Developing standardized ways to capture and express risk, and to record tribalknowledge, helps to remove IT leadership from its cave and to capitalize on the wealth of information IT systems collect every day.
One large aspect of tribalknowledge is an understanding of the key points in a system that should be checked if anything goes wrong, or the key points in a system that must be monitored to make sure that the system stays healthy.
Cheikh Hamidou Kane, a former Senegalese government minister, prefers to try to build bridges between African intuition and western knowledge, tribal and national aspirations, traditions and modernity.
In an environment in which an IT risk system is in place, each of the tribal leaders (the heads of the silos), is essentially asked to write down the special knowledge they have about what keeps the system running.