Laura Fox, a risk management professional, discusses setting up Canary Risk, hiring practices, cognitive diversity, and decision-making. She emphasizes the importance of clarity in decision-making and the need for tailored risk management solutions for businesses.
Canary Risk provides personalized risk management solutions for SMEs, bridging the gap for those lacking in-house resources.
Canary Risk values cognitive diversity when hiring, prioritizing character and unique skills over traditional backgrounds.
Canary Risk embraces changing workforce dynamics, offering agile risk management solutions to meet evolving business needs.
Deep dives
Providing Ongoing Risk Management to SMEs
Canary Risk provides outsourced risk management services to SMEs, offering ongoing support to navigate uncertainty. The consultancy bridges the gap for businesses that lack in-house risk managers, aiming to cater to those who benefit from continuous risk management without the upfront resources. By focusing on scaling solutions to meet SMEs at different stages of their business growth, Canary Risk aims to democratize access to essential risk management support beyond traditional large corporations.
Emphasizing Relationship Management and Customer Service
Canary Risk adopts a flat hierarchy approach, where risk managers, referred to as 'canaries', play a crucial role in relationship management. These canaries act as risk managers and relationship managers, providing SMEs with personalized and hands-on risk management solutions. The consultancy prioritizes direct engagement with local boards and leadership teams to offer tailored risk management services previously accessible mainly to larger corporations.
Diversifying Talent Pool and Empowering Unique Skill Sets
Canary Risk values character over traditional academic backgrounds when hiring talent, seeking individuals with diverse experiences and skills. By building a team that includes individuals such as an ex-prison officer and other non-traditional risk management professionals, Canary Risk embraces cognitive diversity and unique perspectives. This approach aims to leverage varied skill sets to enhance crisis management, communication, and decision-making processes for clients.
Adapting to Changing Work Trends and Generational Shifts
Canary Risk acknowledges the evolving landscape of work trends and the influence of generational shifts on the workforce. As organizations adapt to new ways of working post-pandemic, there is a growing emphasis on portfolio careers, diverse skill sets, and a more inclusive approach to talent recruitment. Canary Risk positions itself as a forward-thinking consultancy that aligns with these changing dynamics, offering agile risk management solutions to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses.
Setting up Canary Clinics for SMEs
Canary Risk offers a quarterly community risk committee, known as Canary Clinics, to provide guidance and a network for entrepreneurs and business owners. These clinics aim to facilitate discussions on various risks like supply chain risks or interest rate fluctuations. The purpose is to help attendees understand objectives, assess certainty levels, and learn decision-making basics, creating a supportive community for small to medium enterprises.
Challenges and Importance of Personal Sacrifice in Strategic Decision-Making
The founder of Canary Risk faced a significant personal challenge of moving away from her children to establish the business. This decision highlights that strategic decision-making often involves personal sacrifices and long-term considerations beyond financial impacts. It emphasizes the need to balance short-term risk management with long-term strategic thinking, recognizing that decisions are influenced by individual values and perspectives.
Today, I'm delighted to welcome Laura Fox to the show. Laura is a risk management professional and the founder of Canary Risk, a firm that helps clients with outsourced risk management and to navigate uncertainty. Canary Risk is a relatively new firm, and Laura took her own personal and professional risks to set it up, so we obviously talk about that. We also cover the state of the risk profession, hiring, cognitive diversity, values, and so much more.
Laura's enthusiasm, her curiosity, courage, and authenticity come through so well in this conversation, and my favourite part is towards the end when she talks about her own decision-making approach in deciding to set up Canary Risk. And I won't say too much here because I want you to listen to it, other than to say that it's a powerful reminder that in order to make quality decisions, we need to have clarity about what's It's important to us. And that's different for each one of us.
