---
id: "action-repurpose-risk-boards"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["§ Integrating the Framework", "¶2"]
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
source_title: "What Are Your Company's AI Nightmares?"
tags: ["organizational-design", "governance"]
related: ["concept-first-line-defense-shift"]
action: "Shift primary AI risk mitigation to decentralized teams; use centralized risk boards only for unmitigable exceptions."
outcome: "Elimination of governance bottlenecks, allowing faster, safer AI innovation."
speakers: ["Reid Blackman"]
sources: ["governance"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-governance"
originDay: 7
articleStem: "hbr-cl-82-ai-nightmares"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
sourceTitle: "What Are Your Company’s AI Nightmares?"
---
# Repurpose centralized AI risk boards for exceptions only

**Action:** Stop using centralized AI risk boards as the *first line of defense* for every high-risk use case (which creates innovation bottlenecks). Instead, train decentralized [[concept-enc-teams]] to handle primary mitigation, and reserve the centralized risk board **strictly for exceptions** — unmitigable nightmares or exceptionally high-stakes reviews.

**Expected outcome:** Elimination of governance bottlenecks, allowing faster, safer AI innovation.

This is the concrete move behind [[concept-first-line-defense-shift]].

**Enrichment note:** Aligns with the broader governance trend toward distributed first-line ownership with central escalation. **Counter-perspective to weigh:** governance experts warn that central oversight remains critical for consistency, systemic risk, and cross-jurisdictional decisions — so the board should be *repurposed*, not dissolved, and decentralization must be tightly coordinated to avoid inconsistent standards.