Highwire Management: Risk-Taking Tactics for Leaders, Innovators, and Trailblazers (Jossey Bass Business & Management Series) - Hardcover

Calvert, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555425534 ISBN 13: 9781555425531

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 1993

Synopsis

Draws on numerous examples of working managers in organizations such as Aetna, MCI, and NASA to explain and illustrate how to manage the risk-taking process from start to finish, while giving careful consideration to the pros and cons of each risk. Offers specific, practical tactics and provides easy-to-use instruments that will help managers set priorities and develop risk-taking strategies and skills.

Portraits of working managers in organizations such as Aetna, MCI, nad NASA illustrate how to manage the risk-taking process from start to finish.

About this title

About the Author

GENE CALVERT is founder and president of Carpe Diem, a management consulting group based in Washington, D.C. He is a faculty member of the Institutes for Organization Management of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an associate professor of management at Johns Hopkins University.

"One skill that all executives attempting to manage technology need is the ability to evaluate and undertake risk.... Drawing from an impressive variety of sources, Mr. Calvert teaches readers to assess their current risk skills, challenge false risk assumptions, judge risks soundly, lower risk levels, control emotional responses to risk, and, perhaps most important, survive the inevitable failures."
—Industry Week

From the Inside Flap

Draws on numerous examples of working managers in organizations such as Aetna, MCI, and NASA to explain and illustrate how to manage the risk-taking process from start to finish, while giving careful consideration to the pros and cons of each risk. Offers specific, practical tactics and provides easy-to-use instruments that will help managers set priorities and develop risk-taking strategies and skills.Portraits of working managers in organizations such as Aetna, MCI, nad NASA illustrate how to manage the risk-taking process from start to finish. Offers specific, practical tactics and easy-to-use instruments for setting priorities and developing risk-taking strategies and skills.

Reviews

Calvert, an adjunct professor in graduate management at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, offers an intriguing thesis. The "changing business environment requires a revision of established risk-taking expectations and methods," compelling managers to "consider more favorably the opportunities . . . that justify a greater number of risks than in the past." They must seek taking chances as "an everyday tactic, not just an occasional strategy." This idea echoes the quip by Will Rogers that "even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Calvert adroitly fine-tunes his theory with detailed comments regarding risk-attitude inventories, decision making, chaotic times and planning. His coverage of case studies and his discussion of coping with emotions and failures are splendid. This well-researched study is an important contributon to management thinking.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555425534
• ISBN 13: 9781555425531
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 225