Three layers that run through every organization
2 min readGreyfieldStrategy
Technology, the legal framework and models are not departments: they are layers that cut across every department. Almost every important problem touches all three at once.
When an organization looks for help, it usually starts with the org chart: a technology project goes to IT, a regulatory one to legal, a risk one to the risk team. That is reasonable, but it leaves something out. The problems that matter most rarely fit in just one of those boxes.
Layers, not departments
Three elements are present in every part of an organization without belonging to any of them:
- Technology. Finance reconciles, risk calculates, operations automates, sales serves clients through a portal. All of them do it on systems, data and integrations.
- The legal and regulatory framework. Every area has obligations: reports, policies, supplier contracts, data protection, limits approved by a board.
- Models. Forecasting sales, measuring a risk, prioritizing alerts or setting a price are, at heart, the same exercise: anticipating, measuring or deciding with data.
That is why we speak of layers: like the strata of the ground, they run through the whole organization from one end to the other.
Where they meet
The clearest example is a new regulation. First it has to be interpreted: what it requires, from whom and from when. Then what it asks for has to be calculated, often with a model that did not exist. Finally it has to be implemented in systems and reports, on a deadline that does not wait.
If each of those three parts sits with a different team, the risk is not in any one of them but in the handoffs: what legal interpreted is not exactly what the model calculates, and what the model calculates is not exactly what the system reports.
The same happens with a new product, a model going into production or a system being replaced. And with a company born in a regulated sector: it needs its licenses, its business and risk model, and the platform that runs from day one, all at the same time.
What this changes
Working by layers does not mean doing everything. It means that whoever designs the solution sees all three at once: the legal interpretation, the calculation and the implementation are thought through together, and decisions are made with everything on the table.
That is the idea Greyfield Strata was founded on. In upcoming articles we will look at each layer on its own, and at the cases where they meet.