In this month's newsletter:

• Latest BarnOwl Insights

• Past BarnOwl Info Sharing Insight

• Upcoming BarnOwl Info Sharing Session 

• Past BarnOwl Bite Size Training Session

The Great Risk Reset:

What Every Risk Manager and Executive Should Be Watching in 2026

Based on BarnOwl GRC‘s review and synthesis of 48 GRC, risk, audit, governance and compliance publications released during May 2026, the following article brings together the key themes that risk managers, executives and boards should be paying attention to.

The review covered perspectives from risk management, internal audit, governance, compliance, enterprise risk management, AI governance, third-party risk management, and board oversight. What emerged was not simply another collection of risk trends. Instead, the period highlighted a significant shift in how organisations are expected to manage risk, govern artificial intelligence, oversee internal controls, and support strategic decision-making.

By The Time Performance Declines,

It’s Usually Too Late

Imagine sitting in a Pick n Pay executive meeting in 2018. Revenue is still flowing. Millions of customers are still walking through the doors. The brand remains one of the most recognised in South Africa. The dashboards are largely green and nothing suggests the business is in crisis.

Yet with hindsight, we know something important was already changing. Not performance. Confidence. Not in the people leading the business but confidence in the assumptions underpinning it. The assumption that customers would continue to perceive value, that the store network remained competitive, that operating costs could continue increasing without affecting market position and that competitors would not fundamentally reshape customer expectations.

Artificial Intelligence

Is About To Change The Wrong Thing

For the past thirty years organisations have invested billions trying to answer one question. “What is happening?”

Artificial Intelligence is finally solving that problem. It can analyse contracts, monitor compliance, identify unusual transactions, highlight procurement anomalies and detect operational patterns that humans would never see. The question is no longer whether organisations can find information. Soon almost all of them will. 

Thinking in Systems When Decisions are Complex

by Lieschen Venter (PhD Operations Research), Senior Lecturer in Operations Research at Stellenbosch University and Director of Systems Thinking for Education Policy (STEP) research group

Thank you very much Lieschen for your insightful presentation on ‘Thinking in Systems, When Decisions are Complex’ at the BarnOwl info-sharing event held on 11th June 2026.

Thank you to all those who attended the session.

The Outside-In Test: What Public Information Reveals About Your Risk Register

If an independent analyst armed only with public information can find credible gaps in your Top 10 risks, so can investors, regulators, analysts and activists. In this session, Wilna Meiring shares a replicable outside-in methodology from a recent strategic risk engagement with a JSE-listed group: a full external environmental scan (PESTLE, SWOT, Porter's Five Forces) completed deliberately before reading a single internal document, then reconciled line-by-line against the company's own risk register.

The calibration results are the heart of the session. Roughly half of the externally inferred “missing risks” turned out to be already managed internally — but the other half were genuine blind spots, invisible from inside the organisation. Wilna unpacks why the outside-in view works, where it fails, how to avoid anchoring bias in risk identification, and how this discipline gives boards and risk functions tangible, defensible evidence of effective risk oversight under King V's outcomes-based, apply-and-explain regime and ISO 31000's requirement to understand the external context.

What Attendees Will Take Away

• The method: A practical, replicable method for building an independent outside-in view of an organisation's risk landscape before internal framing contaminates it.
• The evidence: Real calibration data on how accurate external inference actually is — and what the ~50% hit rate means for your own disclosures.
• The governance link: How an outside-in scan produces demonstrable proof of risk oversight for governing bodies applying King V (effective for financial years from 1 January 2026), anchored in ISO 31000:2018.
• The culture angle: How to run the reconciliation conversation with executives so gaps become strategic levers, not blame.

Speaker: Wilna Meiring

Date: 27 August 2026

Time: 09h00 - 10h00

Cost: Free

Venue: Complete the booking form here to receive the online Teams link

BarnOwl Bite-Size Training Sessions — short, focused learning sessions designed to give you quick answers to the topics you ask about most. Each session is 20–30 minutes long, making them easy to fit into your busy schedule while still delivering valuable, practical insights. 

These sessions are perfect for anyone who wants to sharpen their BarnOwl skills, discover best-practice tips, or get clarity on specific features without committing to a full training workshop. Our goal is to empower you with quick wins, boost your confidence in using the system, and help you get the most out of your BarnOwl software.

BarnOwl Bite Size Training: Re-Assignment of Owners, Category Move Utility and Apply Function

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BarnOwl Bite Size Training: Re-Assignment of Owners, Category Move Utility and Apply Function

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