Seeing the Risk Landscape Anew: Reflections on Enterprise Risk Intelligence and the Future of Modern GRC
Over the past several years — and particularly throughout this past year — I have observed a profound transformation in how organizations confront uncertainty. The traditional boundaries we once relied upon have dissolved. What used to live neatly inside departments and functions now stretches across the full expanse of the enterprise, influencing strategy, culture, ethics, technology, and operations simultaneously. As I worked on my recent Strategy Perspective on Enterprise Risk Intelligence, I found myself returning to the same recurring theme: the world organizations must navigate no longer resembles the world their risk programs were designed for.
This mismatch between reality and design is growing. The organizations I advise feel it every day; sometimes subtly, sometimes painfully. And it has become clear to me that our collective understanding of risk must evolve just as rapidly as the forces reshaping the global business environment.
The Modern Enterprise: An Interconnected Organism
If I distill the past decade of GRC evolution into a single insight, it is this:
the enterprise has become an interconnected organism of human and algorithmic decision-makers, digital and physical operations, and external dependencies that change constantly.
It is no longer possible to think of the organization as a chart of boxes connected by lines. Instead, it resembles a dynamic mesh of:
- Distributed processes and systems
- Layers of third-party and fourth-party relationships
- AI-driven automation and decision flows
- Data streams that cross borders and jurisdictions
- Reputational, ESG, and geopolitical pressures
- Real-time digital signals that shape public and market expectations
In such a world, a disruption anywhere becomes a disruption everywhere. Geopolitical instability affects supply chains; supply chain delays influence customer experience; customer experience shapes reputation; reputation affects market performance and regulatory scrutiny. The dependencies are inseparable.
Yet our traditional approaches to GRC still treat them as if they are distinct.
The Intelligence Gap: Why Organizations Fail to See What Matters
The most striking finding from my research is not the lack of available intelligence — organizations today are drowning in data — but rather the lack of connected intelligence. Many failures do not stem from absence of signals but from:
- Fragmentation: Internal and external intelligence sits in separate systems.
- Lack of context: Signals are observed but not interpreted.
- Manual processes: Spreadsheets and emails cannot keep pace with the velocity of risk.
- Point-in-time thinking: Annual and quarterly assessments assume a stable world.
- Siloed perspectives: Risk domains operate with different taxonomies, metrics, and assumptions.
These disconnects create a widening intelligence gap, the space between the complexity of the world and the organization’s ability to comprehend it.
In that gap, blind spots form. And in blind spots, risks grow unnoticed.
Enterprise Risk Intelligence: A Cognitive Shift, Not a Technical One
As I wrote the paper, it became evident that Enterprise Risk Intelligence (ERI) is not simply another component of the GRC toolbox. It is a cognitive shift in how organizations sense, interpret, and respond to risk.
ERI is an architecture of understanding. It demands:
- A unified framework for organizing risk intelligence
- Mechanisms to aggregate and curate internal and external signals
- Defined roles that connect insight to accountability
- Workflows that move information to action
- Continuous monitoring that reflects the shifting reality of operations and environment
At its core, ERI is about the enterprise developing the ability to see itself more clearly: to understand how one signal, event, or shift in context affects the rest of the system. It is about perceiving patterns, relationships, and meaning, rather than simply collecting data.
This is the work of cognition, not compliance.
Toward Integrated Awareness: Overcoming the Fragmentation of Modern GRC
One of the most persistent challenges I see is the fragmentation of risk into separate programs and disciplines. Each uses its own tools, language, and metrics:
- Compliance tracks obligations
- Operational risk measures process exposures
- Cybersecurity monitors technical threats
- ESG examines sustainability commitments
- Resilience teams assess continuity and recovery
- Internal audit evaluates controls and assurance
Individually, these functions may be capable. Collectively, they often lack coherence.
The future of GRC requires a shift toward integrated awareness, a capacity to see risk not in slices but in systems. This is not something technology alone can solve. It requires a deliberate redesign of governance structures, accountability models, information flows, and decision-making culture.
As I will discuss in the conversations and workshops ahead, this evolution demands that organizations think differently about how they:
- Interpret external intelligence alongside internal indicators
- Connect risk management with strategy and performance
- Build federated, business-integrated governance
- Create lifecycle-based, context-aware operational models
- Use technology to support — not dictate — organizational intelligence
These themes are central not only to the ERI paper but to the broader direction in which GRC must evolve.
A Moment of Reckoning; and of Possibility
We are entering a period in which boards, executives, regulators, and stakeholders are all demanding greater transparency, stronger assurance, and more integrated approaches to risk. Provision 29 in the UK, DORA in the EU, CPS 230 in Australia, and a wave of global regulatory and strategic pressures are pushing organizations toward designs that reflect real-world complexity rather than outdated assumptions.
The question is no longer whether organizations must transform their approach to GRC. The question is how they will do it, and whether they can do so with the speed and clarity the environment now requires.
This is why I wrote the Strategy Perspective on Enterprise Risk Intelligence.
It is why I will be discussing these themes in the days ahead through a webinar and two workshops (see below). And it is why I believe the next phase of GRC will be defined not by controls or compliance frameworks but by intelligence, integration, and context.
Organizations that cultivate these capabilities will be able to anticipate rather than react, to adapt rather than absorb damage, and to align risk-taking with purpose and performance.
Those that do not will struggle to see the terrain they are walking across.
Upcoming Sessions
For those interested in exploring these ideas further, I will be expanding on the themes in the ERI report during the following sessions: