Boards are very good at discussing the fire.
(see the YouTube short above)
Marianne Bachynski wants them to start paying attention to the smoke.
I recently sat across from Marianne and asked her to finish a sentence: the thing most boards get wrong about technology risk is. "They treat it as an IT issue in isolation," she told me, "and they don't recognize that it could be a broader systemic business exposure."
That answer comes from years in rooms where technology was never just technology. Marianne spent more than twenty-five years in the C-suites of financial services. At AIG, she helped lead the separation and technology stand-up of Corebridge as a public company. At Morgan Stanley, she integrated four acquired companies at once, the kind of assignment that should come with hazard pay and a cot. She also wrote Fit for Uncertainty: Lead with Purpose, Adapt to Change (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fit-for-Uncertainty/Marianne-Bachynski/9798897010080), a book built around six principles of adaptive leadership. So when Marianne talks about what boards miss, she is not commenting from the cheap seats.
TECHNOLOGY RISK HAS A PR PROBLEM
We picture it dramatically: a breach, a shutdown, flashing red dashboards, a CEO learning the word ransomware at 5:17 in the morning. But many risks that eventually become board-level problems start with something painfully ordinary: a deferred upgrade, a temporary workaround, an exception that made sense at the time, or an integration everybody uses but nobody fully owns. Nothing catches fire. The business keeps moving. People stop noticing.
"Technology can drift," Marianne said. "Small changes can accumulate, building into a bigger and bigger exposure."
Drift feels harmless because no single decision looks outrageously reckless. Each one had a reason: the budget was tight, the migration could wait, the workaround was only supposed to last six months (and it lasted 10). Then it becomes two years, the person who built it is no longer with the company, and the "IT issue" suddenly sits under revenue, regulatory obligations, customer trust, and half the operating model. It never announced itself. It accumulated.
BOARDS SEE THE INCIDENT. OPERATORS SEE WHAT HAS BEEN ACCUMULATING.
This is why Marianne believes boards need people who have actually operated technology, not simply overseen a technology budget or received a quarterly cyber update. A director may see one outage, one failed conversion, or one security event. An experienced operator sees the architecture underneath it, where every change adds complexity and every deferred fix adds fragility.
That doesn't mean every board needs to become an IT steering committee. It means technology questions have to travel beyond the technology box. Instead of asking only whether the incident was fixed, a board should also be asking:
- Where are we relying on workarounds that have quietly become infrastructure?
- Which risks are we carrying because nothing bad has happened yet?
- What business outcomes depend on systems, vendors, or people with no easy backup?
- Where has complexity grown faster than our ability to understand it?
Those are business questions. They belong in the boardroom.
MARIANNE USED THE SAME DISCIPLINE ON HER OWN NEXT MOVE
The part of our conversation I liked most came when I asked how she decided to pursue board and advisory work. She began with questions. Why is a board seat different from a full-time operating role? What is the purpose of the work? Where could her experience genuinely add value, and which problems was she equipped to help solve? Only after she had those answers did the path make sense.
At ReflectionPoint Advisors, we watch smart, accomplished leaders respond to uncertainty with activity instead: more applications, more outreach, another certification, a slightly louder LinkedIn headline. Motion feels reassuring, and it can hide the fact that the most important questions remain unanswered.
Marianne ran the opposite play. She looked honestly at what she had done and what she wanted to contribute next. Her experience navigating complexity, strengthening governance, and helping leaders decide under pressure wasn't a list of old job duties; it was the value she could bring to a new room. Once she could see that clearly, board work stopped being the next impressive title and became a place where her experience solves a real problem. Then she moved. Recognition, insight, clarity, action, in that order. It sounds simple. It is also the sequence people skip when they are anxious to move.
CAREERS DRIFT TOO
Marianne was talking about technology, but I couldn't help hearing the career lesson. Career risk rarely arrives as one giant event either. It can begin with a role that stopped fitting two years ago, a compromise that became the new normal, a network you meant to maintain, or a quiet sense that your work and your values were moving in different directions.
Nothing looks urgent on Tuesday.
Then one day the company changes, the position disappears, or you finally admit that success has become strangely unsatisfying. You look up and wonder how something so important moved so far without making any noise. It drifted.
That is why clarity work matters before the announcement, the reorganization, the breach, or the breaking point. The strongest leaders do not wait for the red lights to start flashing. They notice what has been accumulating, and they ask better questions while there is still room to make a thoughtful choice.
So I will leave you with the question Marianne left with me: what is drifting in your business, your boardroom, or your career that deserves a closer look before it announces itself?
And if you are seeking an advisor or new member to join your board, Marianne is evaluating offers now and is open to conversations
Remember -
Recognition · Insight · Clarity · Action
#WorkWorthDoing #ClarityForWhatsNext #ReflectionPoint #BoardGovernance #TechnologyRisk #ExecutiveLeadership #CareerClarity #FitForUncertainty #Leadership