Mark Twain once commented "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter book." This book would similarly have benefited from more time. Its 534 pages could easily be boiled down to 200, and the repetitious writing would benefit from more planning and focus.

The book is a cross between:

a book on management advice,
a book on enterprise risk management, and
a book on operational risk.

It is the kind of non-technical book you flip through, reading every third paragraph, looking for substance. The substance is there, but extracting it takes some effort.

It is similar to a management advice book because it offers a very high-level perspective. It quotes Yogi Berra and offers checklists of priorities and strategies. As an example, here are the first four of the book's list of "20 Firmwide Best Practice Strategies"

Define operational risk for the organization.
Demonstrate a vision, mandate, and objectives.
Foster a culture of integrity and risk management awareness.
Manage the risk to the firm's franchise, reputation, and brand.

The advice is good, but it is high-level, non-specific stuff.

The book is similar to one on enterprise risk management because so much of its advice is general. It talks about corporate culture, the role of the board, segregation of duties, etc. In many respects, this is a generalist book on enterprise risk management with a focus on operational risk.

There is a fair amount of material specifically about operational risk. There are nice discussions of data collection, reporting, and the balancing of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Its discussions of efforts by institutions to share loss data are practical and better than are available in any other book.