The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It [Hardcover]

Douglas W. Hubbard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2009

An essential guide to the calibrated risk analysis approach

The Failure of Risk Management takes a close look at misused and misapplied basic analysis methods and shows how some of the most popular "risk management" methods are no better than astrology! Using examples from the 2008 credit crisis, natural disasters, outsourcing to China, engineering disasters, and more, Hubbard reveals critical flaws in risk management methods–and shows how all of these problems can be fixed. The solutions involve combinations of scientifically proven and frequently used methods from nuclear power, exploratory oil, and other areas of business and government. Finally, Hubbard explains how new forms of collaboration across all industries and government can improve risk management in every field.

Douglas W. Hubbard (Glen Ellyn, IL) is the inventor of Applied Information Economics (AIE) and the author of Wiley's How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (978-0-470-11012-6), the #1 bestseller in business math on Amazon. He has applied innovative risk assessment and risk management methods in government and corporations since 1994.

"Doug Hubbard, a recognized expert among experts in the field of risk management, covers the entire spectrum of risk management in this invaluable guide. There are specific value-added take aways in each chapter that are sure to enrich all readers including IT, business management, students, and academics alike"
—Peter Julian, former chief-information officer of the New York Metro Transit Authority. President of Alliance Group consulting

"In his trademark style, Doug asks the tough questions on risk management. A must-read not only for analysts, but also for the executive who is making critical business decisions."
—Jim Franklin, VP Enterprise Performance Management and General Manager, Crystal Ball Global Business Unit, Oracle Corporation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"…shows how to identify and fix hidden problems in risk management. He uses real world examples to reveal serious problems in common quantitative and qualitiative approaches to risk analysis." (Book News, August 2009)

From the Inside Flap

The 2008 credit crisis, terrorism, Katrina, computer hackers, and air travel disasters all have something in common-the methods used to assess and manage these risks are fundamentally flawed. If risks cannot be properly evaluated, risk management itself becomes the biggest risk. The Failure of Risk Management shows you how to identify and fix these hidden problems in risk management.

Ineffective risk management methods, often touted as "best practices," are passed from company to company like a bad virus with a long incubation period: there are no early indicators of ill effects until it's too late and catastrophe strikes. Exploring why risk management fails—the failure to measure and validate methods as a whole or in part; the use of components known not to work; and not using components that are known to work—The Failure of Risk Management shows you how to measure the performance of risk management in a meaningful way, identify where risk management is broken, and fix it.

Respected expert and bestselling author Douglas Hubbard-creator of the critically praised Applied Information Economics (AIE)—uses real-world examples to reveal the serious problems in our current approaches to risk analysis. Hubbard skillfully illustrates how to use a calibrated risk analyses approach, and the many benefits that go along with it, along with checklists and practice examples to get you started.

One of the first resources to apply risk management across all industries, The Failure of Risk Management provides you with the tools you need to hit the ground running with radically better risk management solutions.

Here, you'll discover:

• The diversity of approaches to assess and mitigate risks
• Why many influential methods-both qualitative and quantitative don't work
• Why we shouldn't always trust assessments based on "experience" alone
• The fallacies that stop you from adopting better risk management methods
• How those who develop models of risks justify (in error) excluding the biggest risks
• Adding empirical science to risk management

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (April 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470387955
• ISBN-13: 978-0470387955
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #170,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Insurance > Risk Management
  • #52 in Books > Business & Investing > Skills > Business Mathematics

More About the Author

Douglas W. Hubbard is the inventor of Applied Information Economics (AIE). He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of measuring intangibles, risks, and value, especially in IT value, and is a popular speaker at numerous conferences. He has written articles for InformationWeek, CIO Enterprise, and DBMS magazine. His AIE method has been applied to dozens of large Fortune 500 IT investments, military logistics, venture capital, aerospace, and environmental issues. Doug is the author of How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (Wiley).

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 72 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Addition To A Risk Manager's Library May 5, 2009

By Rich Johnson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

How do we know if our risk management methods are working? Would we notice if they were not working? What are the consequences if they are not working? These are the three basic questions that Douglas Hubbard asks in his book The Failure of Risk Management.

In this book Mr. Hubbard lays out the basics of risk management and explains why many risk management methods are worse than useless. He also provides some ideas and first steps to fix the problem.

Here's a brief walk though 'The Failure of Risk Management':

Part I introduces the history of risk management and the problems with modern risk management methods. Independent events, for instance, are often times not independent at all. This common-mode failure is unaccounted for by many managers, yet can be devastating in an emergency.

Part II of the book goes in depth with some of the problems and failures of risk management, and to me was the most interesting part of the book. Chapter 4 is called The "Four Horseman" of Risk Management, and describes the differences between what the author considers the four main classes of risk managers. The four classes are actuaries, "war quants," economists, and management consultants. Each group has distinctly different methods and areas of expertise, as well as different levels of validation.

Chapter 5 is about how risk should be defined, and why different people may actually be talking about different things when they discuss volatility and risk. Chapter 6 breaks down why humans are not good at subjective methods (which lays the ground work for later chapters introducing quantitative methods). There are a few "calibration" tests available for you to see how overconfident you are in your decision making.... These are pretty interesting, and even after reading about overconfidence I still did poorly on them.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 talk about problems with subjective scoring methods, problems with describing one-off events, and the problems with some quantitative models. The author talks about "black swans," as described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and how they relate to modeling. Many times people believe that events can't be modeled, but the author believes this is not so.

The last section of the book, Part III, gives some ideas on how to fix risk management. Adding empiricism is a big start, as well as calibration of subjective human inputs. Many companies build and use models, but then they don't actually bother to see how well the things have performed in the past. I will leave the rest of the solutions for you to read in the book.

Recommendation:

First off, the author says this book is geared towards all types of risk management, and all types of industries, and I think this is true. The author uses a wide variety of examples from airplane engine failures to volcano eruptions. But I still feel like this book is more geared towards enterprise risk management, and less towards the already quant heavy fields such as actuarial science or credit risk management. But it was an interesting read nonetheless.

It seems like in the past 20 years there have been several so-called "once-in-a-lifetime events," such as the floods of Hurricane Katrina or any of the financial crisis, including 1987, 1998, 2000, or 2008. I wish I had the money to buy this book for every person who ever said "no one saw that coming."

I think this is a great book for anyone who deals with the potential for risk, loss, or damage - no matter if it is financial, personal, or physical. When the stakes are high we should be careful relying on a risk matrix developed by a management consultant, and Douglas Hubbard will tell you why. If you work in risk management, or if you have influence on the operational strategy of some organization, then this book is a must read. Read more ›

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Most Important and Valuable Business Books Written in Many Years January 24, 2010

By Steven Kirkpatrick

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have been involved in business consulting, investment management, business valuation and corporate governance for most of the past 25 years, and I can say without hesitation that Doug Hubbard's book on The Failure of Risk Management is an outstanding and elucidating work. I have never been a risk manager per se, but I have frequently been deeply involved in risk assessment and risk management activities, so I do have firsthand experience in this topic.

This book is an eye opener from the outset. In Part One of his book ("An Introduction to the Crisis") Hubbard begins with fundamental, obvious questions about risk management that everyone (not just risk managers!) should be asking. For example: How do you know that your risk management program is effective? Would anyone in your organization know if your risk management program didn't work? (...and how would they know - and define - that it wasn't working?). These are very simple, obvious questions, yet I have never heard them asked by management teams or even members of boards where I have served as director. Alas, there is a huge "placebo effect" in so much of what passes for risk management nowadays - perhaps that is why it is so popular.

For example, consider the following: If risk management programs really do work, then it seems logical to assume that companies in a given industry with a (self proclaimed) "highly effective" risk management program would show greater shareholder returns, less earnings volatility, and better safety and regulatory compliance records than other companies in their peer group who lack such a program. Yet there appears to be no valid evidence that current risk management practices, taken as a whole, serve to improve overall corporate performance. The evidence just isn't there....

In Part Two ("Why It's Broken"), Hubbard provides a thorough and convincing overview of the many shortcomings of modern risk management practices. As a self proclaimed "Quant," he strongly endorse quantitative analytics as the most effective approach to both measuring risk as well as the implementation of risk management programs. His approach is compelling and convincing; after all, if we can't measure accurately, how can we rely on our system of "assessing" (i.e., measuring)? It sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? Without metrics, what tools do we have, other than generalizations, hunches, intuition, and "gut feel"? Sure, certain qualitative techniques are helpful, but qualitative risk analytics is really effective (in my view) only for the most obvious risks, and therefore no better than having no risk management program at all. Indeed, Hubbard makes a compelling argument that ineffective risk management can be worse - possibly much worse - than having no risk management program at all.

Part Two also includes concepts that Hubbard brilliantly applies to risk management practices. This includes certain characteristics of human nature, such as a proven tendency to be overconfident in our estimates (of risk, but also of other estimates), that must be acknowledged and addressed in order for risk management programs to work effectively. He also provides a practical method of adjusting or "calibrating" for such overconfidence. Similarly, there is a fascinating discussion on risk correlations and how risk events seldom materialize in isolation from one another. Consider (my own example) certain risk correlations in mortgage banking. Banks that invested in mortgage backed securities no doubt undertook some sort of risk analysis of these investments. They also had risk management systems in place for their mortgage lending business. But how many lenders tied these two risk programs together, and properly concluded that a collapse of one market would also result in the collapse of the other? Thus, it's not just a case of accurately assessing and management individual risks, but also in considering the extent to which there might be a "domino" or "cascading" effect among different risk factors.

In reading Part Two (especially Chapters 6 and 9), it occurred to me that this book should be read by anyone and everyone involved in investing or lending money.

As one might expect, Part Three of Hubbard's book ("How to Fix It") embraces a scientific and quantitative approach to improving risk management. Once you get to this point in the book, you will find it very difficult to disagree. Another important concept introduced by Hubbard is that of language and communication with respect to risk. As a potentially murky and subjective topic (if not downright Byzantine at times) risk management systems require clear and concise language and terminology to be effective. Thus, if two different managers in the same factory concur that the likelihood of a risk event materializing is "very likely," we should not assume that they both agree on the use of the term "very likely." One may feel that this means the odds are one in three, while the other feels the odds are one in ten.

Hubbard is clearly on target when he proposes that risk managers apply scientific methods to risk management. His suggestions on how to do this are fairly simple and practical. Without such methodologies, risk managers are sailing through dense fog with an unreliable compass. You might even feel that you are making great headway, but if you can't measure where you are going, you will never know if you are really making any progress.

Finally, one of the greatest benefits to me in reading this book has less to do with the specifics of risk management and a lot more to do with the way people think. Consider, for example, why your sales team frequently falls short of their sales projections, or why so many portfolio managers buy stocks near their highs and sell near their lows. Or why risk management programs are so popular, and yet seldom work. Hubbard provides a brilliant and penetrating look into the human mind in the context of business decision making as a whole - not just with respect to risk. For me, this was an excellent "upside surprise" to this book. I finished reading this book several months ago, and I still think about it all the time. It has made a lasting and beneficial impression that I will never forget. Read more ›

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for every student getting courses in risk management January 24, 2010

By Johan Braet

Format:Hardcover

This book is a must for every professional, undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate student dealing with risk management. Douglas Hubbard manages to combine proper mathematics with the basics of measurement and still keeping things within reach of an audience that does not necessarily has to have too much mathematical skills. Speaking of experience, I started as a PhD in Physics using Monte Carlo for simulating Magnetic forces in semiconductor interfaces. Then I transposed these methods more than 20 years ago to medical equipment, did some work in safety, environment, food hygiene and finally ended up in innovation and entrepreneurship. All of these tracks have an intensive relation with risk. I saw many of the errors (and even more) in risk management as (nearly literally) described in this book. So the level of relevance is there.

The treatment in three parts is well done, the structure is both professional and inviting to read more. The skill Douglas Hubbard apparently has in combining almost prosaic phrases with good scientific content, makes this book to be a reference book and a novel at the same time. An example for many of us (including me) that do not have this skill. I applied already formerly likewise approaches but with the reading of the book, I succeeded in leaving some very heavy (and expensive) calculation programs for the marvelous and illicit Excel sheets Douglas is posting on his website, at least for some applications. As a tutor I take the book of Douglas and leave the "heavy programs" for later on. This "step up" is amazing for students as they get gradually into the complexity of the matter.

I read some of the negative critics and think some of the people did not read the book properly.... Of course when you are used to make large qualitative studies, I can imagine this book is at least a bit "annoying". But as I will always remember the quote of one of the Top Risk assessors and managers of Philips Medical Systems in Holland, "measurement is knowledge and when someone pretends to have a better risk assessment and/or risk management, let him prove to effectively be better". I love the way Douglas Hubbard takes these principles in to real life practice. I applied the risk approach as described in the book already many times and it does work amazingly well.

I strongly recommend this book to professional, tutors and students (getting) involved in risk (as well the risk assessment as the risk management). It can be applied to several domains of risk such as but not limited to: clinical trial, environmental risk, general business risk, safety of products risk, risk of medical equipment, food-safety risk, innovation & entrepreneurial risk (business plan or business case risk). That's were I already applied it with success.

Prof. Dr. Johan Braet, Antwerp University, Faculty of Applied Economics, Department of Environment and Technology, Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship, Risk Assessment (LCA) & Risk Management Read more ›