The moment a baseball season begins, hope fills the air as teams dream of championship glory. But as any sports fan knows, talented players alone can't win championships—they need strong managers making smart calls and adjusting strategy in real-time. This powerful analogy perfectly captures what's often missing in corporate risk management today.

Many companies believe their Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) programs provide comprehensive protection against uncertainty. Yet in practice, these programs frequently amount to little more than documenting potential problems and checking compliance boxes—the equivalent of having a playbook without a coach actively managing the game. This fundamental gap between identifying risks and actively managing them represents the critical difference between traditional GRC approaches and the emerging discipline of Integrated Risk Management (IRM).