Review: “The Failure of Risk Management”, by Douglas Hubbard

The Failure of Risk Management: Why It’s Broken and How to Fix It by Douglas W. Hubbard

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I had high expectations for this book after reading “How to Measure Anything”, and unfortunately none of them were met. My very short review would state: were it not for those high expectations, I would have stopped reading the book about 1/3 of the way in, but based on past performance, I stuck it through to the end. That was a mistake.

The defects in Hubbard’s second book are many. First and foremost, it is simply not pleasant to read. While “How to Measure” adopted a posture of helpful tutorial, “Failure” attempts to rehash most of the same material, albeit from a posture of criticizing almost every risk analysis method Hubbard has not personally worked on. The tone is shrill, smug, and “low emotional intelligence quotient”.