Clive Martin, a member of the Risk Coalition’s Working Group that oversaw the development of Raising the Bar, gives us a cheeky yet provoking new book on how risk comes at us in unexpected ways.
When it comes to risk management, being right about what should happen is the easy bit. Far more difficult is bringing about the desired state… There are so many people and things to influence!
Yet, there is so much opportunity for progress when it comes to risk management effectiveness and efficiency that it seems it must just be worth our while making the effort.
So where to start?
In my book, I disclose quite a bit about where my starting place was and how, all these years later, it played a part in me writing and publishing the near-hyperbolically named A risk management book unlike all the others.
Although I knew the content of my book would hold some interest for risk management specialists (especially how it gets the messages across), I was really after the non-risk management specialists. The ones us risk specialists need to influence, so I could see that I needed an approach to writing about risk which would be interesting to them plus a price point which would make it accessible to many.
The approach I took was to try and make the book entertaining as well as informative. Yes, “entertaining” and you don’t often hear that descriptor used for risk management books now, do you? At least not in terms of it being entertaining in more than the academic sense.
There are over 75 risk management lessons in the book drawn from a selection of real-life celebrity encounters plus further analysis of my previously published linkedIn articles/posts on topics such as the link between risk and strategy and how to understand risk management effectiveness. Topics addressed in the book range from the language used to describe risks relating to Covid-19, through to how to use customer needs analysis techniques to improve risk functions. The management of risk in major programs and the linkage between strategy, people and risk are explored too.
My aim was to help people (especially those who don’t normally read risk management books) to think more smartly about the risks they take and the way they manage them so that we can all take better risks and I hope the way I’ve attempted to do that in the book will trigger some thoughts and reactions which might make a difference.
I hope that readers will enjoy my true stories of Kylie Minogue, Seb Coe, Richard Attenborough, John Bercow and others and that they will also like the other little stories from my life. I also really hope they will understand the quality and depth of my own experience from which I’ve drawn the related risk management tips. Underneath the fun and light-hearted tone of the book lie some very serious risk management issues and some very valuable lessons such as those relating to not ‘shooting the risk management messenger’ and not being overly embarrassed about admitting that things are not yet as they might be.
Covid-19 gave us all a reminder of just how uncertain our future can be. More uncertainty awaits us all around the corner. Better risk management will help. Creative and imaginative ways of influencing others can spark the right sort of difference.
Come on… we can do this!
Clive Martin is Managing Director of Clive Martin Consulting
“A risk management book unlike all the others” is available in paperback and ebook format on local Amazon/Kindle stores around the world.