Cut through information overload to make better decisions faster Success relies on making the correct decisions at the appropriate time, which is only possible if the decision maker has the necessary insights in a suitable format. Mind+Machine is the guide to getting the right insights in the right format at the right time to the right person. Designed to show decision makers how to get the most out of every level of data analytics, this book explores the extraordinary potential to be found in a model where human ingenuity and skill are supported with cutting-edge tools, including automations. The marriage of the perceptive power of the human brain with the benefits of automation is essential because mind or machine alone cannot handle the complexities of modern analytics. Only when the two come together with structure and purpose to solve a problem are goals achieved. With various stakeholders in data analytics having their own take on what is important, it can be challenging for a business leader to create such a structure. This book provides a blueprint for decision makers, helping them ask the right questions, understand the answers, and ensure an approach to analytics that properly supports organizational growth. Discover how to: * Harness the power of insightful minds and the speed of analytics technology * Understand the demands and claims of various analytics stakeholders * Focus on the right data and automate the right processes * Navigate decisions with confidence in a fast-paced world The Mind+Machine model streamlines analytics workflows and refines the never-ending flood of incoming data into useful insights. Thus, Mind+Machine equips you to take on the big decisions and win.

Every leader is different. Make the most of your leadership strengths with Leader ID. With a diagnostic test to discover your strengths and areas to improve, you’ll become a more effective, authentic and confident leader.

What’s your Leader ID? To be a confident, effective and authentic leader you need to play to your strengths. Leader ID will help you understand your inherent strengths and abilities, with practical and actionable insights on how to improve in areas where you’re not. Leader ID gives you free access to an online profiling tool with 45 statements to rate.

Once completed, you’ll receive a report detailing:

• Your Leader ID – a personalised report showing your scoring against the 9 leadership qualities
• Strengths – areas where you are naturally gifted
• Development – areas where further focus is needed
• Insights - actionable ways to develop your personal character, strengths and identity

Your Leader ID report is your personalised leadership action plan showing areas of strength and areas to build on so you can be a better leader. You can then use the book as an individually tailored road map for your professional growth as a leader. Each chapter includes helpful insights, tools, techniques and practices that will ensure development in each area whether you want to focus on improving your leader strengths or improve areas that need more focus. Whichever you choose, Leader ID is highly flexible and will take your leadership performance to the next level.

Leader ID will ensure you survive and thrive as a leader, both now and in the future.

Including contributions from leading experts in the field, this book covers applications and developments of heuristic search methods for solving complex optimization problems. The book covers various local search strategies including genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, tabu search and hybrids thereof. These methods have proved extraordinarily successful by solving some of the most difficult, real-world problems. At the interface between Artificial Intelligence and Operational Research, research in this exciting area is progressing apace spurred on by the needs of industry and commerce. The introductory chapter provides a clear overview of the basic techniques and useful pointers to further reading and to current research. The second section of the book covers some of the most recent and exciting developments of the basic techniques, with suggestions not only for extending and improving these but also for hybridizing and incorporating automatic adaption. The third section contains a number of case studies, surveys and comparative studies which span a wide range of application areas ranging from the classic Steiner tree problem to more practical problems arising in telecommunications and data analysis. The coverage of the latest research and the illustrative case studies will ensure that the book is invaluable for researchers and professionals with an interest in heuristic search methods.

Familiar modes of problem solving may be efficient, but they often prevent us from discovering innovative solutions to more complex problems. To create meaningful change, we must train ourselves to discover previously unseen variables in day-to-day challenges. The Design of Insight is intended to be a personal problem-solving platform for decision makers and advisors who seek answers to critical business questions. It introduces an approach that uses multiple "problem-solving languages" to systematically expand our understanding of problem framing and high quality problem solving. Useful as a critical thinking approach or a think-out-loud document for strategic teams, this brief is a resource for enriching and implementing thoughtful management practices.

Today's business world is under constant digital threats that can cause unpredictable damage and weaken the competitiveness of businesses. With digital transformation risks and cyber-attacks increased by extraordinary situations such as the recent pandemic, new approaches are needed in the management of these emerging digital conflicts to develop sustainable business strategies and become a robust business of the future. Conflict Management in Digital Business: New Strategy and Approach is a pioneering and innovative guide in the context of digital conflicts in the value chain of businesses and on digital conflicts in business management and strategy. Conflict management is discussed in the context of issues of production and planning, logistics, marketing, procurement, technology development, human resource management, and business infrastructure. Sectoral issues with conflicting businesses, organizational behavior, digital sustainability, cyber business management, cyber-attack, and cyberwarfare strategies for businesses are discussed in detail to bring crucial principles in the context of management and strategy to all businesses that desire to be a business of the future. Providing readers with a unique guide of how businesses can achieve resilience to digital conflict, Conflict Management in Digital Business helps prepare for unexpected situations such as pandemics, to maintain competitive advantage, and illuminating pathways to turn conflicts caused by extraordinary situations into opportunities.

"It has been said that in theory, theory translates into practice, but in practice it never does. This breakthrough book defies this conventional wisdom in a unique way. It is a must read for anyone interested in structuring derivatives products." — Dr Peter Carr, Principal, Banc of America Securities

"Harry Kat has done a masterful job explaining the world of exotic options and the role that these options play in building structured securities. Dr Kat conveys the essence of these products from the perspective of a very experienced financial engineer but in a fashion that the less experienced reader can easily follow and understand. In this, Dr Kat has shown himself to be a marvellous teacher. I'm confident that this book will prove to be one of the classics to be read by future generations of financial engineers." — John F. Marshall, Principal, Marshall, Tucker & Associates, and Founding Executive Director, International Association of Financial Engineers

"This is a refreshingly new and different book about putting together structured equity products. It is not a book about deriving formulas but a book about applying formulas. The emphasis on hedging costs and alternative ways of reducing those costs by modifying the structure will be appreciated both by those who actually manufacture and sell these products and those who buy them." — Don Chance, First Union Professor, Virginia Tech

"This book is about applications, about solving real business problems with derivatives.... Contrary to many other books in the field, the approach is managerial rather than abstractly mathematical, aimed at practitioners instead of applied mathematicians. Professor Kat's book contains all the mathematics required. However, the mathematical aspects play a purely supportive role, not the starring role. Bravo!"
— Anthony F. Herbst, University of Texas at El Paso, Founding Editor, The Journal of Financial Engineering

"It is certainly a unique book, much more useful that most new books on derivatives. In a nutshell, this book is very creatively done and a great resource for professionals."
— Mark Rubinstein, Paul Stephens Professor of Applied Investment Analysis, University of California at Berkeley

More than a fad, teaming is proving to be a new way of organizational life, with eight out of every ten employees now involved in some kind of teamwork. But how exactly does one play on a team at work? While there are plenty of manuals, trainers, and theories that help managers create, lead, and reward teams, actual team members are often left struggling without a handbook or a coach.
With refreshing clarity and common sense, Maureen O'Brien, a team expert with more than twenty years of experience as a player, coach, and business consultant, offers one-on-one coaching tips to team players in Who's Got the Ball? The author covers all the bases, from setting a team's goals and articulating its noble purpose, to banishing boring meetings, deciding how to make decisions, and even using flip charts effectively. Friendly and conversational, O'Brien offers experience-based, easy-to-implement guidelines that are eminently practical and surprisingly fun. Her concise coaching notes, wonderfully illustrated by real-life organizational situations, address every aspect of daily team life, including: creating a workable team structure * being a valuable team member * avoiding common teamwork traps * running an effective team meeting * making and implementing decisions * leading a team.
From developing a new team and determining just what kind of game your team is playing--individualistic baseball, interdependent basketball, or tightly orchestrated football--to dealing with personality-based conflicts, knowing when to take a time-out, and honoring a project's most valuable player, Who's Got the Ball? is an invaluable guide to surviving--and thriving--on today's work teams.

Decisions in businesses and organizations are too often based on fads, fashions and the success stories of famous CEOs. At the same time, traditional models and new cutting-edge solutions often fail to deliver on what they promise. This situation leaves managers, business leaders, consultants and policymakers with a profound challenge: how can we stay away from trends and quick fixes, and instead use valid and reliable evidence to support the organization? In response to this problem, evidence-based management has evolved with the goal of improving the quality of decision-making by using critically evaluated evidence from multiple sources - organizational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and scientific literature. This book sets out and explains the specific skills needed to gather, understand and use evidence to make better-informed organizational decisions. Evidence-Based Management is a comprehensive guide that provides current and future managers, consultants and organizational leaders with the knowledge and practical skills to improve the quality and outcome of their decision-making. Online resources include case studies, exercises, lecture slides and further reading.

Who makes the important decisions in your organization? Strategy, product development, budgeting, compensation--such key decisions typically are made by company leaders. That's what bosses are for, right? But maybe the boss isn't the best person to make the call. That's the conclusion Dennis Bakke came to, and he used it to build AES into a Fortune 200 global power company with 27,000 people in 27 countries. He used it again to create Imagine Schools, the largest non-profit charter-school network in the U.S. As a student at Harvard Business School, Bakke made hundreds of decisions using the case-study method. He realized two things: decision-making is the best way to develop people; and that shouldn't stop at business school. So Bakke spread decision-making throughout his organizations, fully engaging people at all levels. Today, Bakke has given thousands of people the freedom and responsibility to make decisions that matter. In The Decision Maker, a leadership fable loosely based on Bakke's experience, the New York Times bestselling author shows us how giving decisions to the people closest to the action can transform any organization. The idea is simple. The results are powerful. When leaders put real control into the hands of their people, they tap incalculable potential. The Decision Maker, destined to be a business classic, holds the key to unlocking the potential of every person in your organization.

Have you ever wondered why most newspapers are so large? Or why management consultants work such long hours? Or why hotels still insist on having check-in desks? Ask anyone in these industries, and their answer will be the same: "That's the way we've always done it."

"Best practices" may be widespread, but that doesn’t mean they're effective. In many instances the opposite is true: best practices can be outdated, harmful, and a hindrance to innovation. These bad practices are all too common in organizations, and managers and executives can be blind to their pernicious effects. Since they've worked in the past, or have been adopted with success by other firms, their purpose or effectiveness is rarely questioned. As a consequence, these practices spread and persist.

In Breaking Bad Habits, Freek Vermeulen, a strategist with a keen eye for the absurd, offers the tools to identify these practices and rid them from your organization. And, most of all, he presents a compelling case for how eliminating popular but outworn ideas, processes, and strategies can create new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Brimming with examples of norm-defying organizations in an eclectic range of industries--including IVF clinics, hotels, newspapers, and a famous London theater--Breaking Bad Habits will make you rethink your long-held beliefs about industry norms while encouraging you to reinvigorate your business by breaking out of the status quo.

Praise for Risk budgeting

"Professor Pearson has raised the bar for books on market risk. Moving beyond descriptions of VaR calculation and stress testing, he provides careful discussions of both the refinements and the limits of the VaR technique. Even more importantly, this book provides structure to the heretofore vague idea of ‘risk budgeting.’ "
–Charles Smithson, Managing Partner, Rutter Associates

"Pearson has written an excellent resource for risk management practitioners who actually need to compute and use VaR. Numerous concrete examples make a broad range of VaR techniques accessible to the people who actually need to use them. The book also provides tangible applications of risk budgeting, a term often used but rarely made relevant. Pearson has put meat on the bones for plan sponsors who want to actually employ risk budgeting techniques."
–Bennett Golub, Co-head of Risk Management and Analytics,
Founding Partner, BlackRock

"An excellent book. This text provides a bridge from the theoretical to the practical, and clears the fog between the buzzwords of risk budgeting and the realities of a useful new portfolio management tool. Pearson’s writing is well balanced between needed academic foundation and the practicalities of managing portfolios."
–Rob Roy, Director, Cash and Investments, Adventist Health System

"I just wish I could summarize this book as ably as Professor Pearson summarizes the voluminous literature on Value-at-Risk. Unfortunately, I suspect no further compression is possible. To reduce the risk of reading rubbish, your best bet is to read this book."
–Dr. Peter Carr, Senior Consultant, Risk Capital Management

This book provides students with an in-depth understanding of the concepts, frameworks and processes used to analyze and present visual data for better decision-making. Expert contributors provide guidance in translating complex concepts from large data sets and how this translation drives management practice. The book's first part provides a descriptive consideration of state-of-the-art science in visual design. The second part complements the first with a rich set of cases and visual examples, illustrating development and best practice to provide students with real-world context. Through their presentation of modern scientific principles, the editors inspire structured discussions of audience and design, recognizing differences in need, bias and effective processes across contexts and stakeholders. This cutting-edge resource will be of value to students in business analytics, business communication and management science classes, who will learn to be capable managers through the effective and direct visual communication of data. Researchers and practitioners will also find this an engaging and informative book.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Smart industry requires better management. As industrial and production systems are future-proofed, becoming smart and interconnected through use of new manufacturing and product technologies, work is advancing on improving product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency, and cost, optimally using supply chains. Presenting innovative, evidence-based, and cutting-edge case studies, with new conceptualizations and viewpoints on management, Smart Industry, Better Management explores concepts in product systems, use of cyber physical systems, digitization, interconnectivity, and new manufacturing and product technologies. Contributions to this volume highlight the high degree of flexibility in people management, production, including product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency and cost in being able to finely adjust to customer needs and make full use of supply chains for value creation. Smart Industry, Better Management illustrates how industry can enabled by a more network-centric approach, making use of the value of information and the latest available proven manufacturing techniques.

Bring Elixir into your company, with real-life strategies from the people who built Elixir and use it successfully at scale. See how Ben Marx and Bleacher Report maintain one of the highest-traffic Elixir applications by selling the concept to management and delivering on that promise. Find out how Bruce Tate and icanmakeitbetter hire and train Elixir engineers, and the techniques they've employed to design and ensure code consistency since Elixir's early days. Explore customer challenges in deploying and monitoring distributed applications with Jose Valim and Plataformatec. This book has all the information you need to take your application from concept to production. Adoption is more than programming. Elixir is an exciting new language, but to successfully get your application from start to finish, you're going to need to know more than just the language. The case studies and strategies in this book will get you there. Make a business case and build a team before you finish your first prototype. Once you're in development, form strategies for organizing your code and learning the constraints of the runtime and ecosystem. Convince stakeholders, both business and technical, about the value they can expect. Prepare to make the critical early decisions that will shape your application for years to come. Finally, manage your deployment with all of the knobs and gauges that good DevOps teams demand. Decide between the many options available for deployment, and how to best prepare yourself for the challenges of running a production application. This book picks up where most Elixir books let off. It won't teach you to program Elixir, or any of its tools. Instead, it guides you through the broader landscape and shows you a holistic approach to adopting the language. What You Need: This book works with any version of Elixir.

Praise for The Risk Management Process

"True to its claim, The Risk Management Process is a rigorous yet lucid and broadly accessible account of how the timeless principles of corporate finance apply to the management of risk. Written by an experienced consultant with impeccable academic credentials and incisive analytical thinking, this book is a must-read for the senior manager and corporate treasurer who aspire to integrate risk management with corporate financial management and business strategy."–George M. Constantinides, Leo Melamed Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

"Christopher Culp’s The Risk Management Process: Business Strategy and Tactics is a comprehensive treatment of the issues that face risk managers today. His book constructs a bridge to connect the theory and the practice of risk management, and Culp leads readers over that bridge with great care."–Peter Tufano, Sylvan C. Coleman Professor of Financial Management, Harvard Business School

"An unusually simple and lucid analysis of the risk management process. This book will be valuable for anyone trying to manage financial risk."–Ken French, NTU Professor of Finance, Sloan School of Management, MIT

"As opposed to offering us another dry, one-size-fits-all, mathematical approach to measuring or managing one risk or another, this book provides a general management approach to this important facet of managing any business in the twenty-first century, yet doesn’t shy away from sharing with the reader the underlying and necessary quantitative thinking that is required to perform the role of financial risk management. Culp easily switches between a statistical approach to risk measurement and a real-world approach to the particular exposure(s). In addition, it was refreshing to see the amount of time he spent on drawing the distinction between managing risk on Wall Street and managing the same risk within a corporation, which may have very different goals and success benchmarks."–Brent Callinicos, CPA, Treasurer, Microsoft Corporation

"The Risk Management Process is at the same time scholarly and comprehensive, yet readable, realistic, and insightful. Unquestionably, this is the right book at the right time, destined to become the standard reference work in the field."–Steve H. Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics, Johns Hopkins University, and Chairman, The Friedberg Mercantile Group, Inc.

A step-by-step guide for developing an operational plan that identifies specific results to be achieved within a set period of time, and for implementing and assessing every phase of the plan. Offers a simple, logical approach that can be adapted to any size or type of business.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured our imaginations-and become a distraction. Too many leaders embrace the oversized narratives of artificial minds outpacing human intelligence and lose sight of the original problems they were meant to solve. When businesses try to "do AI," they place an abstract solution before problems and customers without fully considering whether it is wise, whether the hype is true, or how AI will impact their organization in the long term. Often absent is sound reasoning for why they should go down this path in the first place. Doing AI explores AI for what it actually is-and what it is not- and the problems it can truly solve. In these pages, author Richard Heimann unravels the tricky relationship between problems and high-tech solutions, exploring the pitfalls in solution-centric thinking and explaining how businesses should rethink AI in a way that aligns with their cultures, goals, and values. As the Chief AI Officer at Cybraics Inc., Richard Heimann knows from experience that AI-specific strategies are often bad for business. Doing AI is his comprehensive guide that will help readers understand AI, avoid common pitfalls, and identify beneficial applications for their companies. This book is a must-read for anyone looking for clarity and practical guidance for identifying problems and effectively solving them, rather than getting sidetracked by a shiny new "solution" that doesn't solve anything.

Managing Knowledge is an extensive and eminently readable overview of the most important ideas, tools and current applications of knowledge management. The authors rely on an innovative 'building block' approach and provide a detailed description of the most important knowledge processes in organizations.

"We are experiencing a paradigm shift from an industrial age to a service/knowledge age. We are all looking for new answers that will give meaning and purpose to our efforts, and make sense of knowledge processes. This book is an excellent tool: it is easy to read and contains practical examples which help us to deal with the issues. I enjoyed reading it." Heinz Fischer, Vice-President (Personnel), Deutsche Bank

"Knowledge of customer needs, markets, patents, products and processes is a key strategic resource in today's business world. The use of this resource, particularly in larger companies, is becoming a matter of survival in highly competitive and innovation-driven markets. The practical approach to knowledge management offered by Gilbert Probst, Steffen Raub and Kai Romhardt should prove an extremely useful tool." Heinrich v. Pierer, President and CEO, Siemens AG

"In this book Professor Pobst and his colleagues show in a great way how to systematize and work on increasing the efficiency of strategic knowledge management." Leif Edvinsson, Director, Intellectual Capital, Skandia

"Knowledge will dominate our entire 21st century social environment. Organizations will rapidly divide into those that know and those that don't. Leaders of tomorrow must make better use than they have done in the past of what knowledge their employees hold. This book will show you how." Bob Bishop, Chairman, Silicon Graphics World Trade Corporation

This book is about improving human decision making and performance in complex, dynamic tasks. The defining characteristics of a dynamic decision task are that there are a number of decisions required, that decisions are interdependent and that the environment in which the decision is made is transient and feedback is pervasive. Examples of dynamic tasks include the sustainable management of renewable resources and how businesses might allocate resources for research and development (R&D) projects. Decision making in dynamic tasks can be improved through training with system dynamics-based interactive learning environments (ILE's) that include systematic debriefing. Some key features of the book include its didactic approach, numerous tables, figures, and the multidimensional evaluative model. Researchers can use the developed "evaluation model" to gauge various decision-aiding technologies. How to Improve Human Performance in Dynamic Tasks appeals to those interested in the design and evaluation of simulation-based decision support systems, as well as policy makers, students, researchers, and industrialists concerned by the issue of improving human performance in organizational tasks.

The book takes the inventory control perspective to tackle empty container repositioning logistics problems in regional transportation systems by explicitly considering the features such as demand imbalance over space, dynamic operations over time, uncertainty in demand and transport, and container leasing phenomenon. The book has the following unique features. First, it provides a discussion of broad empty equipment logistics including empty freight vehicle redistribution, empty passenger vehicle redistribution, empty bike repositioning, empty container chassis repositioning, and empty container repositioning (ECR) problems. The similarity and unique characteristics of ECR compared to other empty equipment repositioning problems are explained. Second, we adopt the stochastic dynamic programming approach to tackle the ECR problems, which offers an algorithmic strategy to characterize the optimal policy and captures the sequential decision-making phenomenon in anticipation of uncertainties over time and space. Third, we are able to establish closed-form solutions and structural properties of the optimal ECR policies in relatively simple transportation systems. Such properties can then be utilized to construct threshold-type ECR policies for more complicated transportation systems. In fact, the threshold-type ECR policies resemble the well-known (s, S) and (s, Q) policies in inventory control theory. These policies have the advantages of being decentralized, easy to understand, easy to operate, quick response to random events, and minimal on-line computation and communication. Fourth, several sophisticated optimization techniques such as approximate dynamic programming, simulation-based meta-heuristics, stochastic approximation, perturbation analysis, and ordinal optimization methods are introduced to solve the complex stochastic optimization problems. The book will be of interest to researchers and professionals in logistics, transport, supply chain, and operations research.

This book shows, on numerous examples, how to make decisions in realistic situations when we have both uncertainty and constraints. In most these situations, the book's emphasis is on the why-question, i.e., on a theoretical explanation for empirical formulas and techniques. Such explanations are important: they help understand why these techniques work well in some cases and not so well in others, and thus, help practitioners decide whether a technique is appropriate for a given situation. Example of applications described in the book ranges from science (biosciences, geosciences, and physics) to electrical and civil engineering, education, psychology and decision making, and religion-and, of course, include computer science, AI (in particular, eXplainable AI), and machine learning. The book can be recommended to researchers and students in these application areas. Many of the examples use general techniques that can be used in other application areas as well, so it is also useful for practitioners and researchers in other areas who are looking for possible theoretical explanations of empirical formulas and techniques.

This book investigates in detail large-scale group decision-making (LSGDM) problem, which has gradually evolved from the traditional group decision-making problem and has attracted more and more attention in the age of big data. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for LSGDM with uncertain and behavioral considerations. To address the behavioral uncertainty and complexity of large groups of decision-makers, this book mainly focuses on new solutions of LSGDM problems using the interval type-2 fuzzy uncertainty theory and social network analysis techniques, including the exploration of uncertain clustering analysis, the consideration of social relationships, especially trust relationships, the construction of consensus evolution networks, etc. The book is intended for researchers and postgraduates who are interested in complex group decision-making in the new media era. Authors also investigate the similar features between LSGDM problems and group recommendations to study the applications of LSGDM methods. After reading this book, readers will have a new understanding of the LSGDM study under the real complicated context. 

Faced with ever-increasing complexity on a daily basis, the decision-makers of today are struggling to find the appropriate models, methods and tools to face the issues arising in complex systems across all levels of global operations. Having, in the past, resorted to outdated approaches which limit problem-solving to linear world views, we must now capitalize on complexities in order to succeed and progress in our society. This book provides a guide to harnessing the wealth inherent to complex systems. It organizes the transition to complex decision-making in all business spheres while providing many examples in various application domains. The authors offer fresh developments for understanding and mastering the global uberization of the economy, the post-modern management of computer-assisted production and the rise of cognitive robotics science applications.