Author: David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster
ISBN No: 0 566 08798 7
Review date: 13/12/2025
No of pages: 208
Publisher: Gower
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Recently we gave a thumbs-up review to Fraud and Corruption, by Nigel Iyer and Martin Samociuk, a guide to prevention and detection of such crimes. What you could see as a companion volume, from the risk management side, has come out from the same publisher.
Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude, second edition, by David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster. They are trainers and personal coaches. As their background, and an early chapter of the book, suggests, they are alive to the ‘human factor’ to do with risk, whether it’s an indvidiual, a group or an organisation assessing and acting on risks. As the authors put it: “Too many risk practitioners (and the recipients of their services) act as if they believe that effective risk management simply requires attention to tools and techniques, systenms and processes. They seem to forget that these are all opearted by people, each of whom is a complex individual influenced by many factors.” A security practitioner might point to a flaw in the analysis: that the book only at the start admits to fraud as among the business risks. Otherwise, the authors seem to take for granted that staff might be better able to diagnose work risks, but they are basically well-meaning. Security managers who are tackling staff theft of assets and time may scoff at this. The authors stress ‘emotional literacy’. To be fair, the authors do address trust – namely, that the emotionally literate person has ‘a healthy balance between trusting too much and too little’, that is, being disposed to trust without being gullible, and having an answer to the question: how will I feel and respond if my judgement about you is proved to be wrong?
As a way to approach business the book is well worth a read by managers: whether they seek to manage change in their organisation, be a leader getting more from staff, set goals, or simply avoid failure. In a couple of words, the keys seem to be optimism and self-awareness. The authors would argue that by being able to understand emotions in yourself and others, you are better able to make the right choices in risky situations. True, this approach can lead to merely woolly language (how wide is your ‘trust radius’?!) but, the book argues, an emotionally literate company and individual can better take control in risky situations, where the emotions flare.
