Mark Weber of DARTON GROUP attended the 2nd Charlotte CFO Alliance Breakfast Roundtable meeting today at Carmel Country Club.
The topic of discussion?
“A ‘Risky’ Balancing Act: How To Control Risks While Still Meeting Increasing Performance Standards”
The meeting was facilitated by Jon Duchac, Professor of Accounting, at Wake Forest University. With a cross-section of CFOs from companies across the greater Charlotte region participating, today’s “risk-centric” discussion centered on the concept of how to manage “downside risk” with “upside reward”.
Some interesting discussion points to consider…
- The biggest risk is the one you don’t know about.
- Companies typically manage “hazard” risk exceptionally well.
- Better management of “strategic” risk represents a tremendous opportunity for most companies (strategic risk includes: customer demand shortfall, competitive pressures, M&A integration problems, customer pricing, loss of a key customer, etc.).
- There is considerable opportunity for most companies to better manage “operational” risk (to include: cost overruns, accounting irregularities, management issues, supply chain issues, foreign macro-economic issues, etc.).
Interestingly enough, 3 of the 6 roundtable discussions today addressed the issue of “brand risk” tied to social media trends across the world.
Learn more about the Charlotte chapter of The CFO Alliance at http://thecfoalliance.org/charlotte/.
