Cognitive Risk: First Human-Centered Risk Framework
This book combines a multi-disciplinary body of work into the first fully articulated cognitive risk framework for enterprise risk management and cybersecurity. Case studies illuminate the root cause of corporate failure, human behavior and decision-making as well as new concepts to mitigate cognitive risk.
This book uproots the foundation of subjectively defined risk frameworks and replaces them with the science of risk. The first three-dimensional risk framework that puts humans at the center. A summary of the themes in the book can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chiefriskofficer_cognitive-risk-a-book-summary-coming-2022-activity-6912360166055100417-dJL0?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web
Why I wrote the book? After 20 years as a chief risk and compliance officer with one of the world’s largest financial money managers I realized that COSO’s ERM risk framework was badly flawed. After searching the history of risk management I came upon an interesting finding. Everyone involved in managing really complex risks, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, military leaders, engineers, healthcare workers, and shipping industry all pointed to human behavior and decision-making as the biggest culprit, yet no existing risk frameworks address or compensate for human behavior.
However, my search led me to discovery a wealth of science, research, and practical applications in behavioral science, decision science, behavioral economics, human factors, and cognitive science. What I learned is that risks are the results of human behavior and the legacy of decisions we either learn from or fail to learn from. Risk is also emotional which often misleads us to conclusions that are not always based in probabilisitic outcomes.
In other words, we don’t fully understand risks until we have experienced it and we often fail to recognize the underlying signals of risk even when they are in plain sight. Our innate inability to manage risk bothered me and I brought together a multidisciplinary body of work from different disciplines to help fully comprehend the three dimensions of risk: risk perception, human behavior & decision-making, and technology.
Humans are the creators of the world we currently live in and as we learn to master the elements that allow us to build shelter, raise food, and employ technologies for work and survival we are also wrecking havoc on the our body, minds, and the planet. Our own behavior has become the risk we are trying to avoid. Whether in cyberspace, outer space, or on our tiny planet the choices we make will ultimately determine our longer term survival therefore how do we begin to make more informed decisions?
This is the ultimate goal of Cognitive Risk. We must first become aware of cognitive risks in order to define the right mitigation factors to save us from ourselves. I hope that you find this book useful when it is published on Amazon.com and Barnes&Nobles.com or at Taylor & Francis the summer of 2022!
