Risk From the CEO and Board Perspective: What All Managers Need to Know About Growth in a Turbulent World

Rating:
Summary: A Highly Recommended Read
Review: If ever there was a book to capture the topic of the times, this is it. This salient, well-written book treats the topic of risk intelligently and pragmatically. Most refreshingly, it treats risk from the point of view of the business person, manager or executive forced to live with and manage risk on a day-to-day basis.

KPMG's risk management advice is coupled with interesting, colorful and very enjoyable interviews with top executives at British Airways, Oracle, Microsoft, Sprint, shipping giant P&O and others. Even General Barry McCaffrey chimes in with his thoughts on business lessons from the battlefield.

In all, an engaging read that I recommend for my peers but not my competitors.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely helpful and informative
Review: This book is perfect for the times, an informative, interesting read with illustrative real-world examples. I particularly enjoyed Chapter 7 "We the People of the Board" and Chapter 8 "Audit Committee: Risk and Regulation" for the practical guidance insight provided. All in all, a digestible primer on key risk issues.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: This is an easily accessible, short and reasonably thorough introduction to the subject of risk. The authors touch on almost every dimension of the topic, including financial risk, operational risk, reputation risk, governance risk and even the risk of terrorist attack. The book might have been quite a bit shorter and somewhat more focused on corporate management if the authors, KPMG vice chairs Mary Pat McCarthy and Timothy P. Flynn had tightened their anecdotes about anti-terrorist preparations at the Olympic Games. However, they seem to have believed that they would lose readers unless they provided a few entertaining distractions, and they could be right. Though it breaks little new ground, it plows the old ground interestingly. We recommend this portable summary of useful information to the CEOs and board members who are its intended audience, as well as to anyone responsible for risk management.