Ruth Murray-Webster and David Hillson have been working together since the late 1990s, bringing their complementary skills and expertise to bear on real-world problems in organisations of all types, large and small, across a wide range of industries and countries. As thought-leaders who are also practitioners, Ruth and David have sought to make their ideas accessible by writing books that explain their thinking in a way that enables others to implement them in practice.
Their latest book, Making Risky and Important Decisions, builds on a wide range of original and unique supporting ideas that were developed during over twenty years of thought-leadership, and which have been described in Ruth and David’s three earlier ground-breaking publications:
- Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude (second edition, Gower, 2007) brought together the language of risk and risk-taking with the language of emotional intelligence and emotional literacy to create a unique framework for intentionally managing behaviour.
- Managing Group Risk Attitude (Gower, 2008) focused on decision-making groups, using original phenomenological research to create new insights into influences that drive group behaviour in risky situations.
- A Short Guide to Risk Appetite (Gower, 2012) harmonised the concepts of risk appetite and risk attitude, cutting through confusing terminology and confused thinking to create a practical way of understanding ‘how much risk is too much risk’.
For more details of these books, see below.
Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude
The second edition of this unique and significant book by David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster was published by Gower Publishing in 2007 (ISBN 978-0-566-08798-1).
This book brings together leading-edge thinking on risk attitudes and emotional literacy to create a unique resource for those wishing to move beyond mere implementation of a risk process and towards a people-centred approach for risk management. However, no prior knowledge of emotional literacy is required by the reader, neither is knowledge of risk attitudes or psychology.
Managing Group Risk Attitude
This second book by Ruth Murray-Webster and David Hillson builds on Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude, and was published by Gower in May 2008 (ISBN 978-0-566-08787-5).
Based on the authors’ own experience and research, Managing Group Risk Attitude considers how groups of people make decisions that they perceive as risky and important.
A unique framework is developed and applied, providing a practical model using applied emotional literacy to manage risk attitude.
A Short Guide to Risk Appetite
Risk appetite is a hot topic, driven both by corporate governance requirements and senior managers’ need to make risk-based decisions. But despite the high level of interest, there is no consensus on what risk appetite is, how it should be expressed or measured, or how it can be practically used in business or projects.
In the third book to emerge from their successful partnership, A Short Guide to Risk Appetite (published in October 2012), David Hillson & Ruth Murray-Webster cut through the confusion to produce clear definitions and simple guidelines, helping us to answer the important question: “How much risk should we take?”