J.W. Mayo Consulting

Renowned author, speaker, award winning project manager, and internationally recognized risk management expert Joseph W. Mayo is the President of J.W. Mayo Consulting Services. Mr. Mayo is the principle of J.W. Mayo Consulting, LLC (JWMC). Mr. Mayo is a seasoned IT professional with more than 28 years of experience in the IT industry. Mr. Mayo is a Project Management Institute (PMI) certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Risk Management Professional (RMP). Mr. Mayo is also Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). As an author and active industry volunteer, Mr. Mayo strives to further global project management and risk management practices for the benefit of all.

About the JWMC

Over the years I found that people and books tend to overcomplicate a variety of risk management and project management topics. To counter this trend, I like to breakdown risk management and project management topics to their fundamental elements. Once these fundamental elements are individually understood the entire topic becomes easily understandable. While conducting research for my book Chaos to Clarity – The Tao of Risk Management I noticed a number of similarities between the fundamental elements of risk management and the eight principles of Taoism (pronounced Dow . ism). Taoism is a lifestyle that originated in China around the 6th Century BCE. Taoism is based on eight principles; simplicity, sensitivity, flexibility, independence, focused, cultivated, disciplined, and joyous. Chaos to Clarity – The Tao of Risk Management presents a simplified, effective approach to risk management and describes the relationship between effective risk management and the eight principles of Taoism. While researching case studies for Chaos to Clarity a nagging question formed in the back of my mind. That question was, "Why do we keep making the same mistake over and over again?" This nagging question gave birth to my second book, Cultural Calamity - Culture Driven Risk Management Disasters and How to Avoid Them. Cultural Calamity delves into the organizational culture to understand how culture affects an organization's risk management capability. Cultural Calamity explores a number of risk management disasters and over 200 years of risk management research. My second risk management book seeks to provide risk practitioners with the tools to identify cultural traits that can lead to disaster and offers ways to enhance risk management practices that can help prevent future risk management disasters.

About the Logo

After publishing my first book,Chaos to Clarity, I stumbled upon an article that described the ancient rune Jera (pronounced Year . Ra). The runic alphabet emerged sometime between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century. The runic alphabet known as Elder Futhark consists of 24 runes one of which is Jera. I noticed an interesting relationship between the description of Jera and two Taoism principles; focused and disciplined. Jera is known as the Rune of Success and is associated with the annual harvest. The harvest, like risk management, requires diligence, planning, and hard work. In ancient times a good harvest meant an easy winter with plenty of food whereas a bad harvest set the stage for a difficult winter including possible starvation. Similarly, effective risk management averts disaster and makes difficult market conditions easy to traverse and poorly executed risk management can lead to disaster. Characteristics of Jera include rewards for past efforts, fruition of plans, achievement of a goal, time to work with no time for complacency, and good spirits. The similarity between the Jera characteristics and my personal philosophy makes Jera an excellent foundation for the JWMC logo. The JWMC logo is based loosely on the Jera rune and represents much of what I stand; set a goal, build a plan, diligently drive the plan to completion, don’t be complacent, and do it with a smile.