Читать книгу Conflict Minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo - Dylan Scudder - Страница 13

Introduction

This book aims to help business leaders of today and tomorrow learn how to stay profitable in an increasingly volatile world. Drawing on the latest risk management research, Conflict Minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo provides an immersive reading experience based on the real-world case of a global company responding to a highly uncertain environment in the midst of armed conflict. The central challenge concerns how to reconcile the competing demands of diverse stakeholders: those most interested in immediate and long-term profitability, social concerns and environmental priorities. The book is grounded in the insight that such issues are always interdependent. As such, companies that ignore their stakeholders put their own future viability at risk.

This is easy to say, but much more difficult to realize. Following the PDCA model made popular by W. Edward Deming and refined in Japan, the book is organized around the four phases of Planning, Doing, Checking and finally, Acting. Within this framework, readers develop competencies by working through business challenges that they prepare for, engage in, reflect on and then draw lessons from that can be ←xv | xvi→applied to the next round of challenges they encounter. Readers work as managers at Pentalemma Inc., a major risk advisory that has several large multinational corporations in its client base. Conflict Minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo is part of a series of books on leadership in complex environments, each covering a different location and linked to a specific industry facing its own unique set of challenges. Each book in the series is written as a trilogy with three distinct phases.

The main question for readers is how to select an optimum business strategy from among several that emerge over the course of the session. They receive a series of reports and press releases, which generate a realistic working environment and expose them to modern business concepts. Parallel to this, they are informed by various advisors, such as business mentors or problem-solving specialists. The experience of reading the book is similar to the experience of managing other urgent problems at work, namely, through a flurry of emails and discussions. Immediately after preparing for the upcoming scenario, it’s down to business. Rather than the traditional outdoor adventure, classroom lecture or hi-tech animation, readers are embedded in a corporate team and focused on a complex issue that must be solved without delay.

Learning is optimized by immersing readers in high-impact business challenges through intense but entirely plausible scenarios. These might be set anywhere in the world—from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Japan. What they have in common is the struggle of making critical decisions in the face of uncertainty. Readers must find practical solutions within quickly changing, high-risk situations. By the end of each chapter, readers will have chosen the plan they think their client company should adopt. The outcome, in the form of client feedback, company results and broader social reaction, will be shared with them through review material that describes plausible outcomes to the decisions they made.

In short, the book emphasizes risk awareness and mitigation by demonstrating for current and future managers how planning for the potential consequences of their everyday decisions helps protect them and their stakeholders from unnecessary risk.

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