Five in Five - Strategia Q&A

Our Five in Five Q&A series provides quickfire, engaging insights on topics that matter to our audience.

Each release will showcase different perspectives, give detailed focus on our partnerships and raise useful points for discussion.

In this edition, we had a chat with management consulting firm Strategia.

Q1. What is Strategia’s mission, and how does your background in military strategy translate into helping businesses manage risk?

We help senior executives grow their firms by navigating external risks and managing their impact on strategy. The tried and tested tools used by NATO militaries to design, test and execute strategy - such as Campaign Planning and Wargaming - are immediately transferable to the business environment. Clients like the way the structured approach they provide helps them clarify strategy, prioritise, coordinate and move much faster.

Q2. How do you define “risk” in the context of complex projects such as energy, infrastructure, or natural resources?

It needs to be viewed through a ‘360’ lens, to include economic/financial, social, security (including cyber), technical /operational, environmental, reputational (including ungoverned AI use), political, and legal risks. Only by taking this comprehensive approach can the key risks to a company’s strategy be identified, prioritised and the connections between risks identified. 

Q3. Can you share an example of how Strategia has helped a client strengthen resilience and avoid costly disruption?

A Tier 1 gold miner with a major mine in a southern Latam country:

With one exception (a new senior executive) head office – 5000 miles away – believed they lived up to their slogan of “responsible mining” and there was no threat to their license.

The reality was:

• The government didn’t trust them

• Local communities believed they were polluting the water supply (they weren’t)

• Local suppliers believed contracts were let only to companies with the right political connections (unproven, but perception is reality)

• Their reputation was so bad the workforce were ashamed to wear their branded work clothes when they went home, complaining that nobody values their contribution (in fact they contributed 25% of the GDP of the province)

Risk culture was poor; the company joke was “good news takes the elevator, bad news takes the stairs”. The tone from the top was ‘we don’t welcome challenge’.

Junior employees, unions and local stakeholders were all well aware of these issues.

After yet another leak from the leach pad their license was withdrawn.

We completed a ‘360’ risk assessment and, on the back of this, used Campaign Planning methodology to design an integrated strategy to manage the risks – across environmental, social, political and reputational domains. We presented this to the Regulator and it gave them the confidence in the company they needed to reinstate the license. Furthermore, the company has not suffered similar issues since (over the last 7 years).

Q4. How do you see ESG and climate-related risks fitting into a broader corporate risk framework?

They have to be viewed as part of a ‘360’ risk assessment (economic/financial, social, security (including cyber), technical /operational, environmental, reputational (including ungoverned AI use), political, and legal risks) - this includes scoring and ranking risks. Only this way will their criticality to the company’s overall strategy be correctly identified, and the appropriate resources be deployed to manage them.

Q5. What lessons from working in high-risk environments globally (e.g. military operations, fragile states) can be applied to corporate risk management today?

The importance of ‘Mission Command’ whereby individuals are empowered and given the authority and resources to deliver their mission, making decisions based on the reality on the ground, without disempowering oversight by an – often remote - Head Office (notwithstanding the need for relevant - risk related – controls).

The needs to be coupled with built in resilience; whereby alternative crisis scenarios are identified, tested (‘wargamed’) and the response to them rehearsed, to build up the institutional ‘muscle memory’.

Keep an eye out for our next installation in the Q&A series!