Risk

A User's Guide

By: General Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

Narrated by: General Stanley McChrystal

Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of Team of Teams and My Share of the Task, an entirely new way to understand risk and master the unknown.

Retired four-star general Stan McChrystal has lived a life associated with the deadly risks of combat. From his first day at West Point, to his years in Afghanistan, to his efforts helping business leaders navigate a global pandemic, McChrystal has seen how individuals and organizations fail to mitigate risk. Why? Because they focus on the probability of something happening instead of the interface by which it can be managed.

In this new book, General McChrystal offers a battle-tested system for detecting and responding to risk. Instead of defining risk as a force to predict, McChrystal and coauthor Anna Butrico show that there are in fact 10 dimensions of control we can adjust at any given time. By closely monitoring these controls, we can maintain a healthy Risk Immune System that allows us to effectively anticipate, identify, analyze, and act upon the ever-present possibility that things will not go as planned.

Drawing on examples ranging from military history to the business world, and offering practical exercises to improve preparedness, McChrystal illustrates how these 10 factors are always in effect, and how by considering them, individuals and organizations can exert mastery over every conceivable sort of risk that they might face.

We may not be able to see the future, but with McChrystal’s hard-won guidance, we can improve our resistance and build a strong defense against what we know - and what we don't.

This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF containing a chart and diagram from the book.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Gen. Stanley McChrystal (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“An absolute masterpiece on the subject of risk! Brilliant and highly entertaining, this book is essential reading for every leader, regardless of age or experience.” (Admiral William H. McRaven, US Navy (Retired)

“General McChrystal is swiftly becoming our most important leadership voice. Measured, meticulous, and filled with practical, pragmatic wisdom from both war and peace, his clear-eyed, unsentimental guidance cuts to the heart of our precarious existence. A must-read leadership bible for troubling times.” (James Kerr, best-selling author of Legacy)

“A brilliant user’s guide that demonstrates how managing risk is about how we lead, rather than getting mathematical equations right. Fundamental reading for any leader looking to understand and strengthen their team’s Risk Immune System.” (Annie Duke, best-selling author of Thinking in Bets and How to Decide)

A rehash on topic of risk but still of value.

In my humble opinion Risk is a great introduction in the topic. The book re canines most of what’s been written out there in the topic of risk but the stories told to illustrate the topics helps someone new to studying risk be able to grasp the concept in a way that will help them build open the ideas (nature of crisis and conflict) and the types of problems (structured and ill-structured) and how to plan and adapt those plans accordingly. Decision making exercises, pre-mortem exercises and after action reviews are all discussed with informative examples.

Despite the book being a rehash of the topic it is still a great resource for those new tot he topic. Policing (my profession) could learn much of value from this book.

Good Book About Risk by a Man That Knows About it

Truth in lending, I have the utmost respect for Stan McChrystal. This was a good book and covers multiple aspects of risk and mitigation. Some will not appreciate his commentary on modern events or even military culture and strategy, but it is hard to find flaw with the logic. Overall, an excellent book.

Good nuggets however wants no risk

There are good things to pull out of this book, however when Gen. McChrystal uses examples of good responses to COVID he exults complete totalitarian lock downs like New Zealand and praises CA response. This would work. We can take away all risk by locking everyone up and becoming bubble boys. The real risk is trusting people with their own freedoms while doing all you can to reduce risk. Disappointed.

Easy read introduction to risk management

Quite basic introduction to risk management principles, easy to read and nicely supported by famous anecdotal evidence. The chapter on solutions is way to high level to be useful. The principles are quite obvious for an experienced risk professional. Good read, not particularly educational

Good book if you are interested in Risk

General McChrystal does a good job of laying out how to look at risk. With hind sight he goes into the positives and negatives of multiple situations and shows how personal bias and other factors can influence your views of the world. He explains why a numbers based methods generally don't work. He explains why diverse teams should get better results.

And at the same time he is wrong about Afganistan, he is wrong about Covid-19. I mean he had access to the same government data that I had access to and his conclusions are 100% one political party is correct and everyone else is wrong. He is showing his personal bias to an extreme.

Another fantastic book by McChrystal

In many ways a follow-on to McCrystal's excellent book Team of Teams, Risk takes the case study approach and looks at a wide range of public figures and thinkers from different time periods to illustrate concepts largely concerned with leadership and organizational strategy. While there is arguably something of a political tilt to General McChrystal's case selections, notably Greta Thunberg's climate activism and the US government's intitial handling of the Covid-19 outbreak, these are minor trifles in an excellent book on leadership that adds additional context to the outstanding lessons of organizational leadership set out in Team of Teams.

comprehensive guide to riak

A holistic guide to identifying, assessing, and responding to risk. Many examples and anecdotes provides. The chapter on solutions is valuable

Good book but it inst what i was looking for

the book has very good points but it turns really repetitive and boring. I struggled to finish it.

Interesting from a system engineer view

The authors view of the risk immune system is an interesting view, similar to control theory. I liked how he broke down the different points of failure to control loops (communication is how he named feedback loops), and his analogies were fun to listen to. His political views were pretty obvious, but the stories were still interesting to compare to control theory, if somewhat short-sighted.

Great examples throughout

Nothing. Great read. Will listen to it again. I will likely recommend to others within the organization.