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

Mary Pat McCarthy (Author), Tim Flynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 21, 2003

What all managers need to know about growth in a turbulent world

Especially in these turbulent times, good risk management is about exploiting opportunities for growth while protecting value already created. To do this, corporate leaders must, first and foremost, learn to manage the chain of cause and effect between risk and shareholder value. Now Risk shows them how. As vice chairs of the international consulting giant KPMG L.L.P., authors Mary Pat McCarthy and Tim Flynn are uniquely qualified to offer executives and senior managers this ultimate primer on risk and its optimization and management.

• Packed with case studies and exclusive interviews with executives of many Fortune 500 companies
• Explores the most successful risk management strategies now in use internationally and offers prescriptions for adapting them to any company

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Pat McCarthy is vice chair of the Information, Communications, and Entertainment Practice of KPMG L.L.P. and is the coauthor of Digital Transformation, Security Transformation, and Agile Business in Fragile Times. Tim P. Flynn is vice president and global head of Assurance at KPMG L.L.P. Both authors live in Mountain View, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (November 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071434712
• ISBN-13: 978-0071434713
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #949,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Simplistic review of topics without much detail, September 5, 2006

By 

SF Native "SF Native" (San Francisco, Ca) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Risk From the CEO and Board Perspective: What All Managers Need to Know About Growth in a Turbulent World (Hardcover)

I purchased this book hoping to get some deeper understanding of risk (e.g., approaches for measuring risk, how to quantify risk.) This book was way too high level to achieve that goal. It is a quick read with lots of case examples that would be helpful if you're giving someone a high level overview of Risk Management. However, if you want to understand these topics at a slightly detailed level or deeper, you should probably look at the more text book style books on risk management.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, April 21, 2004

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Risk From the CEO and Board Perspective: What All Managers Need to Know About Growth in a Turbulent World (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Highly Recommended Read, February 26, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Risk From the CEO and Board Perspective: What All Managers Need to Know About Growth in a Turbulent World (Hardcover)

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.