Breaking Failure ─ How to Break the Cycle of Business Failure and Underperformance Using Root Cause, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, and an Early Warning System

This guide brings together three simple, risk-free, low-cost ways to break cycles of business failure and underperformance: techniques that have repeatedly demonstrated their effectiveness in high-stakes, mission-critical disciplines outside business. Drawing on decades of work in manufacturing and space exploration, you’ll learn how to use Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to uncover the root cause of problems, so you can solve them and once and for all. Next, utilizing well-proven Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) techniques, you’ll learn how to anticipate potential failure points before you introduce products, implement strategy, or launch marketing campaigns. Third, you’ll learn how to use an Early Warning System (EWS) to identify “driver” variables in your business, gaining timely and actionable insights without the intense complexity of conventional predictive modeling. The techniques presented inBreaking Failure aren’t new or trendy: they’ve been working for decades, with lives and billions of dollars on the line. If you want to prevent business failure and underperformance, they’ll work for you, too.For wide audiences of executives, entrepreneurs, managers, marketers, strategists, consultants, and other business professionals who want to improve their performance, reduce their risk of failure in projects or strategy, and move forward in their careers.

ALEXANDER D. EDSEL (Dallas/Fort Worth, TX Area) is Director of Marketing Masters Programs and Faculty Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas. There, he designed and launched the university’s MS in Marketing program, which in three years has become one of the nation’s largest programs of its kind. Before joining the University, he served as Manager of the OTC Department of Wellpoint’s PBM Business Unit, with responsibility for P&L and for developing marketing strategy and plans surrounding Wellpoint’s private label product line. As Owner/Partner of Kalex Co., he has performed marketing consulting and digital project outsourcing for nearly fifteen years, specializing in healthcare and finance.