A Rant about the GRC Pundit’s Rant

Michael Rasmussen, a.k.a. the GRC Pundit, is a friend whose intellect, integrity, and insights I respect. He and I, together with another friend, Brian Barnier, were the first three to be honored as OCEG Fellows for our thought leadership around GRC.

Michael and I have had many a debate on the topic of GRC. Michael brings the perspective of an analyst that works with many companies, helping them select and implement software solutions. That is his business: he refers to himself (GRC 20/20 Research, LLC) as a “buyer advocate; solution strategist; and market evangelist”. His latest blog, GRC Analyst Rant: Throwing Down the GRC Analyst Gauntlet, inspired me to write this one.

My background is very different, having been a practitioner and executive responsible for many of the business activities he supports – in other words, I might have been one of his customers. My focus is on helping business run better – and that frequently but not always involves the judicious use of technology.

Michael and I agree on a number of points, disagree on others. For example, I believe he and I agree that:

• The term ‘GRC’ is one that is interpreted in many ways.
  • When I ask practitioners within a company what they mean when they use the term, most say it stands for ‘governance, risk, and compliance’ but cannot explain why anybody would use that term to describe the totality implied by the expression; they may wave their hands in the air and say “what does GRC mean? You know…. it means GRC”. They cannot explain why they don’t refer to governance, or governance and risk management, or risk management and compliance. Sometimes they talk as if GRC is something in the air, something related to the culture of the organization as much as anything else.
  • When I ask people at the IIA, they say it stands for ‘governance, risk, and controls’; in other words, the totality of what internal auditors work on. I don’t personally see anything new in this, nor any value in using the term. In fact, using it with ‘controls’ instead of the more usage of ‘compliance’ is only going to confuse.
  • When I talk to software vendors, they either describe their software solutions (as if GRC is technology) or describe the business solutions that their technology supports.
  • When I read papers from consultants, I find that if I substitute the phrase ‘risk management’ every time they say ‘GRC’, the piece makes more sense. In other words, they are usually talking about risk management but for some reason (some would say to hype the discussion) they use the term GRC instead.
  • When I talk to the people at OCEG and those who follow OCEG and its definition of GRC, they use a definition that makes more sense. That definition adds value by emphasizing the needs for all parts of the organization to work together.

• GRC is not about technology. It is about (as I said last year) “how we can optimize outcomes and performance, addressing uncertainty (risk management) and acting with integrity (regulatory compliance and organizational values)”.
• The key to optimizing outcomes is to for management (with board approval) to set the appropriate strategies, objectives, and goals, and then everything flows from there: managing risks to strategies, managing performance against strategies, and acting with integrity (which includes compliance with applicable laws and regulations) at all times.
• No technology vendor (not even SAP and Oracle, who have the greatest breadth and depth of solutions IMHO) has a complete solution that addresses all GRC needs. The last time I said that, in a September post, several vendors wrote to tell me they had everything. But, they simply didn’t. They have everything that they chose to call GRC, but none included strategy management, support for governance activities like board packages and whistleblower lines, risk management including automated and integrated key risk indicators, compliance training and monitoring, performance management, legal case management, and so on.
• The analysts like Gartner and Forrester have a business model where they need to define technology using buckets. But those buckets do not reflect what individual companies actually need, so their analyses and ratings may be interesting but may well steer organizations to acquire solutions (such as a so-called ‘EGRC platform’) that are not the best use of scarce resources. I would not advise any organization to base their purchase decision on an analyst rating of ‘GRC’, ‘EGRC’ or other made-up bucket of fish.

Where I believe we differ is that I do not advocate the use of the term ‘GRC’.

As I inferred, if not explicitly stated in my post last November, I believe that if the term ‘GRC’ is not dead (and apparently it lingers on), then it should be put to death.

I do not see the value in business people talking about GRC. I have said before and will say again, managers should look to fixing the processes they know need work.

For example, few organizations have effective processes for developing strategies and objectives at the corporate level, cascading them down throughout the organization so every individual knows what they need to do if the organization is to succeed, and minimizing individual objectives that are not clearly necessary to corporate achievement –then rewarding individuals, at least in part, for performance against those cascaded objectives. I have worked at several organizations where we were told what the corporate objectives were and asked to link our personal objectives to them. That is not the same thing. That is tying our personal objectives onto a branch of the corporate objectives, rather than making sure that all the roots of that corporate objective tree are healthy – even when we should be responsible for the health of a root or two.

Another example is the effectiveness of risk management. Most organizations practice enterprise list management at best (i.e., they manage a limited number of risks on a periodic basis), when mature risk management that is dynamic, iterative, and responsive to change, integrated into decision-making at all levels of the organization and into every aspect of daily operations, is essential to success.

Does using the term ‘GRC’ mean anything useful for internal auditors? No. They should continue to “up their game” from a focus on controls and risks that matter to operating management, to providing assurance and insight on organizational governance and risk management.

Effective GRC for OCEG means the integration, among other things, of strategy and risk management. But how many organizations do that well? How many executives receive and manage their area using an integrated report or dashboard that shows for each of their strategies both the current level of performance and the current state of related risks? How many executives see that not only have they accelerated up to the desired level of 100kph but are less than 100m from hitting a brick wall?

So here’s my recommendation to all: stop talking about GRC and start talking the language of the business. Let’s talk about how we can increase value to stakeholders, address potential obstacles and seize opportunities to excel, act with integrity and remain in compliance with current and anticipated regulations, and manage the organization to success.

Don’t try to fix GRC. Fix those parts of the business, those business processes, that are broken.

Good Riddance grC.

I welcome your comments.

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