When Scenario Planning Fails

When Scenario Planning Fails

24/05/2023

Over the past several decades, leaders have turned to scenario planning to identify future risks to their businesses. By analyzing things like revenues or margins across locations globally, this method allows leadership teams to design flexible long-term plans against a defined set of alternative external events and outcomes. The outputs can often include short-term financial […]

Innovation Doesn’t Have to Be Disruptive

Innovation Doesn’t Have to Be Disruptive

22/05/2023

Innovation driven by disruption generates a new market and growth, but often with terrible social costs: the destruction of existing companies and jobs and damage to communities. The Explanation Most innovators have taken for granted that the surest path to growth is creating a new market by destroying the existing one. That overlooks an alternative […]

Make It Safe for Employees to Speak Up — Especially in Risky Times

Make It Safe for Employees to Speak Up — Especially in Risky Times

19/05/2023

The World Uncertainty Index remains high. Bank failures, war, inflation, and layoffs are contributing to a growing sense of instability and unease. As an HR manager at a technology firm told us, “Just seeing your team decrease from 35 to 18 can be very scary; it brings forth strong anxiety and worry over your job.” […]

How Midsize Companies Can Access Capital in Turbulent Times

How Midsize Companies Can Access Capital in Turbulent Times

17/05/2023

Two years ago, I wrote a Harvard Business Review article about how middle market companies were under-served and over-charged for capital transactions. Nowadays, with all the turbulence in financial markets, a new kind of squeeze is on for mid-sized companies. For the past year or more, all kinds of economic warning signs have been flashing […]

Leading a Midsize Business Through Change

Leading a Midsize Business Through Change

15/05/2023

One of the sacred principles of change management is “stakeholder involvement,” i.e. engaging and including people who will be affected by the change in the process of making it happen. GE’s well known “change acceleration model,” or CAP, refers to it as “mobilizing commitment.” Kotter’s eight-step framework for change emphasizes doing this through “building a […]

How Midsize Companies Can Drive Digital Transformation

How Midsize Companies Can Drive Digital Transformation

12/05/2023

The last few years have brought unprecedented challenges, opportunities, and evolution for companies of all sizes. The middle market is no exception. In fact, the pandemic served as an accelerator for a number of initiatives that were perhaps just wishes and dreams for mid-sized companies a handful of years ago, but are now very much […]

Is Your Company as Strategically Aligned as You Think It Is?

Is Your Company as Strategically Aligned as You Think It Is?

10/05/2023

Picture this: You’re the CEO of a midsize company, and you just returned from an expensive, multi-day strategy retreat with your entire management team. You spent hours discussing the ins and outs of your strategy, and it left you and your employees feeling more aligned than ever. But are you actually on the same page? […]

How Midsize Companies Can Keep Up with AI

How Midsize Companies Can Keep Up with AI

08/05/2023

What do the internet, smartphones, social media, the metaverse, and generative AI have in common? Answer: they’re all part of the same, ongoing innovation movie. We’ve seen this movie before, and if the Fast & Furious series can create double-digit sequels (movie number 10 coming soon), we should expect the same from technology. Somehow, we […]

Bias Busters: The perils of executive typecasting

Bias Busters: The perils of executive typecasting

28/04/2023

Despite their best intentions, executives fall prey to cognitive and organizational biases that get in the way of good decision making. In this series, we highlight some of them and offer a few effective ways to address them. Our topic this time? The perils of executive typecasting The dilemma The new CFO at a medical-device […]

It Takes Versatility to Lead in a Volatile World

It Takes Versatility to Lead in a Volatile World

25/04/2023

The last three years have posed serious challenges for leadership. The inability of many leaders to rise to the occasion revealed that the talent crisis organizations thought they had before the pandemic is worse than they imagined. Research we conducted in the early stages of the Covid outbreak showed that leaders with a limited range […]

The next frontier of customer engagement: AI-enabled customer service

The next frontier of customer engagement: AI-enabled customer service

24/04/2023

How to engage customers—and keep them engaged—is a focal question for organizations across the business-to-consumer (B2C) landscape, where disintermediation by digital platforms continues to erode traditional business models. Engaged customers are more loyal, have more touchpoints with their chosen brands, and deliver greater value over their lifetime. Yet financial institutions have often struggled to secure […]

How to Equip Your Team to Problem Solve Without You

How to Equip Your Team to Problem Solve Without You

21/04/2023

Susan,* a client of Luis’ and a mentee of Kristin’s, managed her team with a fundamental belief that it was her job to “protect” them. Her belief was grounded in good intentions. She wanted her team to be happy and successful in a highly demanding and fast-moving organization. However, her approach constantly put her in […]

The 8 Responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officers

The 8 Responsibilities of Chief Sustainability Officers

19/04/2023

The word “sustainability” has never been more popular in the corporate world. The number of companies appointing a chief sustainability officer (CSO) is rising rapidly: In 2021 more CSOs were hired than in the previous five years combined. But despite good intentions — and widespread acceptance of the importance of sustainability — there is still […]

A winning strategy for growth investors at a time of uncertainty

A winning strategy for growth investors at a time of uncertainty

18/04/2023

Growth equity has become one of private equity’s fastest-growing segments in recent years, but today’s market uncertainty has slowed that momentum: 2022 was a year of disruption. Investors faced a multitude of downside risks, including geopolitical tension, energy and food scarcity, rising inflation and interest rates, stock market volatility, and supply challenges triggered by the war […]

Why Business Leaders Must Resist the Anti-ESG Movement

Why Business Leaders Must Resist the Anti-ESG Movement

17/04/2023

The culture wars in the U.S. continue to rage, and they’ve come for business. Companies are being dragged into issues that stir emotions, such as abortion, gay and trans rights, racial and gender equity, and climate change. In particular, business is facing questions about its stance on societal issues mainly from the right side of […]

How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow

How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow

14/04/2023

When uncertainty is high, knowing where you stand — and learning about your mistakes while there’s still time to fix them — is more important than ever. To be able to adapt to changing conditions and ensure that your team continues to feel supported and motivated, you need to understand what you’re doing well — […]

Getting Employee Buy-In for Organizational Change

Getting Employee Buy-In for Organizational Change

10/03/2023

Most advice about building internal support for organizational change reiterates perfunctory platitudes, reminding leaders to communicate reasons for the change, or even to be excited about the change themselves. But in working with hundreds of companies going through organization change I’ve learned that this approach is simply not enough. In fact, research shows, that this […]

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2023

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lighthouses 2023

09/03/2023

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is at an inflection point: companies and institutions have demonstrated positive intent and increased discussion and activity, but data shows that progress is slow. In 2020, the global market for DEI—that is, dollars spent by companies on DEI-related efforts such as employee resource groups (ERGs)—was estimated at $7.5 billion and […]

Is It Time to Shake Up Your WFH Routine?

Is It Time to Shake Up Your WFH Routine?

08/03/2023

We’re approaching three years since the initial office exodus, where millions of people found themselves stationed at home full-time, overnight. The initial shock of that transition has worn off. So if you participated in the office flight, you’ve likely settled into some semblance of a routine. But is it time to make a change? As […]

11 Tech Trends to Watch in 2023

11 Tech Trends to Watch in 2023

07/03/2023

It can be tough to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation. Each new year delivers the full spectrum of progress from game-changing breakthroughs to incremental advancements in a wide variety of fields. In a noisy media landscape fueled by hype and speculation, it can be tough to know where true value is being […]

When Leaders Struggle with Collaboration

When Leaders Struggle with Collaboration

06/03/2023

A client of Luis’s, let’s call him Charlie, a senior executive reporting directly to the CEO, was recently given feedback that despite his outstanding performance, his colleagues struggled to work with him. Charlie’s drive to deliver results, his no-nonsense approach to offering his viewpoints, and the intensity with which he approached most everything made him […]

Research: Why Leaders Should Be Open About Their Flaws

Research: Why Leaders Should Be Open About Their Flaws

02/03/2023

In the late 1980s, Canon ran a commercial with professional tennis player Andre Agassi that launched an infamous slogan: Image Is Everything. For many years leaders of all respects have embraced that sentiment, doing everything they could to come across as powerful, strong, and flawless. Yet, recent research has found that effective leadership isn’t about […]

How to Motivate a Top Performer — When You Can’t Promote Them

How to Motivate a Top Performer — When You Can’t Promote Them

28/02/2023

In many work environments, promotions serve as one of the few indicators of career success and advancement. But promotions have a long feedback loop. They often take years to happen, which means they mask the growth happening across the months and years before a promotion is conferred. Promotions are also not entirely under an employee’s […]

Linking Executive Pay to Sustainability Goals

Linking Executive Pay to Sustainability Goals

24/02/2023

Global businesses have reached a sustainability inflection point. Stakeholder expectations and heightened investor scrutiny are putting organizations under pressure to articulate their societal roles more clearly, prioritize environmental and social objectives within their business strategies, and demonstrate progress to stakeholders. We also know that employees are prioritizing their employment decisions based on an organization’s purpose, […]

Rescuing ESG from the Culture Wars

Rescuing ESG from the Culture Wars

22/02/2023

In the past year, ESG investing has become caught up in America’s culture wars, as prominent GOP politicians claim that it is a mechanism investors are using to impose a “woke” ideology on companies. Former Vice President Mike Pence has railed against ESG in speeches and in an op-ed. A variety of Republican governors and […]

The power of goodbye: How carve-outs can unleash value

The power of goodbye: How carve-outs can unleash value

21/02/2023

The rationale for combining businesses into one company, or for splitting them apart, should be the same: to create more value. Yet we often hear leaders describe separations as the opposite of M&A integrations, at least in terms of “capturing value” in the near term. M&A, done well, unlocks value by realizing synergies. But it […]

Have Companies Become Too Specialized?

Have Companies Become Too Specialized?

16/02/2023

Starting in the late 1980s, a de-diversification wave swept through corporate America, on the premise that conglomerates and highly diversified companies would perform better by focusing on their core businesses. At first this strategic shift brought benefits: academic research undertaken at the time found that all this refocusing was, on balance, beneficial for companies. The […]

What Do Your Customers Want in 2023?

What Do Your Customers Want in 2023?

08/02/2023

For many of us, a new year represents a fresh start. New Year’s resolutions offer an annual opportunity to transform our lives for the better, whether that’s by improving our health, relationships, finances, or whatever else we find most important. This mindset can create new opportunities for businesses as well — but shifting needs and […]

How Women on Boards Navigate the “Warmth-Competence” Line

How Women on Boards Navigate the “Warmth-Competence” Line

03/02/2023

The road to gender parity on corporate boards has been a long one, but there are signs of progress. In 2022, for instance, 45% of new Fortune 500 board appointees were women and the percentage of women on these boards had risen to almost 30%. Yet, the point of being a director is not simply […]

How a CEO Can Create Psychological Safety in the Room

How a CEO Can Create Psychological Safety in the Room

01/02/2023

There’s a power dynamic in every room. If you’re the CEO and you’re in the room, you control that dynamic. Positional power is consolidated in your hands, and what you say and do can draw people out or make them recoil with anxiety and fear. In my work with hundreds of CEOs over the past […]

How to Talk with Your Team About the Elephant in the Room

How to Talk with Your Team About the Elephant in the Room

30/01/2023

No one mentions the hostility and blatant conflict between two team members. A colleague softens the data to avoid delaying the launch date of a project. At the Monday team meeting, the leader doesn’t mention the fact that two team members were fired the week before. These situations occur at many organizations, and they are […]

How Boards Can Guide Company Strategy on Social Issues

How Boards Can Guide Company Strategy on Social Issues

23/01/2023

For the past few years, we’ve been fielding calls from CEOs and other C-suite leaders who find themselves under increasing pressure to engage in — and take public positions on — issues that their companies would have considered outside their purviews only a few years ago. Recent research, including Edelman’s Trust Barometer, suggests that this pressure […]

5 Questions for Business Leaders to Ask in Uncertain Times

5 Questions for Business Leaders to Ask in Uncertain Times

18/01/2023

These days, it feels like we are living in the business world’s version of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Inflation, geopolitical tensions, energy shortages, labor shortages, employees’ evolving expectations, rising interest rates, increasing cyber and data risks, insatiable investor expectations — the list goes on. Just like the song says, today’s […]

Digital transformations: The five talent factors that matter most

Digital transformations: The five talent factors that matter most

17/01/2023

Digital transformations—whether digitalizing an entire company or setting up a digital and advanced-analytics (DnA) start-up within the organization—are a significant challenge. We have frequently seen these transformations stumble along the way, and leaders often have difficulty sustaining any improvements over time. Across the transformation journey, talent and technology are critical to success, from planning and […]

Innovating in Uncertain Times: Lessons from 2022

Innovating in Uncertain Times: Lessons from 2022

16/01/2023

Economic uncertainty, social and political unrest, environmental catastrophe, and global health crises continue to impact people and businesses worldwide. Yet, amidst each of these disruptions, managers must maintain forward momentum to ensure their teams achieve success. This past year we’ve seen tech giants fall due to mismanagement, recklessness, economic turmoil, a lack of innovation, or […]

HR’s new operating model

HR’s new operating model

13/01/2023

The way in which organizations manage people used to be relatively straightforward. For more than two decades, multinational companies generally adopted a combination of HR business partners, centers of excellence, and shared service centers, adjusting these three elements to fit each organization’s unique nature and needs. Today, this approach—introduced by Dave Ulrich in 19961David Ulrich, […]

Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce

Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce

02/12/2022

As a pro bono contribution to the alliance, we worked in tandem to assess opportunities and actual skills-based job progressions that workers have made. Using these data, the team launched a series of practical tools, including a job progression tool 5 5. Job Progression Tool, McKinsey & Company and Rework America Alliance, accessed October 28, […]

Adapting Your Sales Approach in a Downturn

Adapting Your Sales Approach in a Downturn

01/12/2022

There has been plenty of debate over whether the U.S. economy is in a recession. Regardless of the technical definitions and economic perspectives, many organizations see challenging headwinds on the horizon. Even if companies aren’t feeling the economic pinch yet, they will be more skittish when it comes to spending when news cycles predict doom […]

How Executive Teams Shape a Company’s Purpose

How Executive Teams Shape a Company’s Purpose

29/11/2022

Company purpose has mainstreamed its way into management vernacular, and with plenty of good reason. Evidence from across industry sectors has proven that genuinely purpose-driven organizations outperform their non-purpose-driven competitors on critical metrics. For example, brands that have a clear commitment to improving their customers’ quality of life outperform the stock market by 120%, and […]

Starting strong: Making your CEO transition a catalyst for renewal

Starting strong: Making your CEO transition a catalyst for renewal

28/11/2022

It is when we are in transition that we are most completely alive. What makes the top job so different from the leadership roles that come before it? To start with, new CEOs discover quickly that they are accountable for everything, that their reporting relationships have changed dramatically, and that the job is extremely lonely. […]

3 Steps to Prepare Your Supply Chain for the Next Crisis

3 Steps to Prepare Your Supply Chain for the Next Crisis

25/11/2022

No one can say they weren’t warned about the likelihood of a global pandemic or a war in Ukraine. And, in the light of President Xi Jinping’s recent comments at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where he reaffirmed his government’s commitment to take control of Taiwan one day, no one can say that […]

The digital revolution is brewing in the industrials sector

The digital revolution is brewing in the industrials sector

24/11/2022

Over the past 20 years, industrial players have pursued value creation through a focus on product margin optimization, channel sales excellence, and programmatic M&A. These strategies proved fruitful in the prepandemic era. From 2014 to 2019, traditional financial measures of value creation reflected robust sector-level performance: ROIC rose 13 percent—in excess of the typical sector-level […]

Is Your Board Prepared for New Cybersecurity Regulations?

Is Your Board Prepared for New Cybersecurity Regulations?

23/11/2022

Boards are now paying attention to the need to participate in cybersecurity oversight. Not only are the consequences sparking concern, but the new regulations are upping the ante and changing the game. Boards have a particularly important role to ensure appropriate management of cyber risk as part of their fiduciary and oversight role. As cyber […]

6 Ways to Reenergize a Depleted Team

6 Ways to Reenergize a Depleted Team

21/11/2022

A client of Ron’s, “Kelsey,” a division general manager of a large food manufacturer, recently told him, “Everyone on my team seems tired…all the time. I ask them how they’re doing, and they tell me ‘fine.’ If someone asks for time off, I say yes. They get the work done, but it seems like they’re […]

Revenue growth management: Building capabilities to sustain impact

Revenue growth management: Building capabilities to sustain impact

13/10/2022

Key takeaways The growth of online shopping, supply chain constraints, shifts in the channel mix, gross margins strained by rising inflation—these are just a few of the headwinds consumer companies have faced over the past several years. Not surprisingly, revenue growth management (RGM) has emerged as a top priority for consumer leaders in this environment. […]

How Diversity of Thought Can Fit into Your DEI Strategy

How Diversity of Thought Can Fit into Your DEI Strategy

12/10/2022

Nathan Green, known to many as Uncle Nearest, was an enslaved man in the 1850s in Lynchburg, Tennessee. He was known to make whiskey using a special technique he learned when cleaning water back home in West Africa. His method of filtering whiskey through sugar maple tree charcoal became known as the famous “Lincoln method.” […]

Keeping Up with Customers’ Increasingly Dynamic Needs

Keeping Up with Customers’ Increasingly Dynamic Needs

10/10/2022

A mere 20 years ago, a song typically stayed on the Billboard Top 100 charts for 20 weeks. Right now, it’s closer to two weeks. Similarly, the skillset that would once last your whole career now requires a complete refresh every three to five years. Corporate longevity is also rapidly changing: in 2020, the average […]

Is Your Board Inclusive — or Just Diverse?

Is Your Board Inclusive — or Just Diverse?

06/10/2022

The need for boardroom diversity is well-established. Many European countries have mandated that at least 40% of directors of publicly listed companies must be women, and similar laws have been passed in several U.S. states establishing gender- or race-based quotas. And to be sure, these policies have led to substantial progress: For example, one report […]

Visualizing the Rise of Global Economic Uncertainty

Visualizing the Rise of Global Economic Uncertainty

04/10/2022

Over the last six years, companies have had to grapple with five major “uncertainty shocks”: First it was Brexit in 2016, followed by the U.S. presidential election, China-U.S. trade-tensions, the Covid-19 pandemic, and in 2022 the Ukraine war. These shocks reflect a new normal of greater global turbulence, driven by domestic and international political fragmentation. […]

Keeping Your Team Motivated When the Company Is Struggling

Keeping Your Team Motivated When the Company Is Struggling

15/09/2022

It’s not surprising to learn that employee motivation is flagging these days. Fear of a slowing economy has layoffs up 39% in the second quarter of 2022, bringing the year’s total to more than 133,000. On top of that, the great resignation continues to lead employees to exit toxic workplaces characterized by uncaring leaders and […]

In Uncertain Times, the Best Strategy Is Adaptability

In Uncertain Times, the Best Strategy Is Adaptability

13/09/2022

Senior executives often lament, “If we only had better forecasts, we could devise better plans.” They pressure their teams to come up with more accurate projections for how their markets will evolve, competitors will respond, and consumers will react — thinking that forecast precision is the key to defining winning strategies. But attempting to develop […]

Resilient Organizations Make Psychological Safety a Strategic Priority

Resilient Organizations Make Psychological Safety a Strategic Priority

09/09/2022

The pandemic, geopolitical instability, and unpredictable markets have made organizational resilience like food in the desert: critical for survival, but challenging to grow. By making resilience a strategic priority, leaders ensure that their organizations can stretch and adapt. Much has been written about psychological safety’s role in improving workplace wellness and even in helping stem […]

Managing Shareholders in the Age of Stakeholder Capitalism

Managing Shareholders in the Age of Stakeholder Capitalism

07/09/2022

In 2021, Danone’s board of directors, under pressure from activist Bluebell Capital and Artisan Partners, ousted the company’s CEO Emmanuel Faber — a longtime advocate of stakeholder capitalism. This decision puzzled many observers; in an age where the business community seems to be readily embracing stakeholder capitalism, Faber and Danone were stalwarts. Now Unilever — […]

The Inflation Factor: How Rising Food and Energy Prices Impact the Economy

The Inflation Factor: How Rising Food and Energy Prices Impact the Economy

06/09/2022

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the effects of energy supply disruptions are cascading across everything from food prices to electricity to consumer sentiment. In response to soaring prices, many OECD countries are tapping into their strategic petroleum reserves. In fact, since March, the U.S. has sold a record one million barrels of oil per day […]

Leading with Confidence in Uncertain Times

Leading with Confidence in Uncertain Times

05/09/2022

Serena crunched all the numbers and made the best estimates possible when she was preparing the coming quarter’s sales projections for the product she managed. She used lessons from her graduate studies in statistics and decision science. Informed by historical trends, economic forecasts, and market projections, she estimated a total sales volume of 1,000 units. […]

Digital Transformation Is Changing Supply Chain Relationships

Digital Transformation Is Changing Supply Chain Relationships

12/08/2022

The digital transformation of businesses is creating new products, processes, and services. But to provide these new offerings, companies must share information and assets with each other in ways that were previously off-limits. For example, digitized services may require competitors to share physical assets such as warehouse space. This, in turn, means that companies will […]

The Great Renegotiation and new talent pools

The Great Renegotiation and new talent pools

11/08/2022

It’s the quitting trend that just won’t quit. People are switching jobs and industries, moving from traditional to nontraditional roles, retiring early, or starting their own businesses. They are taking a time-out to tend to their personal lives or embarking on sabbaticals. The Great Attrition has become the Great Renegotiation. Competition for talent remains fierce. For […]

What Makes Innovation Partnerships Succeed

What Makes Innovation Partnerships Succeed

10/08/2022

Breakthrough innovation introduces novel paradigms and platforms, and it creates new product families and economic opportunities. But it’s never a solo act. Even the largest companies need partners. Innovation partnerships offer many advantages. They offset R&D costs, add expertise and flexibility, and help create new markets. They can also accelerate innovation and commercialization timelines — […]

Organizational Transformation Is an Emotional Journey

Organizational Transformation Is an Emotional Journey

08/08/2022

The road is littered with failed transformation programs that were set up in the traditional way: Leaders define objectives, design a project plan, agree on KPIs, and recruit the right people. As many executives, academics, and consultants can relate to, the rate of failure in transformations is still far too high, and one that organizations […]

How Leaders Can Escape Their Echo Chambers

How Leaders Can Escape Their Echo Chambers

02/08/2022

The higher leaders go, the more likely they are to find themselves in an echo chamber, surrounded by people who think like them and agree with them. This occurs partly because of the affinity bias, which leads us to favor, associate with, and hire the people to whom we feel most similar. This dearth of […]

The power of the operating model in customer experience

The power of the operating model in customer experience

22/07/2022

Transforming the customer experience (CX) isn’t about playing hard and fast. To succeed in the long game, companies need to manage it systematically. Doing it well is a game changer, which is why more than 70 percent of senior executives rank CX as a top priority for the coming years. Indeed, companies that effectively organize […]

When — and How — to Build Hurdles into a Loyalty Program

When — and How — to Build Hurdles into a Loyalty Program

21/07/2022

Have you ever signed up for a rewards program, only to discover several months later that your points expired before you had a chance to use them? If so, you’re not alone. Research shows that loyalty program members lose up to a third of the savings they could have earned from these programs due to […]

Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint

Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint

18/07/2022

Do you, as a leader, make an explicit choice to grow? Or do you pay lip service to your growth ambitions and let your resolve falter if profit isn’t immediate? When sustainable, inclusive, and profitable growth becomes a conscious, resolute choice, it shapes decision making across every area of the business. Growth becomes the oxygen […]

Adjusting Your Strategy in a Tight Market

Adjusting Your Strategy in a Tight Market

15/07/2022

During the past two decades, corporate scope and priorities were shaped by an abundance of capital. Today the univested capital of private equity funds stands at an all-time staggering high of $3.4 trillion. With such massive liquidity chasing few opportunities, valuations for innovative investments have been high. The prevailing low interest rate environment has only reinforced […]

5 Megatrends Fueling the Rise of Data Storytelling

5 Megatrends Fueling the Rise of Data Storytelling

14/07/2022

Infographic: The Rise of Data Storytelling Humanity is creating more data than ever before, and more of that data is publicly accessible. While “data is the new oil” has almost become a cliché, the impact that data abundance is having on the world is undeniable. All of the world’s most valuable companies are heavily reliant […]

The Pandemic Changed Us. Now Companies Have to Change Too.

The Pandemic Changed Us. Now Companies Have to Change Too.

13/07/2022

It may sound obvious, but facing our collective mortality for the last two years changed us. Of course, many of us had confronted big challenges in our pre-pandemic lives, but this shared experience was uniquely difficult. One area of our lives that was dramatically altered was our collective perspective related to work. Working under the […]

Customer service excellence in 2022

Customer service excellence in 2022

12/07/2022

The stakes couldn’t be higher as teams try to adapt to a postpandemic era of customer care. Over the past two years, leaders have had to quickly adapt systems and ways of working to accommodate the shift to working from home—up to 85 percent of their workforces, in some cases. Contact center employees are harder […]

Your Corporate Purpose Changed. Has Your Strategy Kept Up?

Your Corporate Purpose Changed. Has Your Strategy Kept Up?

11/07/2022

The key question for leaders tasked with setting corporate strategy is, “What is this company’s ultimate purpose?” Fortunately, the basic approach to answering that question has been clearly articulated by the U.S. Business Roundtable. In August 2019 it issued the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” signed by 181 CEOs from Apple to Walmart. […]

Why AI Customer Journeys Need More Friction

Why AI Customer Journeys Need More Friction

01/07/2022

In marketing circles, friction has become synonymous with “pain point.” Eradicating it, conventional wisdom goes, is crucial to building a customer-centric strategy that yields competitive advantage. Taking a cue from policy applications of behavioral economics, marketers seek to “nudge” people along the customer journey and remove friction in the battle against “sludge.” At many firms, […]

Future supply chains: resilience, agility, sustainability

Future supply chains: resilience, agility, sustainability

30/06/2022

Supply chains matter. The plumbing of global commerce has rarely been a topic of much discussion in newsrooms or boardrooms, but the past two years have pushed the subject to the top of the agenda. The COVID-19 crisis, postpandemic economic effects, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine have exposed the vulnerabilities of today’s global supply chains. […]

How to Make Strategic Trade-Offs

How to Make Strategic Trade-Offs

24/06/2022

When CEOs lay out multiple high-level objectives, like increasing market share, entering new markets, and pursuing innovation — all at the same time — they enthusiastically tout the advantages of each. They set ambitious numerical targets. They rally the troops behind the vision. But they rarely talk explicitly about how much value they are willing […]

Capture a digital transformation's value today

Capture a digital transformation’s value today

23/06/2022

While some of the obstacles to digital-transformation success are well known, McKinsey Global Survey on digital strategy and investments asked business leaders about the evolution of these challenges, digital tech’s role in their businesses, and companies’ strategic responses. 2 2. The online survey was in the field from January 25 to February 4, 2022, and garnered […]

Using Fiction to Find Your Strategy

Using Fiction to Find Your Strategy

22/06/2022

Trying to predict what the future will look like is doomed to fail. Yet this is what most executives do when they strategize. They — we — do this because we have been trained and educated to use trends and statistics to predict what is likely to happen and prepare accordingly. As a result, companies […]

CEOs, Here’s How to Lead in an Era of Constant Change

CEOs, Here’s How to Lead in an Era of Constant Change

22/06/2022

Every year I have the privilege to meet with many CEOs and leadership teams to discuss their business. In the past year, nearly every leadership team I’ve sat down with is grappling with the need to make changes and drive transformation. Inflation, geopolitics, supply-chain issues, labour costs, divisiveness, unsettled equity markets, and stakeholder expectations seem […]

What Leaders Get Wrong About Resilience

What Leaders Get Wrong About Resilience

20/06/2022

Resilience, or the continued pursuit of goals despite adversity, is an important issue for organizations, because adversity is inevitable in people’s lives and careers. We all face personal adversities, ranging from the daily stresses of balancing work and home roles to experiences of job loss or the death of a loved one, as well as […]

4 Steps to Creating a Strategy in an Uncertain World

4 Steps to Creating a Strategy in an Uncertain World

16/06/2022

It hardly needs to be said, but we live in uncertain times. The Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the reshuffling of supply chains and capital structures — the past few years have seen unprecedented disruptions, and the turmoil shows little sign of letting up any time soon. Challenges abound, and companies are finding it […]

Driving sustainable, enterprise-wide performance acceleration

Driving sustainable, enterprise-wide performance acceleration

15/06/2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruptor of historic proportions across industries, economies, and lives. In the global pharmaceutical industry, it has caused problems in short-term cash flow and threatened supply reliability. But even before the pandemic, the industry had been facing several hurdles, including the declining value of new launches, challenges to growth in […]

What To Do When the Devil Wears (Your Brand)

What To Do When the Devil Wears (Your Brand)

14/06/2022

Protecting a brand’s equity and value should be one of an executive’s key responsibilities. Companies buy protection software and use blacklists to stop questionable publishers and endorsers from negatively portraying their brand, for example. But what happens when the brand is displayed unfavorably in an environment that the marketer can’t control? This is exactly what […]

What Leaders Need to Know Before Trying a 4-Day Work Week

What Leaders Need to Know Before Trying a 4-Day Work Week

10/06/2022

Despite the gains workers have made through the Covid pandemic in increasing flexibility in where they work, bigger workloads have meant that there is little slack in the system for people to take time out and recover. The effects are obvious. In 2020, 62% of people reported that they had experienced burnout “often” or “extremely […]

The Data Storytelling Toolbox: Data Management, Digital Transformation, and Master Data

The Data Storytelling Toolbox: Data Management, Digital Transformation, and Master Data

09/06/2022

Scott Taylor believes in data storytelling. More to the point, he believes that telling a “data story” leads to Data Governance success. Taylor is a consultant and “Data Whisperer” at MetaMeta Consulting, and author of the book, Telling Your Data Story.  In his presentation “Data Storytelling for Data Management” at DATAVERSITY®’s Enterprise Data World Conference, […]