Role
Executive
Learn what to ask of a management system, get help making it useful, and have it audited
Direction and oversight, without running the system yourself
Executives set direction and carry accountability without operating the system day to day. What they need from it is a position they can act on: what is at stake, what is controlled, what is not, and what a decision would cost.
Overview
The system competes with what gets measured
An executive meets the management system as requests: a policy to approve, a slide before a certification deadline, an incident that has already happened. None of it is what they are measured on, so it competes for attention with the things that are, and it usually loses until something breaks.
The system earns its place the day it answers a question that was going to be asked anyway. Whether the organisation is exposed somewhere it has not looked, whether a decision will hold when somebody questions it a year later, whether last year's failure can still happen. Executives who have had that answer stop treating the system as an obligation and start asking it things.
Training modules
Deepen your expertise
All modules →These modules address this role, and each one is taken on its own.
Advisory
Build and improve the governance you rely on
Learn more →None of this asks you to operate the system. It asks for the decisions only you can take.
You hear about it after it has happened
Escalation exists on paper and applying the thresholds is nobody’s job, so what reaches you is what somebody chose to raise. We bring the questions that settle the decision authorities and the escalation paths, and you are the one who can answer them.
The system reports one list and you are measured on another
It reports incident rates and audit findings; you answer for delivery, margin and growth, and nobody reconciles the two. We work with you and with the people who report both until the two lists describe the same organisation.
Everyone who advises you has a stake
Every view that reaches you comes from somebody with an interest in the answer, which is not a failing on their part. We take the other side of the argument for as long as that is useful, and we have nothing to defend in the outcome.
Audit
Commission a read you can act on
Learn more →What reaches you about the system is written by the people who run it. An independent audit is the way to test it, and it is scoped by discipline, because the criteria live in the standards.
Audit contexts
An assessment written for a board rather than for an auditor
Readiness before certification, with the exposure named
Due diligence on a system before or after an acquisition
Assurance over a critical supplier or outsourced process
A review after an incident the system did not catch
A standing second opinion alongside the internal function
Insights
What we have written on this
All insights →Where do you need support?
A short conversation to understand your current situation and discuss possible next steps.
By discipline