from their RISKWORLD 2026 presentation, open up the RIMS Events app and go to the Attendees Service Center. Also visit RIMS.org/ASC. Navigate over to their names, and you should find it.

[23:13] Be sure to check out the links in this episode's show notes for the past appearances of our friend Ward Ching.

[23:20] Plug Time! You can sponsor a RIMScast episode for this, our weekly show, or a dedicated episode. Links to sponsored episodes are in the show notes.

[23:48] RIMScast has a global audience of risk and insurance professionals, legal professionals, students, business leaders, C-Suite executives, and more. Let's collaborate and help you reach them! Contact [email protected] for more information.

[24:07] Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email [email protected] for more information.

[24:24] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today's risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more.

[24:41] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com. It is written and published by the best minds in risk management.

[24:54] Justin Smulison is the Business Content Manager at RIMS. Please remember to subscribe to RIMScast on your favorite podcasting app. You can email us at [email protected].

[25:06] Practice good risk management, stay safe, and thank you again for your continued support!

Links:

RIMS Canada Conference — Oct. 18‒21, 2026 | Quebec City | Registration Opens in June

RIMScast on YouTube!

Spencer Educational Foundation — Scholarships and Grants | Open Calls and Timelines.

RIMS-CRO Certificate Program In Advanced Enterprise Risk Management | July‒Sept. 2026 Cohort | Led by James Lam

2026 Florida RIMS Educational Conference | July 28‒Aug. 1 | Register Now

RIMS Texas Regional Conference 2026 | Aug. 10‒12 in San Antonio | Register Now!

ChicagoLand Risk Forum | Sept. 24, 2026

RIMS Western Regional Conference — Oct. 4‒7, 2026 | Seattle, WA | Register Today and Submit an Educational Session!

RIMS Risk Management magazine | Contribute

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RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) | Insights Video Series Featuring Joe Milan!

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RISK PAC | RIMS Advocacy

RISKWORLD 2026 Presentations Available via Attendee Service Center — www.RIMS.org/Asc — and via the RIMS Events App

Upcoming RIMS-CRMP Prep Virtual Workshops:

RIMS-CRMP Exam Prep | June 9‒10 RIMS-CRMP-FED Exam Prep with AFERM | June 16‒17, 2026

Full RIMS-CRMP Prep Course Schedule

See the full calendar of RIMS Virtual Workshops

Upcoming RIMS Webinars:

From Underwriting To Risk Management: What To Expect From The Growing Demand For Data Center Construction | May 28 | Presented by Zurich

RIMS.org/Webinars

Related RIMScast Episodes: "Live from RISKWORLD 2026!"

"RIMS Risk Manager of the Year Jeff Bray"

"James Lam on ERM, Strategy, and the Modern CRO"

"Rethinking the Impact of Disruption on ERM Tools and Processes with Ward Ching and Dr. Paul Walker"

"Disruption and the Digital Age with Ward Ching"

Sponsored RIMScast Episodes:

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"Facing Into Risk: Navigating the New Risk Landscape" (New!) | Sponsored by AXA XL

"Secondary Perils, Major Risks: The New Face of Weather-Related Challenges" | Sponsored by AXA XL

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"The New Reality of Risk Engineering: From Code Compliance to Resilience" | Sponsored by AXA XL

"Change Management: AI's Role in Loss Control and Property Insurance" | Sponsored by Global Risk Consultants, a TÜV SÜD Company

"Demystifying Multinational Fronting Insurance Programs" | Sponsored by Zurich

"Understanding Third-Party Litigation Funding" | Sponsored by Zurich

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RIMS Publications, Content, and Links:

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About our guests: Ward Ching, Managing Director, AON

Adjunct Professor of Risk Management, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

Aaron Olson, EVP, Enterprise Client Group, Exec Sponsor, University Partnerships, AON

Lecturer, Northwestern University

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