What happens when a crisis threatens not just an organisation's operations, but the very model on which its survival depends?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Angela McConville, former Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), reflects on joining the charity just ten weeks before the first COVID-19 lockdown and facing an immediate existential challenge.

NCT's operating model depended on bringing expectant parents together through in-person antenatal education. When the pandemic made those gatherings impossible, the disruption affected the charity's income, services and ability to fulfil its purpose.

Angela describes how an organisation built around face-to-face facilitation rapidly developed the confidence, skills and infrastructure needed to deliver support digitally.

A particularly important part of the discussion concerns how leaders frame change. Rather than presenting digital transformation as an organisational objective, Angela connected the transition directly to NCT's mission of supporting parents at a time when connection and community had become even more important.

That sense of purpose helped mobilise a workforce whose capabilities and determination were already present, even if the circumstances in which they needed to operate had fundamentally changed.

In this extract:

• Why the pandemic created an existential challenge for NCT's operating model

• How resilience became an immediate leadership and organisational survival priority

• The role of purpose in mobilising people through significant disruption

• How practitioners developed new capabilities to deliver services digitally

• Why framing transformation around the organisation's mission can influence its ability to adapt

• What NCT's experience reveals about leadership, confidence and organisational resilience

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Angela McConville, When Mission Meets Reality: Resilience and Leadership in a Transforming Charity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation on organisational resilience, leadership, transformation and decision-making.

How do organisations recognise emerging risks when the evidence is still incomplete?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Angela McConville, former Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), explores how leaders can identify, interpret and respond to early warning signals before they develop into material strategic issues.

Angela explains why organisations need to pay attention to frontline observations, intuition and emerging concerns without allowing those signals to become established assumptions prematurely.

An important part of the discussion concerns the ability to distinguish between a signal, a symptom and a strategic issue. This requires curiosity, judgement and a culture where people feel comfortable sharing observations that may not yet be supported by conclusive evidence.

Angela illustrates this through NCT's experience of recognising growing concerns about birth trauma. What initially appeared as isolated observations from practitioners working in different communities gradually developed into a broader picture of an issue receiving national attention.

The example highlights why connecting signals across an organisation matters. Individually, observations may appear inconclusive, but collectively they can reveal patterns that warrant further investigation and ultimately influence strategic priorities, services and organisational responses.

In this extract:

• Why early warning signals should be explored without becoming premature assumptions

• How leaders distinguish between signals, symptoms and strategic issues

• The importance of frontline intelligence and organisational listening

• How connecting observations across different locations can reveal emerging patterns

• What NCT's experience with birth trauma illustrates about organisational awareness

• How emerging risks can influence strategic decisions, services and priorities

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Angela McConville, When Mission Meets Reality: Resilience and Leadership in a Transforming Charity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation on organisational resilience, leadership, transformation and decision-making.

How can leaders make better decisions when information is incomplete and circumstances keep changing?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Angela McConville, former Chief Executive of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), explores why organisational resilience depends on the ability to experiment, learn quickly and adapt without waiting for certainty.

Drawing on NCT's experience of transformation, Angela explains how the organisation adopted a test-and-learn approach, using small, low-cost experiments to explore opportunities before committing significant resources.

A particularly revealing example concerns an initiative that failed within just 10 to 15 days. Rather than treating the outcome as a setback, the leadership team celebrated what they had learned and moved on.

The distinction is important. Learning from failure does not mean accepting uncontrolled risk. It means creating opportunities to test assumptions, contain potential losses and make better-informed decisions.

For charities and other organisations operating under financial and operational pressure, this approach offers an alternative to lengthy transformation programmes that may struggle to keep pace with changing circumstances.

In this extract:

• Why leaders must become comfortable making decisions with imperfect information

• How small experiments can reduce uncertainty before significant resources are committed

• Why speed of learning can matter more than speed of execution

• How celebrating contained failures can strengthen organisational culture

• Why a test-and-learn mindset supports organisational resilience and continuous adaptation

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Angela McConville, When Mission Meets Reality: Resilience and Leadership in a Transforming Charity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation on charity leadership, organisational transformation, decision-making and resilience.

What happens when the assumptions behind an important decision change?

In this RiskMasters — The Download, Grant Purdy explores why decision-making is fundamentally about resolving uncertainty and why organisations need to understand the assumptions on which their decisions depend.

Drawing on the work he developed with the late Roger Estall, Grant explains how good decisions begin with clarity about organisational purpose, the opportunity being considered and the outcomes being sought.

But a particularly important part of the discussion concerns assumptions.

Every decision rests on assumptions about the organisation and the world around it. Yet Grant observes that boards and executive teams rarely record those assumptions explicitly.

That creates a practical governance problem. If the assumptions behind a decision are not visible, how can leaders recognise when circumstances have changed enough to reconsider it?

The objective is not perfect certainty. Grant argues that decision-makers instead need to reach “sufficient certainty” to exercise judgement and act.

In this extract:

• Why decision-making involves resolving uncertainty
• The importance of purpose and desired outcomes
• Why every important decision rests on assumptions
• What Grant means by “sufficient certainty”
• Why boards should make assumptions explicit
• How changing assumptions can signal that a decision needs to be revisited

This extract comes from my CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Grant Purdy on ISO 31000, risk management, uncertainty and better decision-making.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of RiskMasters for the complete conversation.

Has risk management lost sight of what it was originally supposed to achieve?

In this RiskMasters — The Download extract, Grant Purdy offers a provocative perspective on how the risk management profession has evolved and why he believes it needs to reconnect with decision-making.

Grant reflects on the different philosophies that developed around ISO 31000 and COSO ERM. He argues that while ISO 31000 had the potential to move risk management towards decision support, tensions remained between integrating risk thinking into normal management decisions and maintaining separate risk management processes, terminology and frameworks.

He also discusses a proposed revision of ISO 31000 around 2015 which, in his account, would have reframed the standard around helping organisations recognise and take account of uncertainty when making decisions. That more fundamental change was ultimately not adopted.

The discussion then moves beyond standards to the profession itself.

Grant questions whether risk management has become too focused on its own processes, documentation and terminology, including the difficulty practitioners still have in agreeing what the word “risk” actually means.

His central argument is clear: risk management should not become an end in itself. Its value should come from helping organisations understand uncertainty and make better decisions.

• Grant Purdy's perspective on ISO 31000 and COSO ERM
• Why integrating risk management with decision-making remains difficult
• The proposed rethink of ISO 31000 around decision support and uncertainty
• Whether risk management has become too focused on process and documentation
• Why definitions of risk continue to create difficulties for the profession
• Why Grant believes risk management should ultimately support better decisions

This extract is taken from the full CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Grant Purdy on ISO 31000, risk management, uncertainty and better decision-making.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or at aevitium.com.

What was ISO 31000 originally designed to achieve, and how did the international risk management standard develop?

In this RiskMasters — The Download extract, Grant Purdy, who was directly involved in the development of ISO 31000, explains the origins of the standard and its relationship with organisational decision-making.

Grant traces ISO 31000 back to the Australian and New Zealand standard AS/NZS 4360, first published in 1995 and subsequently updated in 1999 and 2004. The objective was to bring greater consistency to different approaches to risk assessment and risk treatment while producing information that decision-makers could understand and use.

As other countries began adopting AS/NZS 4360, Grant and his colleagues approached the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) about developing an international standard. What followed was a four-year process of discussion and compromise as different countries brought their own perspectives on risk management.

Grant explains why the resulting ISO 31000 framework sought to integrate risk management and decision-making, but also why he believes this contributed to a distinction that continues to shape the profession.

In his view, different philosophies of risk management have subsequently developed. He characterises the ISO 31000 approach as increasingly focused on decision support, while describing COSO and IRM approaches as placing greater emphasis on risk identification, governance and reporting.

That distinction leads to a fundamental question for risk leaders: is risk management primarily a process for identifying and reporting risk, or should its ultimate purpose be to improve organisational decisions?

• The origins and history of ISO 31000
• How ISO 31000 evolved from AS/NZS 4360
• The original purpose of risk assessment and risk treatment
• Why risk information should support organisational decision-making
• How the international risk management standard was developed
• The role of compromise in international standards
• Grant Purdy's perspective on different philosophies of modern risk management

This extract is taken from the full CPD-accredited RiskMasters conversation with Grant Purdy exploring ISO 31000, risk management, uncertainty, risk matrices, governance and better decision-making.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or at aevitium.com.