
Автор: Elise Blackwell
Год издания: 0000
As she prepares dinner for her husband andtheir extended family, Suzanne hears on the radiothat a jetliner has crashed and her lover is dead.Alex Elling was a renowned orchestra conductor.Suzanne is a concert violist, long unsatisfied withher marriage to a composer whose music turnsemotion into thought. Now, more alone thanshe’s ever been, she must grieve secretly. But ascomplex as that effort is, it pales with the arrival ofAlex’s widow, who blackmails her into completingthe score for Alex’s unfinished viola concerto.As Suzanne struggles to keep her double life asecret from her husband, from her best friend,and from the other members of her quartet, sheis consumed by memories of a rich love affairsaturated with music. Increasingly manipulated byher lover’s widow and tormented by the concerto’smany layers, Suzanne realizes she may loseeverything she’s spent her life working for.A story of love, loss, sex, class, and betrayal,this psychologically compelling novel exploresthe ways that artists’ lives and work interact, thenature of relationships among women as friendsand competitors, and what it means to make a lifeof art.

Автор: Julia Shuvalova
Год издания:
Exercises in Loneliness is a collection of philosophical essays on a common topic of solitude that started as a series of blog posts. “There is something romantic and legendary about loneliness because every knight searches for the Holy Grail on his own. Even the best fairytales are born out of an extreme loneliness. So the secret is to stop asking to be saved and to start saving others. Before long you will see how your own loneliness subsides – like a tide that runs away with sunrise”.

Автор: Sanjiv Anand
Год издания:
A hands-on guidebook for making your strategy work with effective Balanced Scorecard design, deployment, and maintenance Execution Excellence is the practitioner's guide to real-world implementation. Designed by a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) thought leader with 30 years of experience and over 300 global implementations under his belt across a range of industry sectors, this guide gives you a hands-on framework for putting the BSC methodology into action. Clear, concise, and easy to read, this book skips the theoretical exposition to get right to the point—how can companies use BSC to effectively deploy strategy and drive individual and enterprise performance? You'll find the answers here. The discussion outlines the ways in which firms commonly fail in implementing BSC. These failures can be traced back to common design and implementation flaws: making the process too complicated and focusing on the BSC process rather than the outcome. The discussion will also cover design optimization across a range of key industry sectors. You'll gain expert insight into avoiding these missteps and the practical tools and perspective you need to implement BSC correctly the first time. While the Balanced Scorecard framework is widely accepted and praised, about half of firms that implement it fail to realize the full benefits. The fault lies not with the framework, but with the design, and more importantly—execution. This book gives you the information and tools you need to adopt BSC successfully. Design a BSC that truly and simply reflects your strategy Customize the BSC to reflect your industry's uniqueness Define clear measurements and ownership that suit your strategy Develop a framework for efficient data collection and reporting Implement effective reviews to keep your business on track Use your Balanced Scorecard data to close performance gaps Developed in the early 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard framework has been recognized as one of the most seminal business ideas in the last 75 years. Thousands of companies around the world use BSC to create and maintain a performance-oriented enterprise, yet just as many try and fail. Execution Excellence shows you what you need to know and do to become a BSC success story. Praise for EXECUTION EXCELLENCE «Execution Excellence is a very clear roadmap for any manager serious about improving performance with a team. Sanjiv has decades of experience solving problems with real-world companies and the challenges they face. This is a superb summary of his learning, communicated in concise, specific and easy to understand steps. I highly recommend it.» —RON SANDERS, President, Warner Bros. Worldwide Home Entertainment «This book is full of sensible, practical advice on how to improve your business using the powerful tools of the Balanced Scorecard. Businesses of all types can see how to achieve their goals more effectively and quickly if they adopt the techniques shown here. Read and prosper!» —JON MOULTON, Founder and Managing Partner, Better Capital «Sanjiv certainly did not disappoint. The book is certainly a compendium of incredible experience he has had as a Consultant in different circumstances. It makes for extremely interesting reading. It is full of substance with practical and implementable suggestions and explains in an incredibly simple and straight forward manner how a tool like the Balance Scorecard can help in terms of framing and implementing business strategy in today's complex and multi dimensional business world.» —AKHIL GUPTA, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises "If you ever wondered how great generals manage their troops, this is your chance. Sanjiv is the general when it comes to implementing the BSC, having seen him in board rooms. If you a

Автор: Naeem Siddiqi
Год издания:
A better development and implementation framework for credit risk scorecards Intelligent Credit Scoring presents a business-oriented process for the development and implementation of risk prediction scorecards. The credit scorecard is a powerful tool for measuring the risk of individual borrowers, gauging overall risk exposure and developing analytically driven, risk-adjusted strategies for existing customers. In the past 10 years, hundreds of banks worldwide have brought the process of developing credit scoring models in-house, while ‘credit scores' have become a frequent topic of conversation in many countries where bureau scores are used broadly. In the United States, the ‘FICO' and ‘Vantage' scores continue to be discussed by borrowers hoping to get a better deal from the banks. While knowledge of the statistical processes around building credit scorecards is common, the business context and intelligence that allows you to build better, more robust, and ultimately more intelligent, scorecards is not. As the follow-up to Credit Risk Scorecards, this updated second edition includes new detailed examples, new real-world stories, new diagrams, deeper discussion on topics including WOE curves, the latest trends that expand scorecard functionality and new in-depth analyses in every chapter. Expanded coverage includes new chapters on defining infrastructure for in-house credit scoring, validation, governance, and Big Data. Black box scorecard development by isolated teams has resulted in statistically valid, but operationally unacceptable models at times. This book shows you how various personas in a financial institution can work together to create more intelligent scorecards, to avoid disasters, and facilitate better decision making. Key items discussed include: Following a clear step by step framework for development, implementation, and beyond Lots of real life tips and hints on how to detect and fix data issues How to realise bigger ROI from credit scoring using internal resources Explore new trends and advances to get more out of the scorecard Credit scoring is now a very common tool used by banks, Telcos, and others around the world for loan origination, decisioning, credit limit management, collections management, cross selling, and many other decisions. Intelligent Credit Scoring helps you organise resources, streamline processes, and build more intelligent scorecards that will help achieve better results.

Автор: David L. Dotlich
Год издания:
With the demands of technology, transparency, and constant connectedness, and calls for higher performance, leaders from the front line to the C-suite face complex dilemmas that cannot be easily denied or postponed. These perplexing, recurring issues are familiar to anyone in a leadership role today, including: How do I balance my functional or business unit goals with the needs of my peers and the whole company? How do I support and promote others while still advancing my own career? How do I emphasize teamwork and still reward the “stars”? Can I really devote enough time and energy to both family and work? These are not “problems” but paradoxes—situations in which there will never be a single correct solution—and while they make many leaders feel overwhelmed and challenged, this remarkable book provides help. The Unfinished Leader is a modern handbook for recognizing, facing, and inspiring others to expose the real issues that underlie paradoxes in modern organizations. Leaders must first recognize situations they will never be able to “solve” and understand how to confront the barriers—in their own heads and their organizations—that push them towards seeking ultimate solutions that don’t exist. Leading through complexity requires giving up the illusion of control, consistency, and closure, while embracing the reality of being permanently “unfinished.” Drawing from interviews with 100 CEOs and top leaders from a wide range of companies—such as Avon, Nike, Colgate, DeutschePost DHL, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, and many more— The Unfinished Leader provides the mindsets and tools to recognize contradictory requirements, understand competing demands, and still be able to take action. No one can find or even should look for perfect solutions to impossible situations. The Unfinished Leader will help leaders at all levels understand and excel at their true task: guiding themselves and their teams through ongoing paradoxes, reconciling competing outcomes, continually changing and adapting, and thereby building lasting success.

Автор: Mike Kwatinetz
Год издания:
Insights for today's hot stocks, and winning strategies for tomorrow's, from Wall Street's #1 Tech Analyst This is not your grandpa's Wall Street. Stocks are more volatile now than ever. Even with all their potential for meteoric success, high tech investments are synonymous with high risk. This entertaining primer, by one of the leading tech analysts on Wall Street, offers a practical step-by-step guide for identifying tomorrow's hot stocks today. Why do certain technology companies succeed while others falter and disappear? Which businesses will rule the post-PC era? Kwatinetz discusses what's coming down the pike in the next few years and who the key players will be. He shows how to filter out the noise, and come up with an independent assessment of how much a stock is worth, and reveals ten rules of thumb that will help investors build a powerful portfolio.