As a way of encouraging my team to take more risks, I’ve been espousing the philosophy “Failure is the new black” and have been cataloging quotes on failure from famous people. But increased risk-taking doesn’t just come from pithy quotes, it helps to provide examples of people who failed… and thrived. Here are four such stories:…
In the Upside of the Downturn, Geoff Colvin suggests death rates go down in a recession. Regardless of the accuracy of the claim, it’s worth remembering the recession provides new opportunities for companies willing to take risks. To emphasize this point, Colvin subtitled his book “Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath.”…
In a McKinsey Quarterly article entitled “Management lessons from the financial crisis,” UCLA business professor Richard Rumelt coins the term smooth-sailing fallacy: This smooth-sailing fallacy arises when we mistake a measure for reality. Competent management always looks deeper than the numbers, deeper than the current measures. Incompetent management just focuses on the metrics, on the body…
A new report entitled the Current State of Enterprise Risk Oversight (alternately, here) has been published by several faculty members from the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Initiative at North Carolina State University. For me, the conclusions are alarming, but perhaps not surprising: Despite the growing pressures for more effective risk oversight that are emerging from the…
At the end of every month, I review my most popular posts from the last 90 days. In Q2 Dilbert on Risk Management showed up in the top 5 for the first time:The surge in popularity is interesting but I’m not sure that it’s reliable, especially since Google Trends doesn’t show the same pattern. Regardless, risk…
A few of my favorite quotes about performance management: Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Tzŭ c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter F. Drucker, American Management Guru The essence of competitiveness…
Even though I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year talking to clients about risk management, I haven’t covered the topic in this blog other than my post on Risk Friends and Key Risk Indicators. This is especially odd as I’ve come to believe strategy management and risk management are inextricably linked. I’ll expound…
I don’t normally promote other peoples’ blogs and instead comment on their posts or add them to my blogroll. However, I stumbled upon the Riskfriends Weblog which is dedicated “for risk professionals or people who just like risks”. Despite a little sleuthing, I haven’t been able to find out anything about the author other than…
Unless you were trapped on a desert island over the last few months, it’s unlikely that you missed the Société Générale scandal and the resulting teeth-gnashing about the need for stricter controls and oversight in the financial services industry. While I’m all for better access and process controls leading to improved segregation of duties, I…