Recently we had great pleasure in having Sally Rosenberg join the Inspiration Sessions hall of fame to talk about her experienced corporate risk, crisis, and programme management background. Her candid and humorous review of her life journey was loved by the crowd. The talk was beautifully intertwined with proverbs, quotes, morals, and views on love and spirituality, all juxtaposed against the complexities of crisis and risk. Here Sally’s pioneering story:

Pioneering

From the start Sally was certain of only one thing in life – ‘she didn’t want a girl’s job’. Early influences came from unconventional sources of cranes and construction but always a thrill of research and discovery. After graduating from the University of Waikato, Sally was set by a lifelong curiosity for learning and ‘making stuff better’. Wanting to be famous evolved into wanted to be influential.

She found herself on an Engineering Cadetship after graduating as only one of two women on the programme at the time in New Zealand. By 24, she was running multi-million dollar construction projects in Australia, unphased by scale and responsibility. Her next step took her to a grim sounding Regional Contact role for Facilities Maintenance where she was responsible for the renovation of neglected properties by unscrupulous tenants. Like the dirty homes programmes on TV, this included fly-spraying trousers before entering properties and finding murdered tenants under the floor boards!

The Best Job Title in the World

Entering the world of corporate crisis management at Fonterra as Global Crisis Manager (a title she loved, she exclaimed) Sally immediately recognised the need for pragmatism. She made the point that crisis can’t be planned for and the important part of the job is reaction after the event. A simple but important piece of advice she gave was: gather a list of the key suppliers and contacts you most need for the next steps after a crisis event and make everyone aware of where the list is. Easy to appreciate after the Canterbury earthquakes. Crisis is, after all, the operations end of risk management, she said.

Sally has an optimistic attitude towards risk, that doesn’t fear risk but accepts that it will happen. Her choice of Harry Potter’s Hagrid quote summed it nicely: ‘What will come will come and we’ll meet it when it does’. She believes that New Zealand’s isolation breeds risk takers and the subsequent ability to innovate.

She joked that Y2K planning was boring but during her time at the milk giant she faced crises as significant as Sanlu melamine scandal, with huge floods in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, two New Zealand factories burned down, and the Mexican and Japanese Governments banning Fonterra products because of a rogue bug found in feedstock. She left Fonterra in 2007 before the Sanlu scandal in 2008 but claims that during her time, crises were of the same scale. The difference, she pointed out, was there were no media scandals during her time – a glimpse of a performance indicator for a crisis manager. She contrasted Sanlu to the Perpignan Air New Zealand air disaster of 2008 as an example of how mature leadership is so closely linked to mitigating negativity from crisis – Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe was in Perpignan within days, Fonterra reacted one month later.

During her time at Fonterra, Sally developed her own Enterprise Risk and Assurance Model with the core vision of embedding risk management and promoting the appetite for risk-taking into business. Seven years on, this model is beginning to be recognised as a cornerstone of good governance in business. The integrated group of processes are used and installed at every level of the organisation and is intended to be used dynamically - nothing stays still, she pointed out. The innovative, risk aware approach twist is evident in the framework’s risk appetite foundation. Contrasted against Total Quality Management, which requires a zero failure rate, the framework allows a defined number or value of failures if the cost of guarding against them is more expensive than the cost of the loss through the risk being realised.

The framework outlines risk response decisions including risk the traditional avoidance and reduction but also sharing and acceptance which are important cultural factors in risk based cultures.

The Far East

After a short stint in the healthcare sector at Midlands Health Sally is now tackling a tertiary education project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with WINTEC. Recognising that oil is going to run out eventually, Saudi Arabia is investing heavily in tertiary education and WINTEC have won the tender to install 15 polytechnics by 2014. She admitted to having to put her morals to one side and accept the gender divide in the Middle East as she Special Project Manages the all male campus outside of Mecca, regarded to be the holiest city of Islam. Even by her standards: an ‘enormous and complex’ project.

Creativity in Crisis

Sally described her creative approach to risk and crisis management:

• Colour – Use lots on status boards and risk registers. Clearly indicate progress
• Design – Design information for communication. At Midlands Health she pioneered full wall status boards with magnetised paint to communicate project status. A tool we brought in-house after seeing it  
• Light – Most light is a reflection, use the moment to reflect. Take meetings outside in the light
• Poetry – Crisis is like poetry - the crux is formed from a number of varying factors not a single event, issue, or person
• Music – In a moment of crisis just sing. ‘Don’t worry, be happy’
• Balance – Find a balance in life to navigate life’s big problems – don’t always look to someone to blame in the time of crisis
• Wairua – The spirit to keep going

Sally turned to Dr Seuss for quotes for her four driving pillars:

• Sustainability – I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.
• Empathy – Poor empty pants, with nobody inside them.
• Encouragement (take the risk) – Try them, try them, and you may! Try them and you may, I say.
• Integrity – I meant what I said and I said what I meant

Stepping Up 

Sally’s current portfolio doesn’t end with Saudi education reform. She’s has a goal to be fluent in Te Reo by the end of this year, complete a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Strategy, she sits on the board for the NZ Youth Games, and is planning to walk the 800Km Camino de Santiago pilgrimage through Northern Spain.

Sally’s blend of creativity and risk produces a different attitude and outlook. Courage was a strong theme in her talk and it’s easy to see why it’s so important when decisions in times of crisis mean so much. But it’s the courage to take the risk that is the most admirable.

Hers is the traditional view of risk that less is better, particularly in business. But the most successful businesses today will be the ones that take risks, whether it’s a new hardware platform or a new marketing campaign. Can innovation succeed without risk? Is being first to market too high a risk?

A brilliantly inspirational story and outlook. Cheers Sally!