Feature
PROFILE
Listening and learning BY ARTHUR PIPER
From how businesses create value to the use of office space, the pandemic has turned traditional thinking on its head. IRM’s first independent non-executive chair, Stephen Sidebottom, sees both opportunity and threats for risk professionals and the organisations they serve
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ack in 2003, a major new airborne virus going under the name of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was getting underway. All the signs showed that it could be deadly and spread rapidly. Stephen Sidebottom, IRM’s recently appointed independent non executive chair (previous chairs have been IRM volunteers), recalls being involved in pandemic planning in the global bank where he worked as head of human resources. Luckily, that virus petered out – but
Autumn 2021
the experience was salutary. “The narrative around the pandemic is that no one could have predicted it – that it was a black swan event,” he says. “The reality is that that is not true.” SARS remained on the bank’s risk register, and on the register of many global businesses until COVID-19 broke out and made a pandemic a reality. Preparedness levels were low, according to an IRM survey conducted in summer last year, despite the fact that many risk management functions had gone through the motions of assessing the risk. Few had
put any meaningful mitigation strategies in place – even fewer had done scenario plans. Luckily, many businesses were able to use, or rapidly put in place, digital infrastructures to keep going, something that would have been impossible in 2003.
Lessons Clearly, luck is not the best defence against large-scale complex risk. Sidebottom wants to see organisations go through a period of deep reflection about the nature of systemic risks and to understand what 9
