Well before COVID started, I decided to read every book on risk management I could muster. Since then, close to five years now, I’ve read 17 books, cover to cover, ranging from 121 pages to over 600. Crazy!! right?
Why would someone who has been hands-on in business and a practitioner for over 30 years do that?
I asked myself the same question.
- Was I hoping to learn something new? Yes.
- Was I looking for new concepts? Yes.
- Was I thinking I’d missed something? Yes.
- Was I thinking I needed to add something to the methodology I’ve been teaching for 20 years? Yes.
- Did I find answers? No.
With the exception of 3 books (count’em 3), all the others covered the same things.
The sameness showed up in:
- The models they present – mathematical and financial;
- Insurance focus;
- The sectors they cater to are the full range of financial services and manufacturing environments;
- Focus on health & safety measures;
- Credit risk and financial risk (capital markets) analysis;
- Focus on ‘efficiency’ versus effectiveness.
Companies with revenues up to $1 billion and 5,000 or fewer employees want the tools to manage risks that help them grow their business, not how to buy insurance or play with models. They want to create value by taking smart risks and knowing how to approach them in a way that works for them.
Any broker can help you buy insurance, and there are plenty of health & safety experts out there. That’s not how value is created; that’s how it’s preserved if you’re doing it right.
The 3 books (count’em 3) that stood out cater to businesses that want to create value. They were not written by financial gurus, health and safety or insurance professionals.
One of the books that piqued my curiosity and which I ultimately totally discounted focused on integrating risk management into policies, strategies, decisions and operations, yet provided no directions or tools on how to do that.
Anyone can list dozens of bullet points that are ‘Shoulds’. What ‘should’ be done is not where everyone starts. The starting point will be different for every organization. It all depends on where you’re at today.
The question that is most often asked is ‘How do I do that?’ – I feel compelled to answer that question in my forthcoming book – #Tame the Turmoil.
Management keeps asking – “How did we not see that coming?”
Recent interviews with total strangers, former clients and students, and colleagues have added rich insights into what business managers and executives truly want and need to understand, therefore, to make sense of what risk management means to them. That’s not found in a book.
The answer is found by digging deep into how things are done, what barriers persist, what patterns need to be broken and what gaps keep getting ignored. That’s the hard part!
Have you asked yourself lately . . . “What would having a risk management process that creates value mean to me or to our business?”
My personal history, career, travels, clients, tragedies, and successes play a key part in demonstrating how to use risk management to achieve what you want. Call it goals, objectives, dreams, purpose, or targets – it’s all about getting to that thing we want.
So, another book, you say!!
This is not just a book. It has taken me over 10 years to get working on this book.
What makes it so different?
Each chapter will have a link to a corresponding video that will coach you through its content.
At the end of the book, you will have all the components you need to get started with a risk management program you can implement on your own.
If you already have a program, I believe you will gain new insights, approaches, thinking, and management skills. That alone is worth the price of admission.
You will learn the continuum on which risk management lives. This will change how you approach risk, strategy, and change management. It will change the risk culture.
It will make more sense than a bunch of frameworks that are fragmented and operate in silos.
If I can help you after that, then I’m happy to do so.
Stay tuned for updates prior to publication.
