Target Scope Consulting, Pallabi, Dhaka (2026)

23/09/2026

"WHY DO GOOD ORGANIZATIONS FAIL"

Sometimes, the most dangerous organization is not the one that sees nothing coming. It is the one that sees the problem, discusses it, monitors it, forms a committeeand still doesn't change.

Think about a company in Bangladesh that has been watching its business environment become increasingly difficult.
Margins are shrinking; Customer expectations are changing; Import costs are becoming harder to manage; Skilled employees are leaving; Technology is changing how competitors operate....Management knows all of this.
So what happens?
-A meeting is called > A task force is formed > A consultant is hired > A dashboard is developed > Another risk assessment is commissioned. A new policy is circulated > More data is collected.

Another management meeting takes place.
Everyone is busy. But six months later, the fundamental way the organization operates has barely changed.

This is what "ACTIVE INERTIA" is, an organization responding to change with enormous activity while leaving the underlying operating model largely unchanged. And history gives us some uncomfortable examples.

"Kodak saw digital photography coming. - In fact, Kodak itself invented the digital camera years before digital photography disrupted its traditional film business."

The lesson is uncomfortable - Awareness is not resilience.
Knowing that something is changing does not make an organization resilient. Having a risk register does not make it resilient. Holding another meeting does not make it resilient. Even having a beautifully documented strategy does not make it resilient.

Resilience begins when recognized risk changes what the organization actually does.
So tomorrow, ask your leadership team one question:

“What do we already know is changing—and what have we actually changed because of it?”

If the answer is another meeting, another report or another committee…
you may be managing the warning sign instead of managing the risk.

The real test of resilience is not:
Are we aware?

It is:
Can we turn awareness into decisive action before the window closes?
That is where organizational resilience begins.

22/09/2026

Fraud thrives on predictability. When perpetrators know when and how checks happen, they can time concealment around them. Independent management review and unannounced audits remove that advantage, and the possibility of being checked at any time deters would-be fraudsters. ACFE case studies show that unpredictable checks shorten how long schemes run, which limits losses before they escalate.

Independence matters as much as surprise: a review by someone who reports to, or depends on, the person being reviewed is easily compromised.

What effective oversight covers

i. Independent management review: supervisors or reviewers outside the process examine transactions, approvals, and reconciliations, not just sign off routinely.
ii. Surprise audits: unannounced cash counts, inventory checks, and spot reviews of vendors, expenses, and payroll.
iii. Risk-based targeting: more attention on high-risk areas such as cash handling, procurement, and payroll.
iv. Data analytics: continuous scanning for duplicate payments, round-number invoices, ghost vendors, and unusual patterns, which can support or trigger a surprise check.
v. Rotation of reviewers and duties: so no one controls the same area long enough to build a blind spot.
vi. Documented follow-up: exceptions are investigated, escalated, and closed out.

What makes it "unpredictable"

i. Audit timing and scope are varied, not fixed on an annual calendar.
ii. Sample selection is random or risk-driven, not the same each cycle.
iii. Reviews reach all locations, including remote and smaller units.
iv. Findings are reported to the audit committee or board, not only to the area audited.
v. Mandatory leave and job rotation expose issues when someone else takes over.

Why oversight fails

i. Audits are scheduled and predictable, so concealment is planned around them.
ii. Reviewers lack independence from the people they review.
iii. Management review is a rubber stamp.
iv. Findings are not acted on, so they lose credibility.
v. Senior staff are treated as exempt.

22/09/2026

“We have continuity plans, backup systems, and contingency funds. We’re prepared.”

But preparedness is not the same as resilience.

Consider an NGO in Bangladesh facing several disruptions at once: field access is restricted, a donor disbursement is delayed, operating costs rise sharply, and a critical partner encounters difficulties.

None of these events alone may stop the programme. Together, however, they can create pressure across finance, operations, people, leadership and service delivery.

The organization may have functioning IT systems and a Business Continuity Plan yet still struggle to make decisions, mobilize resources and sustain critical services.

That is the difference between disaster recovery and operational resilience.

An Operational Resilience stress-tests the organization against realistic, interconnected disruption scenarios to identify critical vulnerabilities, dependencies, and decision-making gaps and translates the findings into a practical resilience roadmap and crisis management arrangements.

Resilience is not tested when everything goes according to plan. It is tested when several things go wrong at the same time.

Is your organization prepared for that test?

21/09/2026

Effective training builds two competencies: recognition (spotting red flags) and response (knowing who to tell and what not to do, such as confronting the suspect). Recognition alone produces worried employees; both together produce working controls.

Fraud happens in everyday processes like invoicing, payroll, and procurement, so the people running them see anomalies first. Training also feeds whistleblower channels with informed, well-directed tips.

ACFE's Report to the Nations links training for employees and managers with lower median losses and faster detection. The evidence is correlational, and figures should be checked against the latest edition.

What effective training covers

i. How fraud works: common schemes, illustrated with real anonymized cases.
ii. The fraud triangle: pressure, opportunity, rationalization.
iii. Red flags: e.g., an employee who never takes leave, round-number invoices, missing documentation.
iv. How to respond: report through the proper channel, preserve evidence, don't investigate or confront.
v. Role-specific content: depth for finance staff, report-handling for managers, tone-at-the-top for executives.
vi. Current threats: business email compromise, fake vendor requests, deepfake impersonation.

What makes it "ongoing"

i. Annual refreshers with shorter touchpoints in between.
ii. Content updated as schemes evolve.
iii. Varied formats: e-learning, workshops, simulated phishing.
iv. Lessons drawn from real incidents.
v. Measurement of comprehension and behavior, not just attendance.

Why training fails

i. Treated as a compliance checkbox.
ii. Generic content unrelated to people's work.
iii. Teaches recognition but not response, or points to a channel employees don't trust.
iv. Managers and executives are exempt.
v. Never refreshed.

21/09/2026

"In a crisis, organizations don't panic their people do."

People immediately look to leadership for direction, and a leader's demeanor quickly dictates the company's mood. When leadership hesitates, the entire organization stalls.

The Cost of Untrained Crisis Leadership
√Delayed decisions: Protocols fail, escalating all choices to an overwhelmed executive team.
√Mixed messages: Conflicting stories from different leaders fuel destructive rumors.
√Eroded trust: Poor crisis management permanently damages employee confidence.
√Talent flight: Top performers leave first when organizational stability crumbles.

Organizational resilience relies on a balance of adaptation (speed) and shock absorption (stability). While systems and budgets buy time, leadership determines how effectively that time is used. Resilience is a leadership skill, not a business system. Enduring organizations invest in their leaders' judgment and composure long before a crisis hits.

20/09/2026

"Integrity Awareness - Organisational & Cultural Resilience"

Most organizations discover fraud the same way: after the money is gone. Someone spots a strange invoice, a whistleblower finally speaks up, or an audit stumbles onto something nobody expected. By then the damage is done, and the question is no longer "how do we prevent this?" but "how long has this been happening?"
Organizations that avoid this outcome tend to share one habit. They go looking for their own weak points before someone else finds them.

What a fraud risk assessment actually is?
It's a structured exercise in thinking like someone who wants to defraud you. You map where money, assets, and information move through the business, then ask at each point:
i. Where could someone exploit this process? Payments, payroll, procurement, expense claims, inventory, vendor onboarding
ii. Who has the opportunity? Employees, managers, vendors, contractors, customers
iii. What controls exist, and do they work in practice? A control on paper is not the same as a control that runs
iv. How likely is it, and how bad would it be? This tells you where to spend first

The output is a prioritized picture of your real exposure, not a generic checklist.
Why "regular" matters

A business changes constantly. New vendors, new systems, new staff, new payment methods, remote work, rapid growth, or a leadership change can each open a gap that didn't exist last year.
An assessment done once is a snapshot of a business that no longer exists. Fraud risk moves as fast as your operations do, so the assessment has to move with them: on a schedule, and again whenever something significant changes.

Why "honest" matters even more
This is where most assessments quietly fail. Honesty is uncomfortable because an honest assessment asks questions like:
i. What if the person we trust most is the risk? Fraud often comes from people with the most access and the longest tenure.
ii. What if our leadership can override the controls? Management override is one of the most common ways controls get bypassed.
iii. What if we've been getting away with a weak process simply because nothing has gone wrong yet?

An assessment designed to reassure everyone, produce a clean report, and tick a compliance box is worse than none. It creates false confidence, and false confidence is what fraudsters rely on.
An honest assessment involves people beyond the finance team, protects those who raise concerns, and is willing to write down uncomfortable findings.

The standard behind it
This isn't just good instinct. The Fraud Risk Management Guide, produced by the ACFE (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners) together with COSO, names a structured, recurring fraud risk assessment as a foundational element of any serious anti-fraud program. Prevention, detection, and response all depend on knowing where your real vulnerabilities are, and you can't know that without looking.

Finding a vulnerability is only half the job. The value comes from what follows:
Prioritize by likelihood and impact, not by what's easiest to fix
Assign an owner to every gap, with a deadline
Strengthen or add controls: separation of duties, approval limits, independent reconciliations, vendor verification
Reassess to confirm the fix works
Repeat on a fixed schedule

Fraud thrives where nobody is looking. You can only fix what you look for, and the organizations that look regularly and honestly find their weak points before someone else does.

20/09/2026

Every business school teaches the same playbook: cut waste, minimize inventory, run just-in-time. In a stable environment, it works. But stability is an assumption, not a guarantee, and many businesses are running a stable-market playbook in an unstable-market reality.

What instability does to a lean business? Political uncertainty doesn't announce itself with a warning label. It shows up as:
i. A sudden strike, blockade, or curfew that stops trucks for days
ii. Port or customs delays that turn a 5-day delivery into a 5-week one
iii. Overnight policy changes: new import restrictions, tax shifts, banking limits
iv. A currency that moves sharply in a matter of days
v. Internet or communication shutdowns that cut you off from customers and suppliers

None of these are inefficiencies inside your business. They are shocks from outside it, and you can't manage them away, forecast them precisely, or negotiate with them.
A lean operation has ONE strategy for its operation. When a shock arrives, there is nothing between the disruption and your doors. The business doesn't slow down. It stops.

Efficiency is measurable. Every backup you cut shows up as savings on the spreadsheet. But the cost of having no backup is invisible until the day you need one, and in unstable conditions, that day comes more often than the model assumes.
So businesses keep getting rewarded for removing the cushions they will eventually need. The spreadsheet looks great right up until it doesn't.

Resilient businesses don't abandon efficiency. They stop treating it as the only goal. In uncertain conditions, they deliberately keep some slack: they keep several scenarios in mind.

Yes, this costs something. But when conditions are volatile, redundancy is not waste. It's the price of staying open.

In stable times, the leanest business wins. In unstable times, the business that can keep operating wins. And you rarely get advance notice which kind of time you're in.
The businesses that last aren't the leanest. They're the ones built to absorb a shock and keep going.

19/09/2026

"The 4 Pillars of Business Resilience"

Resilience isn't one plan. It's four, working together.

Ask most businesses if they're prepared for a disruption and you'll hear: "Yes, we have a fire extinguisher and a generator."

That's not resilience. That's disaster response: reacting well after something has already gone wrong. Resilience is what lets your business keep functioning, keep paying people, and keep serving customers while the disruption is still happening.

Why one plan is never enough

Real disruptions don't politely hit one department. A currency shock, a port strike, a prolonged power outage, or an internet shutdown will hit your operations, your cash flow, your systems, and your people at the same time.

Say the power goes out and your generator kicks in. Great, but the shipment you were waiting on is stuck, your customers' payments are delayed, your cloud files are unreachable, and your team is waiting for someone to make a call. Covering one pillar leaves the other three exposed.

The 4 Pillars

1. Operational: keep the business moving
√Backup power so production and service don't stop
√Alternate logistics routes and carriers, so one blocked road or port isn't fatal
√Supplier diversification, so you're never one vendor away from a shutdown

2. Financial: keep the business solvent
√Cash reserves that cover your fixed costs for a defined number of months
√Flexible credit lines arranged before you need them, because banks lend most freely when you need it least

3. Technological: keep the business connected
√Offline access to critical data: customer records, contracts, pricing, contacts
√Communication continuity during network or internet shutdowns, with backup channels your team already knows how to use
√Systems tested under stress, not just assumed to work

4. Cultural: keep the business deciding
√Leaders who can make fast, confident decisions with incomplete information
√Clear authority on who decides what when the boss is unreachable
√A team that has rehearsed, not just read, the plan
Culture is the pillar most companies skip because it's the hardest to buy. It's also the one that determines whether the other three actually get used.

"The rule to remember : A business is only as resilient as its weakest pillar."

17/09/2026

Organizational & Cultural Resilience Factors-Realistic, Well-Calibrated Performance Targets

Balance: Realistic, Well-Calibrated Performance Targets

Performance targets are important for keeping an organisation focused and accountable. But unrealistic targets, constantly changing, or disconnected from market conditions can create a very different kind of risk: pressure to deliver results at any cost.

For example, if a sales team is given an aggressive revenue target without considering market conditions, supply-chain problems, or customer demand, employees may feel that missing the target is unacceptable. If bonuses, promotions or even job security depend heavily on meeting that number, some employees may begin looking for ways to make the results appear better than they actually are, delaying expenses, recording premature revenue, bypassing approval procedures or concealing poor performance.

This does not mean that pressure automatically causes fraud. Rather, excessive or poorly designed pressure can create conditions in which employees may feel justified in cutting corners or rationalising inappropriate behaviour.

A balanced performance system recognizes commercial ambition while allowing employees to report genuine shortfalls without fear of punishment. Targets should be challenging but evidence-based, and incentive structures should reward sustainable performance, not simply numbers achieved at any cost.

This is particularly important in finance, sales, procurement, and operations, where performance incentives can directly influence transactions and reporting.

In simple terms: Set targets that motivate people to perform, not targets that make people feel they must compromise integrity to survive.

17/09/2026

We recently visited the ISE BD site (https://bd-ise.com/) to explore upcoming developments and see what lies ahead.While our role involves diagnosing issues and providing management suggestions, we believe that actively delivering the actual solutions is equally crucial.

Please let us know the specific areas where you would like TSC to provide technical or strategic support moving forward. We are ready to collaborate closely.

Target Scope Consulting

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