Let me be the first to say Happy New Year!
It seems like yesterday that we were preparing one of these for 2025, but we’ve come around once again to what has become one of SDS’ most enduring traditions – the top resources list for the new year.
Like the previous 8 editions, the following list includes a mix of our own articles and resources from other people/organizations. The one common thread each share: helping enterprise risk management deliver greater value to its respective organization.
Some of the following articles can be considered foundational and therefore appear in multiple editions, but many of the SDS articles were published in the last year.
One thing you may notice is a slight shift in the title (from previous years) to add “objective-centric.”
This core focus of risk management activities has been a recurring theme throughout the last few years. If you go back to our first list in 2018, you will notice how it leans heavily on what is labeled as “risk-centric” ERM. However, as I’ve come to understand over the last 8 years, achieving goals and objectives is what company leaders really care about, not risk lists, color coding, heat maps, and reports.
Continue reading for this year’s list of top resources to help you enable better decision-making and provide greater assurance that the company can achieve its goals.
For our own articles, I have broken them down into categories:
ERM Fundamentals
- 10 Differences Between Traditional and Enterprise Risk Management: By far our most popular article of all time, this piece is a great primer for helping anyone better understand ERM’s true purpose.
- Enterprise Risk Assessment – Gathering the Information to Drive Decision-Making: An objective-centric approach to helping company leaders understand risks and opportunities.
- 8 Questions for Properly Analyzing and Prioritizing Risks to Objectives: Information from risk assessments coupled with objectives enables you and company leaders to prioritize efforts for maximum impact.
- Risk Reporting and Communications – One Part Science, the Other Art: An exploration of the nuances of providing the right information at the right time and place.
- Objective-Centric Risk Monitoring – Providing Actionable Information: A deep-dive on how to keep track of changes to action plans, risks, and objectives so timely adjustments can be made.
- Objective-Centric ERM on a Budget: Details on how to “boot-strap” your ERM efforts to provide greater value at minimal out-of-pocket costs.
- 5 Questions to Prompt Reflection of ERM’s Value: No better time than now to reflect and plan next steps to ensure ERM is doing everything it can to meet the company’s needs.
ERM Supporting Decision-Making
- Implications of Decisions: The Seen and the Unseen: Application of a fundamental economic concept that examines both the seen and unseen consequences to arrive at the best possible decision.
- How to Leverage ERM for Unexpected Management Decisions: ERM guide to providing insights when those inevitable quick decisions come up since business doesn’t move on pre-determined timetables.
- 3 Phases of Strategic Planning – Probing Questions ERM Should be Asking: Be prepared to ask questions and challenge assumptions, especially during the strategic planning process when major long-term decisions are being made.
- Using an ORSA to Support Risk Analysis and Prioritization: New way for any company to use or repurpose an insurance regulatory risk management practice to analyze risks and opportunities to achieve its objectives.
- Risk Appetite from Concept to Organizational Reality – An Inspiring Story: An interview of how one ERM practitioner was able to help his company successfully harness one of the toughest practices of all, risk appetite, to guide its decisions.
- Numbers and ERM for Non-Math People – A Discussion in Value-Based ERM: An interview exploring how even the most math-phobic among us can use numbers and data in ERM practices to yield better informed decisions.
- Using Risk Categories to Support Good Decision-Making: An Interview with Graeme Keith: Another interview exploring the criticality of properly establishing risk categories to prevent a company from either neglecting or over-managing risks.
Interacting with “the Business”
- Translate Risk Terminology to Fit the Business: Focus on an invaluable part of being an effective ERM professional – using language that executives and the business will understand rather than five dollar risk jargon.
- 5 Questions to Ask to Understand your Company-Specific Top Risks: Stop using the dozens of ‘top risk’ lists out there and learn questions ERM practitioners can ask to understand their company’s top risks from an objective-centric perspective.
- A Case Study in Meeting People Where They Are – 4 Lessons Learned: Learn from other people’s mistakes with this case study on why it is so important to move at a comfortable pace for “the business.”
- 6 Ingredients for a Valuable Risk and Strategy Conversation: Explore the ingredients and proper proportions that ensure conversations about risk and strategy deliver the most value.
- AI: ERM’s Role in Balancing Opportunity and Risk: Recommendations on how ERM can facilitate the adoption of AI technology in a safe way without being labeled as a naysayer or too bureaucratic.
Books and Other Resources
In this final group of this year’s top resources list, I provide some books and other thought leaders that I have found to be helpful in my two-decade career as both an ERM practitioner and consultant. Most of the resources below have been cited in various blog articles, but since I reference them so much in my day-to-day work, I feel they are important and valuable enough to list them here.
- Good to Great: A Study of Management Strategies of Companies with Lasting Growth: by Jim Collins. His website also has great tidbits and supporting guidance for helping companies chart a path for long-term success.
- Decision Quality: Value Creation from Better Business Decisions by Carl Spetzler, Hannah Winter, and Jennifer Meyer
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
- EQ Applied: The Real-World Guide to Emotional Intelligence by Justin Bariso
- Tim Leech: a top expert and pioneer in “objective-centric” ERM. His website also has numerous articles and additional resources that explain why company leaders will find value in objective-centric ERM.
- Lean Learning: How to Achieve More by Learning Less by Pat Flynn
It is always a challenge to decide what to include each year, which is why I highly recommend you review prior year’s editions for a list of ERM-specific thought leaders you should keep handy in your bookmarks. (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018).
Wrapping up, I hope you find this list helpful in your journey as an ERM professional and look forward to continue delivering actionable insights in the months and years ahead.
If you are NOT already a subscriber, please subscribe today, so you get new articles in your inbox each week as they’re published.
Again, Happy New Year and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2026!
What other resources would you suggest fellow practitioners read or follow to deliver greater value to their company?
Please join the conversation on LinkedIn to share your thoughts or list of resources you rely on to be a better ERM professional.
