The purpose of this book is to change thinking about crises and risk. Risk management is today both a great success, an impressive achievement, and a notable failure. It works, and it doesn't work. It saves lives and property, and it fails to save lives and property. It helps and it hinders. Like all such management approaches, this has a lot to do with how it is employed and practiced, but in the case of risk management there is also a much more fundamental issue. The risk management framework, the risk management model, is wrong. Many organisations today treat all risks as point events, when the real risks involve systemic threats inherent in the global economy, and the uncertain nature of global society. The book argues that risk management has come a long way, but that evidence of its more recent failure is now all around us and that it needs to now change dramatically if it is to accommodate current realities. Whilst there is a clear need for us all to manage risk through a crisis, there is a lack of understanding of the nature of crises that is impeding progress. As well as providing a conceptual basis for changing the way risk management is undertaken, the book provides a blueprint for managing at organisational level through a global crisis, and, to a more limited extent, at government and other levels; how to prepare, what to do when it's happening and how and when to emerge into the post-crisis world.
Professor Tony Bendell is committed to making organisations less fragile and more antifragile. This was the rationale behind his 2014 Gower book Building Anti-Fragile Organisations and the establishment of the <a href="https://www.theanti-fragilityacademy.com/" target="blank">Anti-Fragility Academy</a> in 2012, for whom he acts as Lead Consultant & Trainer. During the COVID-19 pandemic he has focused more specifically on how to make organisations more Crisis Proof, which is the subject of his new book Time to Rethink Risk Management: Surviving Future Global Crises to be published by World Scientific Publishing in 2022.
He is distinguished for, amongst other qualities, an incisive intellect that draws him to innovative thinking and its application to his field, an infectious passion about business improvement, and an idiosyncratic sense of humour. These are all qualities that lie behind his quest to bring Antifragility into the practical domain of business and entrepreneurship.
He is also an international expert speaker, consultant and trainer working through his company, <a href="https://www.servicesltd.co.uk/" target="blank">Services Limited</a>, with extensive experience in the fields of Quality Management, Organisational Excellence, Lean Operations and Six Sigma, sharing views that are always stimulating, challenging and of practical importance, making him a well-known invited keynote speaker at conferences and events worldwide. In normal times, typically he undertakes circa 5 to 10 major external lectures and international Conference Chairs a year.
A respected academic, he was formerly the Rolls-Royce funded Professor of Quality and Reliability Management at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom (UK), and previously the East Midlands Electricity Professor of Quality. Tony has had both an outstanding academic career and an extensive professional consultancy role at the highest level within both manufacturing and service organisations and the public sector.
He is a leading figure internationally in quality and productivity improvement, and in the excellence and public sector transformation movements. In this arena he has fought for the implementation of lean as an alternative to the pervasive climate of 'slash and burn' in public services. He has published extensively and is principal author of the best-selling Financial Times book Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage, which is available in six languages. He has authored over 70 published refereed research papers, 30 professional articles, and 10 management videos.
Tony has always been at the forefront of business and public sector innovation and practice. He was a major contributor to the UK National Quality Campaign and the Managing in the 90s programmes. He currently chairs the MS6 Technical Committee of BSI, which is responsible for statistical methods in process improvement and lead on the development of the ISO auditable international standard for Six Sigma and Lean implementation, ISO 18404. He is also active on the Business Improvement Section Committee and the ISO 18404 Oversight Committee of the London based Royal Statistical Society. He has extensive experience in advising and mentoring senior managers and board members to the highest level.
As well as having worked with the UK, Indian and Hong Kong governments, Tony works extensively in the Gulf and has chaired the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award Jury since the inception of the Award, thirty years ago. He is a GEM 2.0 Assessor, an EFQM Licensed Trainer, and a Competency Assessor and Auditor Trainer for the Royal Statistical Society's scheme for ISO 18404.
