Author

Leo Sadovy
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Marketing Director

Leo Sadovy currently manages the Analytics Thought Leadership Program at SAS, enabling SAS’ thought leaders in being a catalyst for conversation and in sharing a vision and opinions that matter via excellence in storytelling that address our clients’ business issues. Previously at SAS Leo handled marketing for Analytic Business Solutions such as performance management, manufacturing and supply chain. Before joining SAS, he spent seven years as Vice-President of Finance for a North American division of Fujitsu, managing a team focused on commercial operations, alliance partnerships, and strategic planning. Prior to Fujitsu, Leo was with Digital Equipment Corporation for eight years in financial management and sales. He started his management career in laser optics fabrication for Spectra-Physics and later moved into a finance position at the General Dynamics F-16 fighter plant in Fort Worth, Texas. He has a Masters in Analytics, an MBA in Finance, a Bachelor’s in Marketing, and is a SAS Certified Data Scientist and Certified AI and Machine Learning Professional. He and his wife Ellen live in North Carolina with their engineering graduate children, and among his unique life experiences he can count a singing performance at Carnegie Hall.

Analytics | Risk Management
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A Plethora of Black Swans

I was under the impression that Black Swans were supposed to be rare. Rare enough to be effectively non-computable by standard methods. Nassim Taleb’s formulation of the Black Swan Theory is comprised of the three traits of: outlier (rarity), extreme impact, and retrospective predictability (i.e. 20/20 hindsight). I write this

Leo Sadovy 0
Plan V

Quiz time. Just to see if you learned anything from the last go around. The “V”, by the way, could stand for “volatile”, as in the 2008-09 global economic meltdown, or perhaps “volcano”, as in the 2010 eruptions of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Did you have a Plan V for the

Leo Sadovy 0
What’s a Budget for?

With the exception of the occasional James Bond movie that proves the rule, we don’t as a matter of course combine our modes of transportation into one all-purpose vehicle, and we even tend to park our cars, boats and planes in separate facilities. But when it comes to financial management,

Leo Sadovy 0
Making the “How Certain” Decision

Once you’ve quantified the risk surrounding your business decision (see my previous two posts on this topic) there comes the matter of presenting it in a manner that actually facilitates the decision making process, rather than bogging it down in irrelevant details. It’s not, of course, that executives are innumerate,

Risk Management
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How Certain is that Number in the Window

My introduction to the issue of risk in business decision making came rather abruptly and rudely during what I thought was going to be another routine quarterly business review with the executive committee. My particular agenda item was to present the business case for a “lite” version of one of

Risk Management
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How much, How soon, How certain

The best business book I’ve ever read (or at least the best by someone not named “Drucker”) has been “Competing on Value” by Mack Hanan and Peter Karp. Not trendy or full of consultant-speak buzzwords, first published in 1991, it’s simple, direct approach has stood the test of time, even

Leo Sadovy 0
Strategy Frameworks

Somewhat surprisingly, we all probably know what we mean when we use strategy as an adjective, “strategic”, but manage to make a complete muddle out of the word as a noun, “strategy”. Can our tactics be strategic? I would think yes, if they are in accordance with some strategy. Can

Leo Sadovy 0
Strategy as a set of Options

The term “military intelligence” is often put forth as the epitome of an oxymoron, and while it is true that many military processes and approaches do not easily make the transition to the business world, there are several that should not be overlooked, intelligence being one of the most significant.

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Stuck in the Middle

At the beginning of each year our Scout Troop puts the newly elected boy leaders through JLT, Junior Leader Training, in order to prepare them for the roles they will assume within the troop. About mid-way through the day-long training session, after we have covered the duties of all the

Analytics
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Unique business models, but common problems

Twenty-four sessions, twenty-four speakers, twenty-four different topics over just two days, and I didn’t just sit through the convention as a participant, no, I moderated the entire two day event as its Chairman. The Financial Forecasting and Planning Summit, organized by the IE Group, and held at the DoubleTree Mission

Analytics
Leo Sadovy 0
SIM City for business decisions

Day one of the 2010 CFO Corporate Performance Management Conference in New York is in the books, and while the day’s presentations and discussions should rightly merit being the prime subjects of this post, those events have been overshadowed by one of even greater magnitude: dinner with Thornton May. Where