If the pragmatic side of Miles Everson's personality could conduct a self-inventory, it would heartily approve of the PricewaterhouseCoopers partner's primary consulting characteristics: Conceptual prowess? Check. Real-world expertise? Check. Passion? Check. A sense of higher calling? Check. Everson boasts the complete consultant package. This seems fitting given Everson's long-time dedication to helping clients unite the discrete disciplines of internal control, risk management and performance management. His consulting practice strives to integrate this package under a set of common principles designed to strengthen clients' governance, risk and compliance (GRC) capabilities.
As one of the principal authors of the influential Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)—Integrated Framework published by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, Everson researched and identified the best practices that companies in all industries are eager to adopt in the wake of numerous painful risk management failures among financial services firms.
The Framework, a 105-page document, distills risk-management best practices into a set of common principles and practical guidance on ways to apply the principles to real-world businesses. Striking a balance between the conceptual and the practical has always marked a key emphasis in Everson's career at PwC—and more recently in his writing and his recent GRC consulting work.
"My focus is translating the conceptual to the pragmatic," he notes. "You need to have the conceptual to ensure that you have a logically sound basis for what you're about to say. Translating that logic into practical application is where there tends to be a disconnect. Pragmatists don't want to spend time to understand the logic … and, oftentimes, the logical or academic folks can't relate to the pragmatic issues. I see that as a big part of our space as a firm, and my space as a consultant is creating that translation."
The role has paid dividends for the firm, which now earns about 20 percent of its advisory revenue from the U.S. GRC practice that Everson leads. For his part, Everson is proud of the team that the he and the firm put together within this practice. "This was about building a team that has conceptual, logical thinkers and the pragmatists who apply the concepts to real-world situations," he says. "Getting that team assembled and deep in the market against client issues is what we've been focused on over the past three years."
The client work Everson and his team conduct does not involve a newfangled methodology. "It's about getting back to basics around the discipline of execution," he emphasizes. "Some companies say they have risk tolerance, but they use it when they do an episodic risk assessment. They don't embed it into the new product development process, the R&D selection process, the planning process or other core processes used to make strategic and business-as-usual decisions around resource deployment."
Everson and PwC's GRC practice is busy addressing this gap. "That's the difference I think we're making right now in the market," he asserts. "I think the United States, frankly, can be a better, more competitive environment if we can get anchored on this integration of risk and performance."
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