Essential Management Models: Tried and Tested Business Frameworks for Strategy, Customers and Growth

Essential Management Models is a compilation of business tools that actually work. It’s a guide to the very best in practical management thinking. No reinventing the wheel, no management fads and no corporate word-bingo.

Essential Management Models demystifies strategy tools and does so with attitude: the view that any decision is better than no decision. The book encourages you to "go on…decide" and provides you with reference on how to do so.

Rather than a series of independent summaries, the book makes connections between frameworks to expose the overlaps and relationships between them. This is the key to what makes the exercise worthwhile, the tools useful and the book unique.

Using diagrams extensively to explain key concepts, but without ever "dumbing down", the book is written for managers who get things done – or students who want to.

If you’ve ever studied management or strategy before, Essential Management Models will enable you to go back to the models and use them to do a better job, or think more clearly. It will remind you of the interlinkages between the frameworks to really make them work as a coherent whole. If you've forgotten them, it will give you confidence to use them. If you’ve written them off as mere theory, we urge you to think again.

Grant S. Foster ran his market strategy consulting business Ellis Foster McVeigh from 2009 to 2019. A highly sought-after educator in Melbourne, Sydney and Hong Kong, Grant had held adjunct lecturer posts with Macquarie Graduate School of Management, the Graduate School of Business at the University of Sydney, Mt Eliza Business School (now Melbourne Business School) and the Australian Graduate School of Management. Grant was a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and also a director of crisis support charity Lifeline Australia (mental health/suicide prevention). Prior to his consulting career, Grant was GM of Marketing and Sales for business telco Commander Australia. He had an MBA from Bond University. Grant passed away in 2019.

Chris J. Grannell is a Partner at We Keep Good Company which advises clients on the intersection of strategy, operations, customers and technology. Chris also works directly with a number of early-stage businesses. Previously he has held senior positions at Adventus.io, Carsales.com, Solvup.com and TIC Group. Chris has an MBA from Melbourne Business School, and has written for the Financial Times, WARC/Market Leader, Nine/Fairfax and others.