The Risk of Inaction
The Risk of Inaction. A Framework for Prioritising When You Can’t Put a Revenue Number on It
A practical, interactive session for conferences, leadership teams, and L&D programmes, designed to leave your audience with a framework they can use the same week, not just inspiration.
Sales teams walk into a prioritisation conversation with a revenue number. Ops and IT teams walk in with “we need to upgrade the platform.” Sales wins. The majority of the time.
Not because the platform upgrade is less important but because nobody has articulated what happens if you don’t do it. The risk of inaction goes unspoken, and the projects that protect, sustain, and scale the business keep getting pushed to the bottom of the list.
This session gives your audience the language and the framework to change that.
What it covers
- Why traditional return on investment frameworks fail for operational and technology projects and why ops requests consistently get drowned out by commercial pitches
- The leadership behaviours that derail prioritisation, executives who bypass the process, priorities that flip-flop weekly, and teams who burn out from constant context-switching because nobody is willing to say “no” or “not right now”
- The Risk of Inaction, a practical reframe that gives ops and IT leaders the language to compete in prioritisation conversations
- How to attach value to backlog items that don’t have a revenue number
- A worked exercise using real examples from your audience’s own backlogs, they’ll leave with at least one project articulated in a way their CFO can evaluate
What your audience walks away with
- A repeatable method for articulating the risk of not doing something, in language a CFO and board will understand
- At least one real backlog item reframed using the method during the session
- Confidence to challenge the next prioritisation conversation instead of accepting the default
- A process your team can own and repeat without external dependency because the goal is to build capability, not create reliance on a consultant
How I deliver this
I deliver The Risk of Inaction as a virtual keynote or interactive workshop. The signature exercise, working through real backlog items from your audience’s own businesses, means every session is different. Your audience leaves having articulated the risk of inaction for their own projects, in language their leadership team can act on.
Virtual conference keynote
From £1,50045–60 minutes
A focused session delivering the Risk of Inaction framework to your conference audience. Practical, no-nonsense, and designed to leave attendees with a method they can use immediately.
Best for: conference main stages, virtual summits, and professional community events where you want your audience to leave with something actionable, not just inspired.
Virtual interactive workshop
From £2,50060–90 minutes
The full experience. Includes pre-session discovery to understand your audience and context, tailored examples, and the signature worked exercise, attendees work through real items from their own backlogs and leave with at least one project articulated using the Risk of Inaction method.
Best for: leadership teams, L&D cohorts, internal training programmes, and smaller focused groups where interaction drives the value.
Watch the highlights
This highlight reel is drawn from a live session I delivered covering the real-world challenges of prioritisation — why ops projects get drowned out by commercial requests, what happens when leadership teams keep switching priorities, and why having a process means nothing without the behaviours to back it up. It includes a case study from my time at Elvie and an unscripted Q&A where the concept of Risk of Inaction first took shape. Watch it for a taster of how I think and work.
Want to bring this to your team or event? Enquire about booking →
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Want the framework for your own use?
The Risk of Inaction Playbook gives you the method, 10 worked examples across IT, Finance, Legal, HR, Supply Chain, and more, plus a companion spreadsheet, ready to use immediately.
Who books this
- Conference and event organisers looking for practical, no-nonsense speakers on prioritisation and technology leadership
- L&D teams at mid-market businesses building capability in prioritisation and governance
- Professional communities and networks who want their members to leave with a framework, not just a keynote
- COOs, CFOs, and Heads of IT who want their leadership team aligned on how to evaluate operational and technology investment
Speaker bio
Helen Beckford is an IT Business Partner who has spent 15+ years working across 16 countries spanning EMEA, APAC, and the Americas. She specialises in prioritisation and governance for mid-market businesses, helping leadership teams decide what matters, build the structure to protect those decisions, and ensure the prioritised work gets delivered. Her background includes IBM, Accenture, Dyson, and Elvie, where she led the technology prioritisation for the launch of an entirely new product category. She holds PRINCE2, ITIL 4, BRMP, and CBRM certifications and has been recognised as a UK Finalist for Future CIO of the Year (2017) and an SAP UKI Customer Success Awards Finalist for Best Transformational Change Programme (2021).
