From north to south, the whole of Brazil became a football coach. There was a debate about merit at lunch, tactical analysis at the cafe, bets on Neymar in WhatsApp groups, discussion about physical fitness, injuries, squad atmosphere and even theories about what criteria should really weigh in on the call final of the Brazilian team.
The World Cup album has also just been released. Soon, the albums spread out on the meeting tables, the trading of stickers repeated during breaks and the inevitable debates about who has completed the most pages will begin.
The World Cup hasn’t even started yet, but the social phenomenon it causes has already entered people’s daily lives.
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While many areas of companies see major cultural phenomena as distraction, loss of productivity or “side issue”, a more mature and out-of-the-box GRC (Governance, Risks and Compliance) can see something different: opportunity.
When the risk crosses the defense
When a topic monopolizes conversations outside the corporate environmenthe inevitably also monopolizes conversations within it. It would be a mistake for organizations to pretend that this doesn’t happen or to ask employees to focus on something else.
And that is exactly why the theme World Cup is an opportunity for GRC. Opportunity for communication, training, to bring technical topics closer to people’s reality, to transform abstract concepts into emotional, practical and memorable references.
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If you are a GRC professional, how many times have you tried to explain within your company the concept of the three lines of defense, widely used in risk management structures and widely disseminated by international standards, institutes and auditing companies?
If you heard the explanation, did you understand it clearly and would you be able to repeat it in your own words? The explanation oftechnical concepts within companies they often feel distant, overly abstract, or simply difficult to engage. This is a classic example.
In theory, the concept explains how organizations distribute responsibilities to prevent, monitor and respond to risks. The first line is formed by the business areas and process owners, responsible for executing controls and deal directly with risks on a daily basis.
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The second line brings together specialized technical support areas, such as compliance, internal controls, information security and risk managementwhich help to structure policies, monitoring and risk mitigation action plans.
The third line is internal audit, responsible for independently assess whether the entire system is working appropriately.
But what if this same explanation came through the lens of a game between Brazil and Argentina? Imagine Messi stealing the ball in midfield. If someone regains possession right there, the risk quickly disappears and the entire team breathes a sigh of relief.
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But, if he passes through the first line and moves towards the defense, the discomfort increases. At this point, no one is calm on the couch anymore. Now imagine if he passes the defenders and comes face to face with the goalkeeper. The heart accelerates, because the risk is about to materialize.
In this example, everyone agrees that it would be much better to prevent the play from progressing in midfield, when the risk was further away from the small area and there was more space to react. The sooner a risk is identified, treated and controlled within the correct process, the less chance it will turn into financial loss, reputational incident or regulatory issue.
When controls fail successively and the risk comes “face to face with the goalkeeper”, the organization is already operating in emergency mode.
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The World Cup as a communication tool for the GRC
The World Cup talks about many of the topics that Governance, Risks and Compliance try to discuss daily within organizations.
It talks about decision criteria, preparation, pressure, reputation, strategy, crisis management, teamwork and trust. The difference is that, during the World Cup, people already are emotionally engaged in these conversations.
Every selection call, for example, quickly turns into a collective discussion about merit, coherence and transparency. People analyze recent performance, history, experience, physical recovery, behavior and even group climate to try to understand who got in and who was left out.
In the corporate environment, the logic is not so different. Promotions, successions and strategic moves are also observed by collaborators through very similar lenses. When criteria appear unclear, perceptions of favoritism, inconsistency or unfairness arise.
And, just as in football, the lack of communication tends to generate more speculation than understanding. The preparation for the World Cup, for example, offers interesting parallels to the corporate environment.
No team takes the field without months of training, physical monitoring, performance analysis and friendlies to test weaknesses before the championship begins. The game does not start in the game. It starts much earlier.
In companies, the logic is very similar. Training, audits, control tests, crisis simulations and response exercises exist to prepare the organization before the critical moment. Even so, Many companies treat these initiatives as mere bureaucratic formalitiesalmost as if training were just “following the schedule”.
In football, no one would put an unprepared player into a World Cup final. In the corporate world, however, There are organizations that believe it is possible to go through complex crises without collective preparationintegration between areas and culture of prevention.
Friendlies also carry an extremely useful logic for the GRC. They exist to reveal vulnerabilities before the outcome really matters. In the corporate environment, continuity tests, cyber simulations and investigation exercises play the role of discover weaknesses before the crisis is worth points on the reputational, financial or regulatory scoreboard.
The problem is that many companies only recognize the value of these tests when the crisis has already happened. It’s curious how the football helps to visualize something that the GRC has been trying to explain for years: no one discovers weakness in the final. Or at least it shouldn’t.
Even discussions about casting climate find a direct parallel in organizational culture. Technically brilliant teams can fail when there areinternal disputes, excessive vanity, toxic competition or lack of collective trust.
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In companies, countless crises arise precisely in fragmented environments, where areas stop sharing information, problems stop circulating and individual goals start to matter more than the collective result. Often, the problem is not the absence of formal policies or controlsbut in the inability of the organizational culture sustain coherent behavior under pressure.
And it is precisely at this point that governance plays the role of coordinating interests, align responsibilities and ensure that different areas can act in an integrated manner.
This is one of the greatest opportunities that culturally mobilizing events offer to the GRC.
Companies invest millions trying to capture employees’ attention for mandatory training and internal campaigns, but can take advantage of an extremely valuable asset that is already naturally available within the company itself: the subjects that already mobilize people emotionally.
The World Cup creates a common repertoire, shared language and spontaneous engagement. And this has a huge potential to transform technical topics into more accessible, relevant and memorable conversations.
It’s not about turning GRC into empty entertainment or “gamifying” everything indiscriminately. It’s about recognizing something very simple: People learn better when they can connect technical concepts to emotional and cultural references already present in everyday life.
Out-of-the-box GRC is precisely the one capable of realizing that, sometimes, the best gateway to discussing risk, culture, governance and integrity It can start with something as simple as a discussion about the Brazilian team’s lineup, an exchange of stickers in the hallway or a debate about Neymar in the cafe.
