Risk and risk management is a major concern for the large organization. Smaller businesses tend to ignore it. But they do so at their peril. Risk management is just as important for the smaller company, it's just less likely to have the experience and resources to do it.

Enter Brad Forsythe with Bulletproof your Business. This thick ringbound volume (nearly 300 letter size pages) is packed with practical advice for SMEs to manage their risk. It strongly follows US practice, but the vast majority of the book is equally applicable anywhere - you'll just need to take advice where there are local legal implications, for instance with employee agreements.

With that proviso, it's a superbly detailed guide - it's more than just a training guide for your risk manager, it contains sample agreements, managers' checklists, models for interaction and more. For the right audience, this is a must-have book.

A few small issues. The subtitle is "cutting risk for small business owners and managers". Now my idea of a small business is 10 or fewer employees, and often 1 to 3 employees. Such businesses really need a different book - this is much more aimed at the medium sized business, perhaps 10-100 employees. This is obvious because, for instance, it says the risk manager can't be the CEO (difficult for a one person business), and the sheer volume of effort required means that you do need a medium sized company to make it worthwhile. That's not to say small businesses don't need risk management too, it just has to be a lot simpler and quicker to execute.

Secondly, several of the major risks faced by small businesses just aren't faced. For example, small businesses face big risks if they rely on too small a number of clients/customers, if customers don't pay and if the business spends all its time on servicing existing customers and not on attracting new customers. These major risk issues (with a degree of exception on non-payment) are glossed over.

Finally, the style of the manual won't appeal to everyone. It's heavily structured, with a lot headings and marginalia. Some readers like this, others might find it gives them a headache.

Don't let these niggles get in the way of the fact that this is a very useful book that squarely addresses a real gap in the market.

At the moment the book isn't available from Amazon, but can be bought direct from www.bradforsythe.com at $59.95