Organisations have a high opinion of their abilities to be prepared for a crisis, but the actions they take to be prepared are falling short, said a survey by Origami Risk.

In fact, the amount of priority that organisations put on risk management has dropped almost by 10 per cent in the past year, the report said, and the percentage of respondents who said they had fully connected risks with strategic objectives was down by about one third.

“Nearly every sign points to a retreat back from the two-year expansion in risk-related capabilities the survey has previously shown,” the report said. “This could indicate that overconfidence and complacency are creeping back in at a time when the risk environment is demanding agility and foresight.”

Disagreement in the ranks

Business leaders tended to be more optimistic about the six-month outlook for their organisations. For example, C-level respondents were 50 per cent more likely to rate that outlook as excellent than senior management. 

“If organisations can’t even agree on assessments of the current situation (or the status of technology used to manage current challenges) there is little chance for developing a strategy that unites all levels of the enterprise,” the report said.

AI gold rush

One area where organisations are acting quickly is in the adoption of AI – but in doing so are paying little attention to the kind of technology risks associated with rapid adoption.

Familiar mistakes include implementing safeguards that are easy to circumvent, using poorly resourced staff to fill in gaps in the technology, and having little transparency over how products are developed and used.

“The key to balancing these opposing points is to find a way to quickly learn these skills and build up the organisation’s institutional AI knowledge without rushing into well-known mistakes of the past,” the report said.

Most organisations failed to develop a unified, enterprise-wide understanding of what is (or is not) being done with AI. “A shared context is an essential element to gain complete buy-in, up and down an organisation, for any AI strategy the organisation chooses to adopt,” the report said.