Tech-powered growth: Three things growth leaders do differently
19/09/2023
Growth has always been important. In times of uncertainty, profitable growth is critical. The benefits of growth are undeniable. McKinsey’s analysis of more than 5,000 public companies shows that growth champions—companies that profitably outgrow their peers—create 80 percent more shareholder value than their peers over a ten-year period.1“Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint,” McKinsey, July […]
Smaller Companies Must Embrace Risk Management
18/09/2023
There’s an unfortunate stereotype that risk management is boring. Risk managers are pessimistic clerks. Compliance officers are scaremongers. Too many managers think this way. As a result, risk management is an unloved and misunderstood discipline. Until disaster strikes, risk management is, for most, a painstaking and costly chore. In an increasingly volatile world, however, risk […]
When Your Vacation Wasn’t Exactly Relaxing
16/09/2023
Vacations are meant to be rejuvenating. Time off can not only help you restore your mind, body, and soul, it also has a positive impact on your work life: One study found that employees who take 11 or more vacation days are more likely to receive a raise or bonus. However, not all vacations are […]
What Makes a Great Corporate Purpose Statement
15/09/2023
Organizations in all sectors are increasingly required by their investors, customers, employees, and wider stakeholders to articulate a clear statement of corporate purpose. Purpose isn’t about profit maximization; it’s the reason the organization exists. A purpose statement should clearly explain how the organization will contribute to human, societal, or environmental goals. It needs to be […]
Where Should Your Company Start with GenAI?
13/09/2023
To best understand generative AI (GenAI), look at it through bifocal lenses. Through the top lens, one sees the long view of big, looming issues, such as accuracy, privacy, and bias, as well as GenAI’s potential impact on “knowledge workers” and even economy-wide job losses and societal risks. While this view is important, we have […]
How to Be a Purpose-Driven Leader Without Burning Out
23/08/2023
When Robert Greenleaf coined the phrase “servant leadership” in a seminal 1970 essay, it was a much-needed improvement over the traditional command-and-control leadership model that had prevailed for centuries. “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead,” Greenleaf […]
How bold is your business transformation? A new way to measure progress
22/08/2023
Today’s volatile business environment continues to challenge organizations no matter their size, industry, or geography. Just a few broad trends tell the story: new digital entrants are gobbling up market share across industries; ecosystem-based strategies are gaining ground; and companies committed to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are increasingly attractive to employees and investors […]
3 Ways Our Brains Undermine Our Ability to Be a Good Leader
21/08/2023
Robin, a perennial high achiever, has just been promoted to her first leadership position. But her first few months on the job have been tougher than expected: Her colleagues don’t joke around with her anymore, she’s pulled in different directions, and she’s constantly putting out fires. When one of her top performers suddenly leaves for […]
The Value of Digital Transformation
17/08/2023
“Show me the money!” Cuba Gooding Jr., playing Rod Tidwell, made those words a cultural touchstone in the movie Jerry McGuire. He was not just voicing his concerns about committing to a sports agent, played by Tom Cruise in this case; he was also questioning Cruise’s commitment. Business leaders, shareholders, and board members have increasingly […]
The triple play: Growth, profit, and sustainability
16/08/2023
Consistent and profitable growth has been hard to achieve since the global financial crisis, making it critical for companies to explicitly choose growth in their mindsets, pathways, and execution capabilities.1“Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint,” McKinsey, July 7, 2022. Many executives believe making that growth sustainable and inclusive requires inscrutable trade-offs, forgoing revenue and profit for the […]
Don’t Let Your Company’s Culture Stifle Leadership Development
11/08/2023
All too often, leadership development programs don’t adequately account for the culture, norms, and system within which the leader is working. Leaders may be asked to think long term in a culture that fixates on immediate results, or they may be taught to collaborate across organizational boundaries when they’re rewarded for work within their own […]
Using AI to Build Stronger Connections with Customers
08/08/2023
The surge of generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications is spurring exciting innovations and consumer experiments, but it also worries many people who are concerned about data privacy or only being able to communicate with a company through a bot. These concerns are especially acute in industries where customer interactions and data privacy are critical, such […]
Managing Anxiety When There’s No Room for Error
27/07/2023
In some arenas, mistakes are par for the course and not very costly. It doesn’t really matter if a designer starts over several times before producing a beautiful cover image, an inventor tries a hundred prototypes before finding the one that works, or an entrepreneur pivots from one idea to another based on customer feedback. […]
3 Steps to Prepare Your Culture for AI
24/07/2023
As business leaders, today we find ourselves in a place that’s all too familiar: the unfamiliar. Just as we steered our teams through the shift to remote and flexible work, we’re now on the verge of another seismic shift: AI. And like the shift to flexible work, priming an organization to embrace AI will hinge […]
3 Ways to Make a Winning Board Presentation
21/07/2023
For most executives, even those at the most senior level, a presentation to the board of directors is the most demanding test of leadership communications. Very few succeed. Conversations with more than 100 public and private boards directors over the last decade reveal that dissatisfaction with presentations is nearly universal. PowerPoint decks are too long, […]
13 Principles for Using AI Responsibly
19/07/2023
Love it or loath it, the rapid expansion of AI will not slow down anytime soon. But AI blunders can quickly damage a brand’s reputation — just ask Microsoft’s first chatbot, Tay. In the tech race, all leaders fear being left behind if they slow down while others don’t. It’s a high-stakes situation where cooperation […]
Four essential questions for boards to ask about generative AI
18/07/2023
Company executives are scrambling to understand and respond to generative AI. This technology is still nascent, but of those who have used it, few doubt its power to disrupt operating models in all industries. Here is a view of how CEOs might start preparing for what lies ahead.1“What every CEO should know about generative AI,” […]
The Simple Power of Communicating with Kindness
14/07/2023
I believe that in every interpersonal communication, leaders should err on the side of kindness. This pronouncement is seemingly simple but it takes courage to live — especially now. We live in a world in which a host of issues are eating away at our connections with each other. Take lack of focus: When was […]
Staying ahead: How the best CEOs continually improve performance
22/06/2023
Be humble, hungry. Most people know the fable The Tortoise and the Hare. In the story, the two animals challenge one another to a race to prove who is faster. The hare starts strong and is soon out of sight. Midrace, the hare lies down to rest, feeling certain that it’s going to win. After […]
Build a Strong Learning Culture on Your Team
21/06/2023
When Kendra Grant’s team was charged with designing and delivering learning experiences for 90,000 Walmart Canada associates, she knew as a senior learning-and-design director that the landscape of corporate learning needs was constantly changing. “Over time,” says Grant, now the principal of her own L&D practice, “we acknowledged that many of the problems we saw […]
How New CEOs Establish Legitimacy
19/06/2023
Corporate governance delegates tremendous authority to the chief executive. Yet authority alone provides a limited license to lead. We listen to those in authority because we’re required to do so; authority motivates via a follow-the-rules mechanism that will never encourage someone to go above-and-beyond the call of duty. A greater level of executive influence comes […]
Unlocking commerce in the metaverse
16/06/2023
It’s hard to escape the metaverse. The emerging virtual world is the driving force behind the internet’s evolution, and consumers are increasingly seeking more immersive experiences and demanding the ability to interact with products and brands before making a purchase. That enthusiasm has the potential to drive $5 trillion in value creation by 2030,1Value creation […]
To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort
15/06/2023
The old management mindset An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is “maximum effort = maximum results.” It doesn’t actually work that way in reality, but many managers still believe that it does. They might talk a good game about “practicing self-care,” but their core assumptions are often more akin to a bad 1980s […]
How to Build Upon the Legacy of Your Family Business — and Make It Your Own
13/06/2023
Founded by Henry Ford in 1903, the Ford Motor Company rocketed to success by mass-producing reliable, low-priced automobiles. When Henry’s son, Edsel, took the helm in 1918, he championed a different strategy for a new era. He sought to replace the Model T — iconic but outdated — with a more modern design geared to […]
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 […]