A Risk Management Framework That Doesn’t Suck the Life Out of Your Business
How CFOs Manage Risk Without Killing Speed
🎯 Why Risk Is a Feature, Not a Flaw
If you're in a business that doesn’t take risk, odds are you're in a business that doesn’t make much money.
Risk is not a bug in the system; it is the system. Every growth decision, every new market entered, every product launched, every person hired… all of it carries uncertainty. The job of the CFO isn’t to eliminate that risk. It’s to underwrite it intelligently. To place the right bets, hedge the big swings, and make sure one rogue wave doesn’t tip the whole boat.
But here's the catch: the CFO is also the designated grown-up in the room. You're expected to be the one who sees the iceberg while everyone else is toasting on the deck. And in that duality, risk enabler and risk governor, is where the real job begins.
Too many finance teams fall into one of two traps:
The Overbuilder: Layering process on top of process, approvals on top of approvals, until the business becomes a bureaucratic tar pit. Decisions slow down. Innovation stalls. And ironically, risk increases because now everyone’s operating through workarounds.
The Cowboy: Going full speed ahead with minimal controls, trusting that “we’ll fix it later” when something breaks. That works… until it doesn’t. (See: any post-mortem from the 2008 mortgage crisis.)
The right approach is somewhere in between. It’s recognizing that some level of risk is the cost of success, but that smart controls can ensure you’re flying with a parachute—not just Red Bull.
You have to underwrite some level of risk, or else you don't have a business. But you also can’t slow down the business to the degree that people are complaining about it or can’t hit the goals you set.
So how do you enable growth without letting the wheels come off?
You build cheese.
In this post we’ll go through Risk Management 101 (a model that doesn’t suck the life out of your business):
Part I: The Swiss Cheese Model Explained
Part II: The Red Arrows… What Are You Actually Guarding Against?
Part III: Why Crisis Response ≠ Risk Management
Part IV: Building the Cheese… Proactive Controls That Actually Work
Part V: Why Finance Is Uniquely Positioned to Lead
Part VI: When Too Much Cheese Becomes a Problem
This post will position you as a thought leader when it comes to risk, giving you words to rely upon that people actually understand in their day to day lives. And it will give you a framework and mindset you can deploy within your company to stop more hazards from getting through.
Let’s get started.