Time & Change: Risk Institute Annual Conference 2018

Our 2018 Annual Conference — an invitation-only, two-day event (Sept. 26 & 27) — was attended by C-suite executives and senior risk professionals from around the globe and featured Eddie George, Ohio State Football legend and Jeff Eggers, Executive Director of the McChrystal Group. This year our conference focused on managing talent pipeline and workforce development in the face of massive technological change and economic upheaval.

Our annual conference is an ongoing dialogue between risk management practitioners on risk management successes, challenges and leading practices related to the evolution of risk.

Attendees heard from 15 talented speakers. Each coming from a unique perspective on managing talent pipelines in the face of massive technological change and economic upheaval.

“Some say that Gen Z has an 8-second attention span, but I don’t believe it. I think they have an 8-second BS meter. They can tell in a snap if something is relevant to them — if it’s bogus, if it’s worth their time,” said Marcie Merriman, Chief Culture Hacker at EY. “The millennial boat has sailed and Gen Z is here.”

Professor Joseph Fuller from Harvard University’s Future of Work Initiative offered insight into how Boomers approach a rapidly changing job market, “While Baby Boomers might recognize the job titles of today, many would lack the skills required to do the jobs they had when they retired.”

In addition to discussing demographic changes, Eddie George, Ohio State Legend and Entrepreneur offered attendees some sage advice, “You are going to be uncomfortable in life. So why not learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable?” He encouraged attendees to eliminate the metaphorical box governing their life, citing his own experience of becoming a wealth manager, getting his MBA, and acting on Broadway after a successful career in the NFL.

We live in a digital world, which means that the risks we face are changing more rapidly than ever before. Over the course of two days, we sought to cultivate a greater understanding of how an organization can approach the many sides of talent risk — and leverage it to create value.

As Greg Khairallah, Senior Manager for Big Data and Analytics at Amazon Web Services, put it, “We simply cannot afford to think about risk the same way we’ve thought about it in the past.”