How Mature is Strategic Confidence in Companies Today?

Its an old adage that confidence builds success. But what builds confidence? How do business leaders know that they can confidently move ahead with a strategic plan, or act swiftly to grasp an opportunity even in the face of risks?

In part, appropriate confidence comes from knowing that you, your team, and your business possess certain skills and traits — agility, awareness, creativity, and resiliency to name a few. But these traits must be applied to strategies built on real and timely information or they won’t aid in the pursuit of business objectives.

As I wrote in an earlier post, “…what really lies beneath all of this, as a foundation to enterprise success, is confidence. That is what can keep us awake at night, worrying about how confident we really are that we know what we need to know and that we can achieve what we have set out for ourselves and our organization. That is the reason the definition of Principled Performance includes the concept of reliability. Because really, how can we feel comfortable and calmly put our heads on our pillows if we don’t have a meaningful basis for feeling confident that we have set and can achieve the right objectives while addressing uncertainty and acting with integrity?”

In the 2012 survey OCEG ran about GRC maturity, we found quite a low level of confidence among those in organizations with siloed governance, risk, and compliance efforts. The smaller number with more integrated GRC felt more secure that their strategic decision-makers were getting the information they needed to make the right decisions and take advantage of the positive traits in their businesses. On every level, those in organizations with integrated GRC felt more confident and saw enhanced outcomes.

So, are more organizations today, in 2015, integrating GRC capabilities? Is there more confidence in the ability to identify and manage risks and requirements? Are GRC roles and organizational structures evolving? Can we identify more realized benefits from integrated GRC capabilities?

These and other questions are the focus of OCEG’s 2015 GRC Capability Survey, which collected responses from those in governance, risk, compliance, finance, audit, legal, HR, IT, and other core business roles. View the results here.