5 minute read 1 May 2019
bungee jumping woman

How to inspire confidence in the Transformative Age

By Amy Brachio

EY Global Deputy Vice Chair, Sustainability

A voice for working women. Passionate about diversity and inclusiveness. Mother. Wife.

5 minute read 1 May 2019
Related topics Cloud Trust Digital Risk AI

A new approach to risk that empowers organizations to thrive in the Transformative Age.

In the Transformative Age, where the Fourth Industrial Revolution is rapidly reforming almost every aspect of life as we know it, trust is fast emerging as the key competitive differentiator for organizations around the world. 

Across all levels of society, businesses and consumers alike systematically rely on the feeling of trust to guide their decision-making. They look for the credibility and reliability that flows from integrity and consistency: being transparent about one’s intentions and delivering exactly what has been promised, time after time.  

Trust is the foundation on which organizations build vital bonds with partners, clients and consumers, supporting long-term growth and allowing them to face the future with confidence. However, even trust painstakingly built over years can be lost in a second. In this era of instant-accessible information, the tides of public opinion can rapidly submerge organizations and topple governments. Mistakes can be costly, and second chances harder to come by. 

Given the seemingly inexorable rise of populism, widespread institutional scandals, and shifting social contracts, it would indeed appear that trust is a commodity in dwindling supply. In fact, the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report shows that, on a global average, only 56% of people trust businesses and only 50% of people trust the broader system of institutions. Distrust on this scale can too easily become all-pervasive and self-reinforcing. 

On the bright side, there are incredible opportunities at hand for organizations that are able to embrace disruption, seizing new opportunities whilst forging and maintaining strong bonds of trust. These are the leaders of tomorrow.

The siloed and reactive view of risk management prevalent today is no longer enough to guarantee the integrity and consistency necessary to build trust. Organizations need to adopt a proactive, future-facing and fully integrated approach to risk that gives them the confidence to embrace innovation for long-term growth. This is Trust by Design – a revolutionary new approach delivered through two key facets: enhanced strategic capability and operational consistency.

1. Revolutionizing risk through enhanced strategic capability

Organizations must take into account more simultaneous factors than ever before in order to build successful strategies for long-term growth. They face the imperative of combining specialist knowledge with global understanding to gain a clear and comprehensive view of the wider landscape, where the risks and opportunities lie, and what it takes to capitalize on these. Cementing this understanding is the first stage of creating solutions with trust in mind. 

Specialist knowledge is especially key when it comes to embracing the potential of emerging technologies. From artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and visual recognition, to blockchain and diversified ledger technology, a number of digital innovations are disrupting global markets and creating new opportunities (along with simultaneous threats) for businesses everywhere.

Grasping how these specialist technologies fit into a worldwide context of connected yet fragmented societies also requires a robust and comprehensive global vision built up from local insights. While the world is flooded with data, few organizations truly manage to harness its potential and derive meaningful understanding from it. One of the upsides of technological disruption is the advent of tools enabling business leaders to rapidly make sense of the risks and opportunities they face not only today, but tomorrow and beyond. This means that rather than focusing on how things have gone wrong before, they now have the possibility to forecast how they can make things right in the future and seize the upside of risk.

2. Revolutionizing risk through operational consistency

To achieve the integrity and operational consistency so crucial to building trust, organizations must arm themselves with robust processes and responsive systems.

Many of the businesses who have lost trust with consumers, partners and stakeholders, often in costly and highly publicized debacles, have done so because they lacked sound and consistent methods of dealing with new challenges, such as technology, data privacy, the latest types of cyber-attack and manipulation of information. Only after the fact were these companies compelled to implement stronger processes to prevent such issues, either as a lesson learned or through legal constraint. 

For organizations to be credible and reliable, they must elevate risk management from a protective and reactive function to a proactive process designed to identify and avoid the many pitfalls inherent in digital opportunities.

The creation of responsive systems is equally important as, without the ability to translate insight and intention into action, inconsistency is inevitable.

Digitally-enabled risk optimization tools can provide organizations with the means to establish flexible frameworks that anticipate and adapt to changes in the market and evolutions in the consumer context. 

Trust by Design: built for the Transformative Age

To help organizations build the confidence to thrive in the Transformative Age, EY teams have developed a ground-breaking new approach to risk. 

Trust by Design helps organizations embed a risk optimization mindset across every level of their business, beyond its usual confines. It does this by elevating risk from a mere responsive function to a powerful, dynamic and future-facing tool for strategic decision-making, relevant across the C-suite and beyond. Ultimately, it empowers organizations to create products and services with trust in mind at every step, helping them secure long-term growth in uncertain times. 

Trust by Design harnesses digitized, real-time risk-intelligence to bring you tangible solutions and outcomes, empowering confident and agile decision-making.

Throughout the 150 years at the forefront of a world economy fuelled by transformation, EY teams have combined an in-depth understanding of local markets with a broad global vision to help organizations thrive in times of change. 

Today, EY teams are once again taking the lead on transformation, strengthened by 270,000 better-connected consultants and professionals across the globe, and their depth of experience in transforming clients organizations. 

Summary

As the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution becomes increasingly apparent, this article explores the unique framework at the heart of the ground-breaking solution, Trust by Design (TxD), providing organizations with the confidence to thrive in the Transformative Age.

The article highlights the two core facets of the TxD approach: strategic capabilities (a function of global understanding and specialist knowledge) and operational consistency (derived from robust processes and responsive systems). 

About this article

By Amy Brachio

EY Global Deputy Vice Chair, Sustainability

A voice for working women. Passionate about diversity and inclusiveness. Mother. Wife.

Related topics Cloud Trust Digital Risk AI