Does Your Strategy Have a Spine?

Does Your Strategy Have a Spine?

19/07/2022

For all the ink spilled on the concept of strategy, it continually proves to be a surprisingly slippery idea. In practice, leaders often struggle to define and communicate strategies to their team. In their 2008 article, “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?” David Collis and Michael Rukstad don’t mince words: “Most executives cannot articulate […]

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. […]

Visualizing the Coming Shift in Global Economic Power (2006-2036p)

28/06/2022

Visualizing the Shift in Global Economic Power As the post-pandemic recovery chugs along, the global economy is set to see major changes in the coming decades. Most significantly, China is forecast to pass the United States to become the largest economy globally. The world’s economic center has long been drifting from Europe and North America […]

Will Your Competitive Advantage Work in Other Markets?

Will Your Competitive Advantage Work in Other Markets?

27/06/2022

When building a business, the critical first step is to develop a strategy that resonates with your market. But once you’ve crafted that winning strategy, what does it take to successfully translate it into new markets? When companies expand overseas, they often assume the competitive advantages that have made them successful in their home countries […]

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 […]

Mapping the Migration of the World’s Millionaires

Mapping the Migration of the World’s Millionaires

21/06/2022

Mapping the Migration of the World’s Millionaires Throughout 2022, a projected 88,000 millionaires will move to a new country, according to the latest Henley Global Citizens Report. Which countries are these millionaires moving to, and where in the world are they coming from? This graphic maps the migration of high net worth individuals (HNWIs)—people with […]

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, […]

What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

08/06/2022

As organizations and individuals around the world settle into a blend of in-person and virtual work, we’re learning more about the opportunities and risks hybrid brings. One key concern is leadership development. We know that some of the vital ways in which executives learn on the job — such as serendipitous interactions and informal feedback […]

Which Countries Trust Their Government, and Which Ones Don’t?

Which Countries Trust Their Government, and Which Ones Don’t?

07/06/2022

Which Countries Trust Their Government, and Which Ones Don’t? In many countries around the world, vast portions of the population do not trust their own government. Lack of faith in government and politics is nothing new, but in times of uncertainty, that lack of trust can coalesce into movements that challenge the authority of ruling […]

Ensure that Your Joint Ventures Meet Your ESG Goals

Ensure that Your Joint Ventures Meet Your ESG Goals

06/06/2022

Companies are under intense pressure to improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. To date, the lion’s share of management scrutiny and investor activism has focused on wholly-owned or controlled entities. But this worldview contains a sizable blind spot. Many companies hold large and growing portfolios of joint ventures, many of which are equally-owned […]

Flexible work and the innovative organization

Flexible work and the innovative organization

06/06/2022

Despite the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—and partly because of it—innovation and digitization have been happening at a record-breaking pace. A McKinsey survey of top executives around the world found that companies accelerated their digitization of customer, supply chain, and internal operations by an average of three years. Indeed, over the past two years, countries […]

The next frontier in consumer goods: Digitally enabled innovation

The next frontier in consumer goods: Digitally enabled innovation

27/05/2022

With digitally enabled innovation, our work has shown that consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies can bring new products to market 50 percent faster, at a third lower cost, and with double the return on investment. While the industry has embraced new technologies in many parts of the business, from manufacturing to marketing, most organizations are […]

How to Ask for Feedback from an Interviewer

How to Ask for Feedback from an Interviewer

26/05/2022

Susan was certain she’d receive an offer after 10 interviews for a VP-level role, but she ultimately didn’t get the job. She was hesitant to ask for feedback after the exhausting process and assumed it would be fruitless anyway. But after we spent time in coaching discussing how to approach the request for feedback, she […]

Mapped: The State of Global Democracy in 2022

Mapped: The State of Global Democracy in 2022

25/05/2022

Mapped: The State of Democracy Around the World The world’s (almost) eight billion people live under a wide variety of political and cultural circumstances. In broad terms, those circumstances can be measured and presented on a sliding scale between “free” and “not free”—the subtext being that democracy lies on one end, and authoritarianism on the […]

The Key to Retaining Young Workers? Better Onboarding.

The Key to Retaining Young Workers? Better Onboarding.

24/05/2022

It is no news that hiring right now is incredibly difficult. Labor shortages are widespread, young workers are expecting higher starting wages, and after employers hire and train a new employee, the risk that they will jump ship for a better paying job is rising fast. The cost of turnover is high, but it has […]

Why CEOs should care about service operations

Why CEOs should care about service operations

23/05/2022

As a CEO, you have a lot of ground to cover, and the way your organization defines, designs, and delivers services has a significant impact on almost all of it. Services matter in every industry, both as a direct source of value and as an enabler of value creation. For some businesses, services are the […]

3 Questions Investors Ask Themselves When Evaluating a CEO

3 Questions Investors Ask Themselves When Evaluating a CEO

20/05/2022

Market volatility is back. Corporate valuations are under the microscope. Today’s leaders need to demonstrate they can manage through uncertainty and remain agile in the face of one black swan event after another. When it comes to proving valuation, companies tend to focus on the tangibles like revenue growth, market share, and profitability. While these […]

The board’s role in cloud

The board’s role in cloud

19/05/2022

Few companies are unaware of the potential benefits of cloud. Far fewer, however, have captured them at scale. For companies looking to increase their speed of innovation, the efficiency of their IT, and the business value their technology generates, finding the formula to unlock cloud’s value is paramount. Boards have an important role to play […]

Balancing Autonomy and Structure for Remote Employees

Balancing Autonomy and Structure for Remote Employees

18/05/2022

As major companies like Google and Apple have begun mandating a return of all employees to the office for a certain number of days per week, the debate about flexibility and autonomy continues to develop. More organizations are taking a firm stance on where they feel their employees should work, once again casting the spotlight […]

Getting strategy wrong--and how to do it right instead

Getting strategy wrong–and how to do it right instead

18/05/2022

The word “strategy” means an approach to dealing with a difficult challenge, especially that of competing with a clever opponent. To have a strategy is to have an approach to overcoming critical obstacles and difficulties. However, through many years of working with companies, government agencies, and the military, we have too often seen strategies that […]

How sustainability could change the food system

How sustainability could change the food system

13/05/2022

It’s not simple to reform a system that more than 500 million farmers, workers, and employees around the world depend on, and that plays a critical role in people’s health. Yet pressure from stakeholders has never been stronger: consumers are demanding sustainable products and services, investors are shifting to sustainable investments, regulators are implementing new […]

The Success of Your M&A Deal Hinges on How You Announce It

The Success of Your M&A Deal Hinges on How You Announce It

12/05/2022

One of the critical mistakes that acquirers make is the mismanagement of Announcement Day, which usually arrives in the form of a carefully staged conference call packed with journalists and analysts — and plenty of excitement. Then investors react to the acquirer’s presentation. For the majority of companies, those reactions come as a harsh surprise, […]

How to Map Out Your Digital Transformation

How to Map Out Your Digital Transformation

10/05/2022

At the start of the pandemic, businesses around the globe found themselves exposed to an unexpected boost in digitalization. Those who promised to keep the wheels turning were given carte blanche to do whatever it took to keep a company running. But as many now return to the office, they also realize that the digitalization […]

How procurement leaders can fight inflation

How procurement leaders can fight inflation

09/05/2022

In the years before the pandemic, rising productivity and declining costs for many inputs—achieved through lean and just-in-time strategies and the globalization of supply chains, among other factors—had allowed many procurement organizations to operate successfully. But now the inflationary surge and frequent scarcity of critical supplies have made shortcomings of the traditional operating model increasingly […]

How Companies Can Prepare for a Long Run of High Inflation

How Companies Can Prepare for a Long Run of High Inflation

08/05/2022

While consumers generally dislike inflation because it erodes the purchasing power of their income, businesses desire a steady level of inflation because investments made in today’s prices yield higher profits and returns in the future. Governments also like low and steady inflation. With inflation, government’s long-term borrowing needs to be repaid at a lower real […]

Four steps for managing risk at the CEO level

Four steps for managing risk at the CEO level

06/05/2022

Adapting to a fast-changing risk landscape has become a priority for most organizations, a necessity made more evident by the global pandemic and recent geopolitical events. At the same time, chief executives are under more pressure than ever to reconcile agendas from multiple stakeholders affecting their organization. The convergence of these two trends means that […]

3 Obstacles to Globalizing a Digital Platform

3 Obstacles to Globalizing a Digital Platform

05/05/2022

As technology progresses, it has become increasingly easy for digital platform companies to reach customers around the globe. This ease of access can make scaling up seem effortless — after all, virtual marketplaces are borderless by nature, and so it can be tempting for these businesses to view the entire world as their target market […]

How Do Big Tech Giants Make Their Billions?

How Do Big Tech Giants Make Their Billions?

04/05/2022

The Returns of Top Cryptocurrencies in 2021 2021 saw the crypto markets boom and mature, with different sectors flourishing and largely outperforming the market leader, bitcoin. While bitcoin only managed to return 59.8% last year, the crypto sector’s total market cap grew by 187.5%, with many of the top coins offering four and even five-digit […]

Navigating inflation: A new playbook for CEOs

Navigating inflation: A new playbook for CEOs

22/04/2022

Last year, policy makers, economists, and financial-market participants fiercely debated the higher inflation then under way. Was it a transitory problem, caused by dislocations from the COVID-19 pandemic that would inevitably fade, or was it a more fundamental and potentially permanent shift? CEOs told us that they viewed this debate as detached from the business […]

How Cofounders Can Prevent Their Relationship from Derailing

How Cofounders Can Prevent Their Relationship from Derailing

21/04/2022

When you start and grow a company with a cofounder, that person becomes your key relationship. There’s no more intimate relationship in business, and yet people often don’t think carefully in advance about how to make those partnerships work. That can be fatal for your venture since, according to Noam Wasserman, author of The Founder’s […]

The Rise of Functional Food: What Investors Need to Know

The Rise of Functional Food: What Investors Need to Know

20/04/2022

Investors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) expect to dramatically increase their sustainable assets. In fact, sustainable assets are projected to grow from 21% of total assets in 2020 to 47% of total assets in 2025. In this graphic we outline the top five ESG challenges that European investors face amid this shift. […]

When to Change Your Company’s P&L Responsibilities

When to Change Your Company’s P&L Responsibilities

19/04/2022

Most major rearrangements, or “leaps,” involve a change of profit and loss (P&L) responsibility in the organization’s primary dimension. Companies can be organized around product category, region, customer segment, distribution channel, business function, asset, program, major account, or any other value-driving dimension. For example, let’s take consumer goods company Procter & Gamble (P&G). In July […]

Talking to Your Customers About Prices

Talking to Your Customers About Prices

11/04/2022

A simple take on prices is that they are an obstacle toward the purchase of a desired product or service. Companies, therefore, see a legitimate need to reduce “friction” in the transaction, which they accomplish by reaching into a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, ranging from the subtle to the egregious. Some companies, for example, […]

The flip side of large M&A deals

The flip side of large M&A deals

08/04/2022

The latest readout of our ongoing Global 2,000 research shows that a large-deal approach to M&A holds more risk than other types of M&A programs—second only to an organic approach, in which a company pursues no M&A. According to the data, the chances that a company using the large-deal approach 1 1. A transaction in which […]

Where We Go Wrong with Collaboration

Where We Go Wrong with Collaboration

07/04/2022

Practically everything we do at work is a collaboration. Pre-pandemic, many people spent 85% or more of their time each week in collaborative work — answering emails, instant messaging, in meetings, and using other team collaboration tools and spaces. This number has only grown throughout the pandemic, with no end in sight as we move […]

State of Grocery Europe: Navigating the headwinds

State of Grocery Europe: Navigating the headwinds

06/04/2022

Disclaimer: The war in Ukraine is having a deep human, as well as social and economic, impact across countries and sectors. The exact implications for grocery retail are still unclear. This article was written before the war started. Our first analysis of the impact of the war indicates that it mostly accelerates the trends we […]

Visualizing the EU’s Energy Dependency

Visualizing the EU’s Energy Dependency

05/04/2022

Visualizing the EU’s Energy Dependency   In response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and EU have imposed heavy sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy. However, these bold actions also come with some potentially messy complications: Russia is not only one of the world’s largest exporters of energy products, but it is […]

Six customer experience pitfalls to avoid

Six customer experience pitfalls to avoid

01/04/2022

In recent years, organizations across sectors have been forced to overhaul many of their processes as the importance of CX has taken center stage. Largely due to the rise in “CX native” companies, customers’ expectations across areas like getting immediate help, maintaining control, and personalization have grown. Meanwhile, privacy concerns have increased, social media has […]

How Much Autonomy Should You Give Your Global Teams?

How Much Autonomy Should You Give Your Global Teams?

31/03/2022

When expanding into international markets, how much autonomy should home-office leaders give local teams? Maintaining excessively tight control over your overseas divisions can get in the way of their ability to operate efficiently and make decisions effectively — but giving them too much autonomy can also backfire, leading to quality issues, inconsistencies, duplicated work, and […]

Building new supply-chain management skills for a digital age

Building new supply-chain management skills for a digital age

30/03/2022

What expertise will your next generation of warehouse managers require? Computer programming? Data analytics? Advanced robotics? Maybe all those things and more. If you are like the 71 global companies that responded to a 2021 supply chain survey, you probably accelerated your investments in digital technology as your supply chain grappled with COVID-19 challenges. What’s […]

Mapped: Global Happiness Levels in 2022

Mapped: Global Happiness Levels in 2022

29/03/2022

Mapped: Global Happiness Levels in 2022 What really makes people happy? While countless academic researchers have tried to get to the bottom of this, the truth is, it’s a complicated question to answer. Happiness levels depend on a number of factors, including one’s financial security, perceptions of social support, feelings of personal freedom, and much […]

Supporting Women Leaders, Beyond the Crisis

Supporting Women Leaders, Beyond the Crisis

21/03/2022

The pandemic’s negative impact on women in the workforce will not be reversed for a very long time. In the first year of the pandemic alone, 54 million women around the world left the workforce, almost 90 percent of whom exited the labor force completely. The participation rate for women in the global labor force […]

3 Practices That Set Resilient Teams Apart

3 Practices That Set Resilient Teams Apart

18/03/2022

Keeping a team’s energy dialed up through tough times has always been a challenging task — but sustaining resilience in a pandemic? Nobody has written a playbook for that. As Gallup asked in its end of 2021 report: “How can managers be expected to improve the engagement and wellbeing of your workforce if they, themselves, […]

What Stops Leaders from Looking to Other Industries for Inspiration

What Stops Leaders from Looking to Other Industries for Inspiration

17/03/2022

As business scrambles to recover from the pandemic, I’ve seen one famous piece of advice doing the rounds: leaders are told to look to other industries for fresh ideas. The classic example is Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly line, an idea he stole from the meat industry. Abbatoirs used a “dissembly line” to shunt […]

Map Explainer: Key Facts About Ukraine

Map Explainer: Key Facts About Ukraine

11/03/2022

Map Explainer: Key Facts About Ukraine The modern state of Ukraine was formed nearly 30 years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the country has often made headlines due to political instability and the looming threat of a Russian invasion. In the map graphic above, we examine Ukraine from […]

How to Make Sense of Conflicting Feedback on Your Leadership

How to Make Sense of Conflicting Feedback on Your Leadership

10/03/2022

I recently sat with an executive, we’ll call him Mark, to review his comprehensive feedback report, which comprised nearly 25 interviews with critical stakeholders. While most feedback contains some contradictory data, in his case, the differences were extreme. Some people described him as supportive and kind while others described him as self-serving and mean-spirited. He […]

A better way to brainstorm

A better way to brainstorm

09/03/2022

The dilemma The regional CEO of a large US cosmetics company has invited all the business unit leaders to brainstorm about M&A priorities and potential opportunities in the new year. Everyone knows that digital acquisitions have been a pet project for the senior-leadership team. But some business unit heads believe the company should look at […]

How Brands Can Enter the Metaverse

How Brands Can Enter the Metaverse

08/03/2022

There are quite a few people who believe that the latest paradigm shift for the internet is already well underway: the metaverse, they say, is almost here. When companies investing in a space and the media declare a moment, it’s reasonable to take a beat and see whether the reality can live up to the […]

Visualizing Ukraine’s Top Trading Partners and Products

Visualizing Ukraine’s Top Trading Partners and Products

07/03/2022

International trade was equal to 65% of Ukraine’s GDP in 2020, totaling to $102.9 billion of goods exchanged with countries around the world. In 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea contributed to a 30% year-over-year drop in Ukraine’s 2015 trade value ($75.6B). Now, Ukraine’s international trade has been irreversibly disrupted since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February […]

Using a Mantra to Be a More Inclusive Leader

Using a Mantra to Be a More Inclusive Leader

04/03/2022

Cohesive teams are critical for organizational success, innovation, and fostering a sense of belonging. Yet one of the greatest challenges facing leaders today is creating a culture of inclusiveness, where all members are treated equitably and feel equally valued. In teaching hundreds of executives and students about leading diverse teams, we’ve found that, although most […]

What Is the Purpose of Your Purpose?

What Is the Purpose of Your Purpose?

03/03/2022

Despite its sudden elevation in corporate life, “purpose” remains a confusing concept. Finding the right one involves identifying an authentic and motivating basis for alignment among key stakeholder groups. Why It Exists Purpose is used in three distinct senses: competence, as in “the function that our product serves”; culture, as in “the intent with which […]

How Your Brand Should Use NFTs

How Your Brand Should Use NFTs

02/03/2022

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are going mainstream in 2022. You can now show off your favorite NFTs as your Twitter or Reddit profile picture, with Facebook and Instagram soon to follow. Driven in part by a FOMO reminiscent of the 1990s dotcom anxiety of bricks-and-mortar companies, mass-market players and luxury brands alike are launching NFT collections […]

Visualizing Countries Grouped by Their Largest Trading Partner (1960-2020)

Visualizing Countries Grouped by Their Largest Trading Partner (1960-2020)

25/02/2022

Amidst supply chain issues and inflated shipping costs, global trade continued to grow last year, reaching an estimated $28 trillion in 2021—a 23% increase compared to the year prior. Which countries are the central nodes of the global trade network? While China is currently the world’s largest trading partner, this hasn’t always been the case. […]

Does Your Company Need a Chief ESG Officer?

Does Your Company Need a Chief ESG Officer?

24/02/2022

There’s a new title in the C-suite: chief ESG officer. While top executives with “ESG” in their title are new and not yet widespread, this role is an opportunity that companies may consider as they face increasing pressure to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues; companies like C.H. Robinson, Royal Caribbean, and Verizon have […]

The Cybersecurity Risks of an Escalating Russia-Ukraine Conflict

The Cybersecurity Risks of an Escalating Russia-Ukraine Conflict

23/02/2022

As warnings of an imminent Russian attack on Ukraine proliferate, news networks and social media have featured clips of Russian armed forces training, exercising, and preparing to fight. Less visible are Russia’s formidable cyber forces that would be preparing to unleash a new wave of cyber-attacks on Ukrainian and western energy, finance, and communications infrastructure. Whether an […]

Agile Doesn’t Work Without Psychological Safety

Agile Doesn’t Work Without Psychological Safety

22/02/2022

Twenty-one years ago, 17 software engineers published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, more commonly known as the Agile Manifesto. Responding to the bureaucratic waterfall model of software development, with its linear phases and heavy documentation, these engineers advocated a more flexible approach, one that could adapt and succeed in a highly dynamic environment. That […]

The rise of the inclusive consumer

The rise of the inclusive consumer

22/02/2022

Large consumer and retail players from Nordstrom to Yelp are moving quickly to serve this group of influential customers. Indeed, while inclusive consumers tend to be younger, female, and more racially diverse, they include men and women across ethnic backgrounds, income levels, and age groups. Given this diverse and ubiquitous representation, the inclusive consumer holds […]

Precision Pricing When Inflation Is Rising

Precision Pricing When Inflation Is Rising

18/02/2022

Precision pricing is the key to pricing in today’s inflationary environment and in the mixed-inflation markets we can expect in years to come. It’s highly targeted and enables managers to base prices on each product’s true, current costs and each customer’s true, current profitability. Traditional across-the-board price increases, which treat all costs and customers the […]

How did COP26 help business move towards a net-zero economy?

How did COP26 help business move towards a net-zero economy?

17/02/2022

I thought I might kick off by sharing a few reflections on how far COP26 helped us move towards a net-zero economy, and what some of the implications to business are. These remarks are really formed by four different sets of insights. In the year running up to COP, we helped create the fact base […]

Make Your Employer Brand Stand Out in the Talent Marketplace

Make Your Employer Brand Stand Out in the Talent Marketplace

16/02/2022

Employer branding is gradually becoming more important in C-suite conversations, but it’s still a relatively new concept. Several years ago business leaders might have pointed to pinball machines in the office game room or catered lunches as examples of employer branding. In 2022 most are aware that such perks hardly constitute a comprehensive employee retention […]

Do You Need a Career Coach?

Do You Need a Career Coach?

13/02/2022

Career coaches provide a range of services, from helping you figure out what you want to do to exploring opportunities for professional growth to supporting you through the ups and downs of looking for a new job. Engaging with a career coach requires an investment of time and money, so it’s important to do your […]

What’s the Optimal Workplace for Your Organization?

What’s the Optimal Workplace for Your Organization?

11/02/2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the pandemic, now is the right time for many leaders to rethink how and where their employees work and collaborate. Should businesses call employees back into the office or leave them working remotely? Is it time to try out a new way of working all together? Lost in […]

Companies Gone Public in 2021: Visualizing IPO Valuations

Companies Gone Public in 2021: Visualizing IPO Valuations

20/01/2022

The Companies that Defined 2021 Attention is an increasingly valuable form of currency in the Information Age. In 2021, a handful of companies stood out from the pack, dominating the conversation and influencing society in both positive and negative ways. After vigorous internal debate, here is Visual Capitalist’s list of companies that defined 2021: We […]

The (uncomfortable) truth of HR and leadership development

The (uncomfortable) truth of HR and leadership development

19/01/2022

Quackery and pseudoscience can be very dangerous. Not only in medicine but also in human resources. Alarmed by the nonsensical ideas of Transactional Analysis, Patrick Vermeren set out on a mission to reveal the truth about the many HR theories, models and questionnaires. The academic literature revealed that most HR practices (in recruitment, assessment, development, […]

What Courageous Leaders Do Differently

What Courageous Leaders Do Differently

18/01/2022

Fred Keller, the founder of Cascade Engineering, wanted to show that a for-profit business could also help address society’s social ills. So he accepted an employee’s suggestion that they hire unemployed locals. They rented a van, went to a low-income area of Grand Rapids, Michigan and — with the eight men they identified — started […]