Consulting financiers offer an abbreviated, practical guide to risk management via performance benchmarking.
This overview proves, at the very least, that an abundance of words is not always necessary to explain a high-level business concept. In a scant 50 pages, Talbot and Jakeman describe and dissect performance benchmarking, here defined broadly as “comparing your organization’s processes and risk management performance against internal measures, industry standards, and best practices from other industries.” The authors focus primarily on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) because using them is “a key strategy for shaping and defining desired behaviors and outcomes—and, indeed, of managing operational risks.” In addition, Talbot and Jakeman cover performance standards, define performance and establish a reporting framework. A particularly helpful chapter discusses how to present KPIs to various audiences. While the authors emphasize the importance of a visual presentation, the visual aids needn’t be complicated. Talbot and Jakeman refer to the fact that they built a security-risk-performance scorecard for a multibillion-dollar organization using nothing more than Microsoft Excel. Despite the book’s brevity, it is enhanced with numerous figures illustrating causal links for KPIs, lag vs. lead indicators, KPI performance standards and more. Additionally, Talbot and Jakeman reference real-world examples throughout the text. The authors are careful to point out that, despite their value, KPIs require considerable thought in the development stage. One issue, for example, is to be certain KPIs are measuring the right things and addressing the underlying causes: “When things go wrong, it is tempting to allocate blame, ‘kick to contractor,’ or try to dodge responsibility. Unless the KPIs are truly meaningful and can specifically identify poor performance, this strategy is likely to be counterproductive.”
Given the authors’ considerable experience in this targeted area, business managers interested in managing risk will find this well-written guide of special value.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466377578
Page Count: -
Publisher: Resilient Risk, Ltd
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BUSINESS | BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION
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A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Categories: BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY
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BOOK REVIEW
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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