Chris Bradley

Martin Hirt

Sven Smit

Beat the odds with a bold strategy from McKinsey & Company “Every once in a while, a genuinely fresh approach to business strategy appears” – legendary business professor Richard Rumelt, UCLA McKinsey & Company’s newest, most definitive, and most irreverent book on strategy—which thousands of executives are already using—is a must-read for all C-suite executives looking to create winning corporate strategies. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick is spearheading an empirical revolution in the field of strategy. Based on an extensive analysis of the key factors that drove the long-term performance of thousands of global companies, the book offers a ground-breaking formula that enables you to objectively assess your strategy’s real odds of future success. "This book is fundamental. The principles laid out here, with compelling data, are a great way around the social pitfalls in strategy development.” — Frans Van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips N.V. The authors have discovered that over a 10-year period, just 1 in 12 companies manage to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company’s current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to give it the strongest chance of vaulting over the competition. This is not another strategy framework. Rather, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick shows, through empirical analysis and the experiences of dozens of companies that have successfully made multiple big moves, that to dramatically improve performance, you have to overcome incrementalism and corporate inertia. “A different kind of book—I couldn’t put it down. Inspiring new insights on the facts of what it takes to move a company’s performance, combined with practical advice on how to deal with real-life dynamics in management teams.” —Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup Latin America

People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds

Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick

Henry Nonnenberg

Gwen Moran

A cost-conscious guide to building one's dream house on a budget takes prospective homebuilders through every stage in the construction process, from planning and financing to design and final details and explains how to reduce or eliminate costs on everything from purchasing the right piece of property, to negotiating loans, to getting the best prices on materials, supplies, and systems. Original.

Build Your Own Home on a Shoestring

Mike Cioffi

Sara B. Franklin

Just a few hours north of New York City, nestled in the picturesque Catskills, the Phoenicia Diner will take you back in time. It's a comforting respite that happens to serve the best pancakes you've ever had--and a damn good cup of coffee too. In their debut cookbook, the Diner shares their approachable, comforting dishes that have made them a must-stop in the region, from "All Day Breakfast" dishes like Twice-Baked Potato Skillet and K-Town Shrimp and Grits to elevated classics such as Roasted Chicken with Tarragon-Honey Glazed Carrots and Chile-Braised Lamb Tostadas. The recipes reflect the Diner's multifaceted culinary approach- a mix of all-American diner classics, and Catskills-specific items that highlight indigenous ingredients of the region and the cultural groups that have left their mark on the region (Jewish, Irish, and Dutch). The cookbook is also a celebration of the region and includes rich essays on the activities and culture of the area, culling from both its complex and fascinating history and the revival that defines it today. Most important, the food celebrates the long history of diners as cross-cultural scrambles of sorts, where hardworking cooks from all over the world have always worked the line side-by-side and left their culinary imprint. This is delicious, no-nonsense food. Whether you dish it up with a touch of salty service is up to you.

Dishes and Dispatches from the Heart of the Catskill Mountains

The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook

Steve Hoberman

Donna Burbank

Did you ever try getting Business and IT to agree on the project scope for a new application? Or try getting the Sales & Marketing department to agree on the target audience? Or try bringing new team members up to speed on the hundreds of tables in your data warehouse -- without them dozing off? You can be the hero in each of these and hundreds of other scenarios by building a High-Level Data Model. The High-Level Data Model is a simplified view of our complex environment. It can be a powerful communication tool of the key concepts within our application development projects, business intelligence and master data management programs, and all enterprise and industry initiatives. Learn about the High-Level Data Model and master the techniques for building one, including a comprehensive ten-step approach. Know how to evaluate toolsets for building and storing your models. Practice exercises and walk through a case study to reinforce your modelling skills.

A Handbook for Aligning the Business with IT Using High-Level Data Models

Data Modeling for the Business

Did you ever try getting Businesspeople and IT to agree on the project scope for a new application? Or try getting Marketing and Sales to agree on the target audience? Or try bringing new team members up to speed on the hundreds of tables in your data warehouse — without them dozing off? Whether you are a businessperson or an IT professional, you can be the hero in each of these and hundreds of other scenarios by building a High-Level Data Model. The High-Level Data Model is a simplified view of our complex environment. It can be a powerful communication tool of the key concepts within our application development projects, business intelligence and master data management programs, and all enterprise and industry initiatives. Learn about the High-Level Data Model and master the techniques for building one, including a comprehensive ten-step approach and hands-on exercises to help you practice topics on your own. In this book, we review data modeling basics and explain why the core concepts stored in a high-level data model can have significant business impact on an organization. We explain the technical notation used for a data model and walk through some simple examples of building a high-level data model. We also describe how data models relate to other key initiatives you may have heard of or may be implementing in your organization. This book contains best practices for implementing a high-level data model, along with some easy-to-use templates and guidelines for a step-by-step approach. Each step will be illustrated using many examples based on actual projects we have worked on. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, but the pain points and lessons have been preserved. One example spans an entire chapter and will allow you to practice building a high-level data model from beginning to end, and then compare your results to ours. Building a high-level data model following the ten step approach you’ll read about is a great way to ensure you will retain the new skills you learn in this book. As is the case in many disciplines, using the right tool for the right job is critical to the overall success of your high-level data model implementation. To help you in your tool selection process, there are several chapters dedicated to discussing what to look for in a high-level data modeling tool and a framework for choosing a data modeling tool, in general. This book concludes with a real-world case study that shows how an international energy company successfully used a high-level data model to streamline their information management practices and increase communication throughout the organization—between both businesspeople and IT. Data modeling is one of the under-exploited, and potentially very valuable, business capabilities that are often hidden away in an organization’s Information Technology department. Data Modeling for the Business highlights both the resulting damage to business value, and the opportunities to make things better. As an easy-to follow and comprehensive guide on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of data modeling, it also reminds us that a successful strategy for exploiting IT depends at least as much on the information as the technology. Chris Potts, Corporate IT Strategist and Author of fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology One of the most critical systems issues is aligning business with IT and fulfilling business needs using data models. The authors of Data Modeling for the Business do a masterful job at simply and clearly describing the art of using data models to communicate with business representatives and meet business needs. The book provides many valuable tools, analogies, and step-by-step methods for effective data modeling and is an important contribution in bridging the much needed connection between data modeling and realizing business requirements. Len Silverston, author of The Data Model Resource Book series

Chris Bradley

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