The practice of risk management has come under fire lately, given the upheaval in the economy. Firms that were engaged in risky activities, such as trading large volumes of complex securities, certainly made use of mathematical models and other risk management tools that were supposed to identify and quantify potential risks. This would allow them, so the thinking went, to take preventive action. Somewhere along the line, that didn’t happen.

The problem isn’t necessarily with the models but with their application, say several Wharton professors in a report, “Re-thinking Risk Management: Why the Mind-set Matters More than the Model.” more

While formerly leading a CPM office and now assisting companies in establishing their CPM offices, the question of staffing is always front of mind. How many people? What are their skills? What are some examples? Let’s review two aspects of the CPO team, the size and their leadership skills. The good news is that CPM offices and their staffs are self-funding: They bring in multiples of their annual budget. (Otherwise, why establish one?) more

Data flows through companies like blood through a body. It’s created by the transaction systems that capture sales, receive goods, watch processes, and process checks. It’s aggregated and passed on, moving through various processes before being presented to management and investors as The Truth.

Yet few companies can actually tell you how data gets from point A to point B, much less what happens to it along the way. Fewer still can tell you where data originates and what the definition of that data was, when it was first put into the transaction systems. Of the ones that can do this, even fewer can do it across the entire enterprise. more

Last week, I wrote about signs of growing protectionism among a number of the G-20 countries, as documented in a report by the World Bank, “Trade Protection: Incipient but Worrisome Trends.”

Peter Morici, professor at the University of Maryland, took issue with the topic, noting that “these measures pale by comparison to Chinese protectionism, which contributed importantly to the (financial) crisis.” Morici was referring to the Chinese government’s manipulation of the country’s currency, the renminbi or yuan. more

The term “thought leadership” usually makes me grimace.

That’s because the phrase often is used to gussy up content that is filled with more sales-and-marketing blah-blah-blah than thought. (Besides, what does it really mean to be “positioned as a thought leader?” Are there rankings? Is there a fantasy league that pits teams of thought leaders against each other? Does a Thought Leadership for Dummies book exist? Hmmm, note(s) to self…)

This white paper actually qualifies as thought leadership, which is refreshing since its author makes no claims about the competitiveness of his thoughts. Instead, Richard Pike of CCH delivers the goods on the current importance, and challenges surrounding, risk information. more