Global risk is no longer relegated to the appendix of the board deck. Conversations about trade tensions, climate disruption, AI regulation, and cyber threats are central to today’s Fortune 50 boardrooms. That is not new, but how boards respond and how swiftly they move might be.
A recent McKinsey and World Economic Forum study found that 84% of business leaders feel underprepared for today’s unprecedented combination of geopolitical, technological, and environmental shocks.
Boards are adapting. According to Harvard Law School’s Program on Corporate Governance, boards must actively oversee material risks and emerging vulnerabilities. They cannot simply receive reports. They must demand alignment with strategy and business purpose.
At the forefront of this shift is the discipline of preparedness. Directors expect management to bring not just risk scenarios, but downstream actions tied to specific triggers. If tariffs rise, if a cyber breach occurs, or if a logistics route is blocked, the board wants to know exactly which responses are ready to be activated. These ready responses are essential to turning boardroom debates and discussions into strategic responses.
This is not theoretical. Boards are reconnecting with integrated assurance. Deloitte reports that audit committees now confront a broad remit, covering everything from cyber and regulatory compliance to enterprise risk management. Many of these committees feel under-resourced, which signals a deeper need for expertise. The expectation is that boards must strengthen strategic resilience through oversight, not retreat from complexity.
Global risks demand that oversight evolve as well. McKinsey urges boards to treat geopolitical risk not as a check-box item but as a real-time governance conversation. It should be part of both committee discussions and full board dialogue. Yet research from the Conference Board shows that only a small fraction of S&P 500 companies name geopolitical risk in their proxy statements, which suggests that many boards are still playing catch-up.
What does this look like in practice? A board could be evaluating a capital plan when a geopolitical flashpoint develops. A seasoned director, like Fred Diaz, whose career spans global operations, might focus the group on early-warning economic indicators, trade exposure, or how currency swings could reshape margins in affected markets. As Diaz puts it, “In my experience, it’s not just about reacting quickly; it’s about anticipating those risks before they appear on the horizon. A proactive board isn’t just looking at the present, it’s scanning for the next wave of uncertainty.” His role is not to dictate the decision, but to ground debate in actionable variables so that when logistics shifts are confirmed, the response is deliberate rather than improvised.
Survey data reinforces the urgency. EY found that while boards are increasingly concerned with emerging risks, including geopolitical events, supply chain shocks, and cyber threats, only 23% fall into the highly resilient category. These boards anticipate risk and integrate it into strategy. The rest lag behind.
The clock is not just ticking on the emergence of risk. It is also ticking on who owns it. EY and other governance advisors have shown that boards must push for Chief Risk Officer empowerment, tech-enabled monitoring, automation, and scenario analytics to stay ahead. “Empowering the right leaders with the right tools is critical to ensuring that risk management isn’t reactive, it’s embedded in every part of the decision-making process. Boards should enable their CROs to have real-time insights and the autonomy to drive the strategy when it matters most,” Fred Diaz emphasizes. This is not because it is fashionable, but because it is now fundamental to protecting and growing enterprise value. McKinsey’s more recent risk governance primers echo the need for a shared risk culture and an operating model anchored in governance.
CEOs and board chairs should ask whether risk is woven into every strategic discussion. Do board materials attach triggers to decisions? Does the board foster a culture of readiness, or is it relying on hope?
To stay ahead, the most effective boards embed risk thresholds into governance charters, update playbooks alongside shifting geopolitical conditions, and build dashboards around early indicators such as port activity, credit trends, and regulatory alerts. They do not wait for lagging financial measures to confirm what the early data already shows.
These are not heroic moves. They are deliberate, structural shifts that transform boards from reporters of risk to active stewards of resilience. Research confirms this approach offers real advantages, not only in defense but in agility, strategic opportunity, and credibility with stakeholders.
Global risk has always mattered. The real question for boardrooms today is not whether it matters, but how they are preparing to act when the next crisis lands. As one director puts it, you cannot control every risk, but you can control how prepared you are when the next one arrives.
