The Chameleon in the Room - Five Star Book Reviews

FIVE STAR BOOK REVIEW
The Chameleon in the Room is a must-read for those managing risks!
By William Bastiaan on July 7, 2017 Format: Paperback

The writer looks beyond the obvious, makes comparisons across cultures. He ‘slices’ the concept of risk in fragments and does describe the obvious but, even more important, explains the non-obvious.

It makes you re-think, challenges you to look at things from a different perspective, and provides tips and direction, based on actual events. In short, very practical and a must-read for those engaged in the management of risks.

FIVE STAR BOOK REVIEW POSTED ON AMAZON.COM
Recommended to everyone who wants to deal with business risks successfully!
By Andriy Sichka on November 26, 2015 Format: Paperback

I always had a feeling that knowledge of the theory is only one part. Another, much more difficult one is finding a way to apply it in practice. Reading The Chameleon in the Room resolved majority of my doubts concerned with risk management. Written by a practitioner for practitioners the book shines the light on the areas left by theories in dark, and gives clear guidance for everyday practice. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to deal with business risks successfully!

BarrettWells

Oil Major Executives need to stop dreaming and reinvent their businesses…

Quoted by the Financial Times on Valentine’s day: “Philip Verleger, an energy economist, argues that ‘nightfall is coming’ for big oil companies, threatened on one side by the rise of renewable energy and climate policies that will curb the growth of fossil fuel demand, and on the other by the smaller, nimbler companies that lead the shale oil and gas industry.”

“The companies that are wedded to high-cost projects, like deep water in Brazil, are going to have to take some large write-downs,” he says. “The likelihood that those investments are going to pay off over the next 20 years is extremely low.”

Companies that put their hopes on a strong rebound in oil “aren’t going to make it”, he adds.

In fact anyone who has watched Jeremy Rifkin’s presentation on the Third Industrial Revolution & a Zero Marginal Cost Society (view it here: https://youtu.be/5mQj574Cv_k ) will realise that fossil fuel prices will not recover sufficiently to make current or future oil-major funded and developed large projects viable.

Oil Major Executives should abandon their pipe dreams about the golden days of crude prices returning, as they did before the previous price dip crises; el Dorado will not rise again from the mists of the future.

There is an oil glut because oil is in less demand; a fundamental shift towards renewable sources of energy has taken place and is gathering speed.

Oil Exec’s should take on-board Ms Nadya Zhexembayeva’s advice and reinvent their business models; her short but telling evocation to reinvent can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/f4kySpcdvFg

It is time to acknowledge that Change has Changed and to Embrace the Exponential.

Investing in renewable energy production, storage and distribution infrastructure is the only viable future strategy for the medium and long term.

Capitalism has Spawned Three Classes of Risk Taker

Real Businesses build infrastructure or provide goods and services that enhance the quality of life for people; while providing employment. Their success and often their very survival depends on effective risk management.

Financial Institutions only make money. Their survival and success largely depends on employing other people’s money to make money. While they bear very little risk themselves they allocate most of any profit to themselves; the people whose money they employ bear any losses.

Consultants and Lawyers make a lot of money for themselves by advising others to make decisions (take risks) but take very little risk themselves.

It is Real Businesses that are the builders, the decision makers, the risk takers, the growth makers. Successful Real Businesses benefit societies globally.

Risk is the Context of Life - The Chameleon in the Room
Decision Making is Risk Taking because Outcomes are Unpredictable

The Chameleon in the Room explains risk assessment and management in Real Businesses.

Click this link for more information.

Redesigning Work, Employment & the Social Contract - a presentation by Heather McGowan

Published on June 4, 2015
Heather McGowan - Academic Entrepreneur and Innovation Strategist

In this 23 minute talk presented in Australia recently, Ms McGowan provides an easy to follow view of the future of work, careers and the skills that will be in demand. It is both amusing and thought provoking. Certainly it is a ‘must see’ video that can be viewed on YouTube via this link: http://youtu.be/zDf-zENKDsQ

BarrettWells

BarrettWells Credit Resources is a trading name of T3P LIMITED
URL: http://www.barrettwells.com

A Global Shortage of Required Skills Threatens Prosperity in the lead up to and post 2030

A study by Rainer Strack presented in an amusing TED Talk indicates that by 2030, many of the world's largest economies will have more jobs than adult citizens to do those jobs.

What is worse there will be a global shortage of people with the skills to fill those jobs. In order to view this 12 minute talk click this link: http://go.ted.com/tdV

Using the example of Germany, Strack illustrates that despite the global population ballooning to about 8.5 billion by 2030 the working age populations in major producing countries will have shrunk. The situation in Germany is illustrated here, bearing in mind that the demographic profile utilised exists so the 2030 position is accurately predicted; ignoring immigration/emigration and any unfortunate calamity that may occur.

The same exercise applied to other major producing nations indicates the seriousness of the situation:

Of course the skill distribution amongst the working age population versus the needs of these economies in 2030 is more important than simple numbers.

In this talk Strack describes the Skills Mismatch that will surface despite the use of robots and other artificial intelligence in the manufacturing and service sectors. He points to the motor manufacturing industry as an area that has adopted technology to more or less replace people on the production line but has spawned associated jobs, such that more or less the same numbers of people are now involved in the process. However those new jobs require very different skill sets.

This leads to the conclusion that the global community needs to take urgent steps to ensure a suitably equipped workforce is available to maintain global GDP at adequate levels in the future. The reduction in workforce coupled with a probable skills mismatch threatens the prosperity of future generations if action is not initiated without delay.

Credit Management Magazine has Reviewed ‘Credit Risk Management – The Novel’

“This is the first narrative non-fiction novel to feature the true to life experiences of a team of professionals managing business-to-business credit risk, day-to-day. This is a ‘difficult to put down’ book, not one to gather dust on your shelf, or occasionally use for reference. There are a number of case studies that might pass you by, but will probably become relevant and applicable at some stage of your career.

Hard to imagine though it may be this is a credit management book featuring action. There are real life questions for the credit team to deal with. The team solves day-today problems in practical ways and discusses general issues as they add value constructively. There are interesting twists and turns, characters are developed, fascinating places are visited, and little known facts emerge. James and his colleague Jenny manage the credit risk for a global enterprise, and at the same time share their experience and knowledge to fellow team members and the reader. Great fun”

Credit Management Magazine is the journal of the CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF CREDIT MANAGEMENT
The Recognised Standard in Credit Management
December 2014 www.cicm.com
To read page 10 of the December issue, click here
© Chartered Institute of Credit Management

A Novel about Credit Risk Management ... No way! How can that work?

Credit Risk Management - The Novel (Part One) presents two cracking good stories for your enjoyment and enlightenment.

It is the first narrative non-fiction novel to feature the true to life experiences of a team of professionals managing business to business credit risk, day to day. This is intertwined with a parallel story that follows the adventures of Credit Exec and Secret Agent, James E Cricket, which provides an undercurrent of twists and turns.

Click this widget to browse inside a sample of this unique and innovative book, satisfy your curiosity….



Visit and follow the James E Cricket fictitious celebrity Facebook page to learn more about his early life, and other useful posts at www.facebook.com/jamesecricket.

To retain talent the role demands of Finance must change, by David Axson

In the linked video Dave Axson discusses the rôle that Finance Professionals should be allowed to play in businesses in order to retain and attract the talent that they so desperately need.
Dave Axson is author of The Management Mythbuster (John Wiley & Sons 2010) and MD of Accenture.

“What we are dealing with today is an environment where there are many more variables that could potentially impact your business. Twenty to twenty-five years ago you were concerned about your competitors down the street…..” click this link to view this short but interesting talk.

Time for Thinking

I’m sure we have all endured management practices that seemed to be more examples of how not to manage successfully rather than the role models we had hoped to find. Nevertheless these management practices all too often seem to be successful as organisations are carried along on the tide of a benign market cycle. They are only tested when the cycle turns negative.

The result of a negative turn of events is usually howls of anguish from those who have done little, thought little, cared little, planned and strategized little; yet drained their organisations of much. Executives with no vision and no leadership skills but big pay-packets, no, obscenely large pay and benefits packets, wonder how their genius could have suddenly escaped them…..

Robert Heller writing in the January 2009 Letter to Thinking Managers remarked:

‘….the effects of working for the largest company in the industry for so long; managers become ‘comfortable, insular, self-referential and too wedded to the status quo’. Such habits, folklore would argue, will get driven out of supine corporations by the threat of failure and the impact of competition. But this process is not automatic at all.

….twin cults have played a noxious part in the fall of America’s one-time world champions. The Cult of the Chief Executive elevated some quite ordinary men into mini-heroes and mini-heroes into gods. The Cult of Shareholder Value, perversely enough, extracted large wealth from the value that rightfully belonged to the investors. The Congressional hearings on the Big Three auto giants and their pleas for bail-outs showed cultism at its silliest. The three CEOs turned up in separate corporate jets, with no documents or plans, giving the committee a field day. Would the trio accept a cut in pay to $1 a year? The Ford man reckoned that his massive $22 million was just about right.

The banks sum it all up: overpaid colossally, professionally incompetent, immensely conceited. That’s no way to run a bank, a car company - or the world economy.’

Today we hear only bad news, but is it all bad? It cannot be bad that inefficient, and incompetent leaders who lack vision and act only out of selfish greed are removed from the corporate decision making process. It is not bad that excess productive capacity is trimmed – redirecting scarce world resources to more useful activity.

There is no doubt that we live through a time of painful transition for many people, a transition that could have been eased, less radical, and spread over a longer time period if corporate leaders had had the skills and vision for which they were so handsomely rewarded.

Edward de Bono wrote in his January 2009 Letter to Thinking Managers:

‘Most executives regard thinking as a luxury. It is enough to follow the routines. Continuity is everything. Now and again there is a need to analyse a situation to identify a standard element and then the standard response can be applied.

When things are going well, then this continuity works because you are carried along on the tide of success. Unfortunately, the reverse happens when things are going badly, because the tide is going in the opposite direction.

Better thinking is never a luxury. Better thinking is an absolute necessity in difficult times.

This better thinking includes creativity. There is a need for creativity in order to look at things in a different way.’

Although many businesses will benefit from the state of transition in which we find the world economy; let us hope that new leaders of vision and compassion will emerge to enable the whole world economy to expand and prosper to the benefit of all participants.

Ron Wells

Members can subscribe to the Letter to Thinking Managers at http://www.thinkingmanagers.com