Advisory Director — Risk and Resilience

One route for three kinds of risk

Today conduct, operational and financial risk each reach the board through a separate door: their own committee paper, their own severity scale, their own vocabulary. The result is that a board can see three moderate risks and miss the single serious one they add up to. The Advisory Director is appointed to help the Board of Directors bring them into one escalation model over 12 months, so that a conduct concern, a safety near-miss and a liquidity strain are read against the same thresholds and reach the same people at the right time.

Counsel with weight, but without a veto

The role is advisory. Decisions remain with the board and management, and the Advisory Director's influence comes from the quality of the counsel. That counsel covers where the line should fall between what local leaders decide and what the board sees, what evidence the board should use when it oversees spending, operating capacity and controls, and which inherited commitments the board should keep, hold back or end. The adviser challenges any proposal that lets cost or risk drift with nobody accountable, and any value case that leaves out who will use the result, what it rests on or the size of the possible loss; offers a view on how leadership is organised and how a concern travels upward; and helps directors and operating leaders settle disagreements while funds are still uncommitted. Influence without a vote demands a particular discipline: presenting a disputed downside to a board without softening it, and being right often enough that the board learns to listen.

From design to habit in a year

When the first ninety days are over, the board should have agreed a single escalation model covering conduct, operational and financial risk, including severity scales that mean the same thing in each category. Around month nine, the model should have been tried on live cases, with thresholds and owners refined on the adviser's recommendations wherever those cases exposed a gap. At month 12, the board should be reviewing all three categories of risk through one route, on resilience evidence it trusts.

Judgement tested where delay cost money

You have made risk decisions in logistics and infrastructure where delay had a measurable cost, inside businesses that turned over $550 million or more, employed upwards of 2,700 people and operated in seven or more countries. Your record includes a culture reset, integration and professionalisation; the culture work matters especially, because conduct risk rarely lives in a policy document. The capabilities that count most are risk judgement at level 4, then three at level 3: assurance testing, risk appetite and regulatory engagement. You know where local judgement must be kept and where it must be removed, and you document the boundary so others can apply it. Integration matters too, because the moment two businesses combine is when escalation routes most often run in parallel and nobody notices the gap between them.

Four steps to the board table

You first talk privately with the Board of Directors, by video, during the opening week. The Risk Committee Chair then spends time with you in week three, taking a real case through an integrated escalation model. In week five you sit in a room with executives from every function, and the seventh week ends the process with the full board. Within four working days of each step, our response will reach you in writing.