This is absolutely NOT intended to toot our horn but to support a very important point. We have been talking about how this current crisis is both a challenge and an opportunity for our function and let me use our Maturity Model (“MM”) to illustrate that point vividly. Our clients and alumni will recall that we published the MM originally in 2001 and it went through it’s last major overhaul in 2010 when we ended up shifting Strategic Sourcing to a Level 4 and introduced Value Creating or Category Management at Level 5 (shudder….that was a TON of work!!!).
I was putting together a presentation for an upcoming conference and happened to read the following in detail:
This is how we defined the attributes or characteristics of a Level 5 organization for the Risk Management domain. This is what we declared you had to be to be considered a Level 5 organization by us when we did our various benchmarking initiatives over the years. This is the yardstick we used when we did Transformation initiatives for many clients. And this was in 2010!!!
Would you agree that any organization that was anywhere close to this level of maturity in Risk Management pre-pandemic would be very well positioned to survive and thrive right now? Would you also agree that if you are not at this level of maturity today as an organization, you have no choice but to get there by tomorrow – and by tomorrow, I mean the literal tomorrow and not the figurative. You are expected to be working to get to this level of maturity ASAP!!! This will no longer be the definition of a Level 5 organization but a Level 4 because everyone will be expected to be here. This is now where Strategic Sourcing has to be and a new set of attributes has to be developed to define Level 5 (shudder – that’s a lot of work because it’s not just for this domain in our MM!!).
Would you agree that EVERY point on the following slide is as True and Relevant today as it was in 2017??
And this is what we have been advising our clients on our calls. You need to be thinking about the impact of this in much longer terms and it is finally, slowly starting to sink in for them. EVERYTHING will be different, and many things will be different permanently. In this case, you need to be thinking about how to get to this level of maturity in Risk Management. Keep in mind that assumes that you have already achieved the prior 4 levels because you cannot jump straight to Level 5 (soon to become Level 4 by us). And for reference, here is what is the current and soon to be historical Risk Management domain of our MM.
So if you don’t have a plan in your hand that you are already starting to execute to get you to that Level 5 maturity then you need to get started TODAY. If not, either you are not convinced that that is where your organization needs to be to survive and thrive through this catastrophe OR – well there really isn’t an OR here. You don’t have a choice. Which is again why we keep reminding everyone that Risk Management is a Strategic Process.
And to keep repeating the other mantra for the current times, even to get to Level 5 for Risk Management, a number of the 2020 trends that we identified are very relevant and worthy of your attention and consideration as well. 
For example, “Talent”, “Role”, “ SRMO”, “Cost to Value” will all need to be integral and essential parts of the discussion. If you would like to participate or contribute to adding to our new Level 5 on the Maturity Model, drop us a quick word – we’d love to hear from you.
