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chinney's review
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.5
Ritholtz rec. Includes checklists for ways to de-risk. Cross between memoir and how to.
skerhawx's review
2.0
A very basic exploration of risk that remains at the surface level and doesn't introduce new ideas in the discipline. Largely, it warns against hindsight bias and then spends the bulk of the book looking back at real examples where warnings were ignored. You're left with a general sense of "if so-and-so had only acted sooner..." which is often true, but unhelpful without a corresponding discussion of the tradeoffs involved and something the General should be quite familiar with ... the fog of war.
The good: McChrystal invites us to "operationalize" our risk response muscles, which he dubs our "risk immune system." That's true -- it's far better to develop internal capabilities that will weather multiple types of risks than to hyper-focus on one single risk that may or may not develop. He also skims some exercises in the final chapter that serve as a basic checklist for organizations that may over-rely on one or another.
But certainly McChrystal has a lot more to say on risk than is written here. Instead of writing about his experiences of risk, uncertainty, and lessons learned, he second guesses decisions he wasn't part of, with a corresponding recommendation of what he would've done differently.
There are many books that better address what he tried to cover here. For general stories of situations gone wrong, instead read "Meltdown" by Clearfield and Tilcsik; for a discussion of decision making, instead read "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman; for a better book on how not to fool yourself, read "The Scout Mindset" by Galef.
The good: McChrystal invites us to "operationalize" our risk response muscles, which he dubs our "risk immune system." That's true -- it's far better to develop internal capabilities that will weather multiple types of risks than to hyper-focus on one single risk that may or may not develop. He also skims some exercises in the final chapter that serve as a basic checklist for organizations that may over-rely on one or another.
But certainly McChrystal has a lot more to say on risk than is written here. Instead of writing about his experiences of risk, uncertainty, and lessons learned, he second guesses decisions he wasn't part of, with a corresponding recommendation of what he would've done differently.
There are many books that better address what he tried to cover here. For general stories of situations gone wrong, instead read "Meltdown" by Clearfield and Tilcsik; for a discussion of decision making, instead read "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman; for a better book on how not to fool yourself, read "The Scout Mindset" by Galef.
mfitz's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Great toolkit for assessing organizational risks at planning, operational, and completed stages. Will likely refer to it again. Tools common for most military folks, but great to see them applied outside of the operational military.
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