Coca Cola HBC : CRO on business resilience

Chief Risk Officer as a facilitator

'Who should ultimately be responsible for business resilience?', Bansi asks. Hather: 'I describe my role of CRO as a facilitator not an expert. I always say I'm a 'Jack of all trades and master of none'. But all kidding aside, it's important to realise that risks refuse to accept corporate roles and responsibility models. Every risk has a cross-functional component. Many parts of the business need to be engaged.'

'How many people do you have in your team?', Prinsenberg asks. Hather: 'You could say I have 27,000+ people in my business resilience team, because at the end of the day everybody at Coca-Cola HBC is engaged. It's about finding the right people and connecting them.'

Prinsenberg: 'A perfect business culture and a broad awareness about risk and resilience could mean CROs are redundant. Do you agree with that?' Hather: 'If you embed much of the risk management process into the thinking of people, they will automatically start thinking, not just about risk, but also about managing it and turning it into an opportunity. We're trying to manage uncertainty.'

'After you have reached this ideal situation, you would have no need for a CRO. Yet, it's not a bad idea to have someone who keeps an overview right across the system because we all tend to disappear into functional silos and put blinkers on. And the next thing you know there is a blind spot that bites you!'