Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off: How Leading Companies Implement Risk Management

Rating:
Summary: Nice book, but read this for risk management fundamentals
Review: After reading `Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off', I must say that I can recommend it. Buy it if you want to know how large companies have been dealing with risk management in the past years. This book will not really help you understand the fundamentals of risk management, and that isn't the primary focus of this book.

I would recommend that you do not read `Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off' just by itself. I highly recommend `Controlling the controllable: the management of safety' by Dr. Jop Groeneweg. This is a must-read if you are interested in risk management and it will give you an good basis for reading `Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off'.

`Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off', unlike what may be suggested, isn't about companies on the cutting edge of risk management. In my opinion that's only partly true. These companies are dealing with highly visible risks, but in risk management that is the easy part of the job. Dealing with the invisible risks, most often those risks lurking in a company's own organization, is much harder. It is unfortunate that the Tripod risk management methodology isn't discussed in this book because it is THE methodology for integrated risk management.

I would recommend that those interested also read up on a risk management tool called BowTie XP, which really represents the leading edge of risk management research today. I believe the majority of companies in this book will be using BowTie XP for risk management in the coming years.

`Making Enterprise Risk Management Pay Off' is quite readable and I enjoyed reading it. When you read it, realize that risk management is evolving quickly. Don't try to copy the companies in this book with respect to risk management, unless you only want to deal with highly visible risks.


Rating:
Summary: Great Lessons in De-Risking, in a Very Readable Book !
Review: After the Enron meltdown, risk management is as hot as fire. You can't pick up the newspaper without stories about all the risks facing businesses and investors.

I run a medium size business in a big city. If you want to "de-risk" a company, you need to learn from managers who are already doing it and doing it well. This book has very detailed cases about the risk management programs at companies like Microsoft and DuPont with managers telling their own stories. The book is short on fancy theories and long on practical ideas.

I admit I was surprised to see Chase bank among these elite companies. Chase wrote off $500 million because of Enron. But you have to wonder how much more they would have written off without a good risk management program. No one ever said these systems are perfect. The Chase chapter even describes two big problems the bank had with their bookkeeping and how they were fixing them.

This book has everything you need to get started in a good risk management program. Lord knows businesses had better manage their risks or they're history.