I’ve been talking with a number of product and services leaders in North America about the state of their recovery from the COVID period and I’m hearing several persistent themes. One that stands out? The sheer workload and deep fatigue they are experiencing. It really feels for all the world that you are doing the […]
Has this ever happened to you? As I was cleaning out my office the other day, I came across a report from a strategy offsite during my days as a Fortune 500 exec. If your firm is anything like the one I was part of, this may sound familiar…. We paid big money to have […]
It’s one of those moments we all remember from childhood: planting the beans in our third-grade science class. Yes, it’s about science, but it’s also about another deeper lesson: it takes time for the underground work to pay off in visible outcomes. Large ships turn slowly, and even when you do the right thing, are […]
When I do workshops for firms on how to accelerate strategic implementation, rarely does a session go by where the shortage of key talent does not come up. This has always been an issue when a firm has a strategic challenge to rise to a new level. But I am finding that as we work […]
We’ve never had a time quite like this – explosive demands for goods and services, really mobile talent and the wholesale reorganization of work itself. At the same time, many leaders are feeling like they are on a treadmill – through no fault of their own – and noticing that the harder they run, the […]
It was a great offsite session. The core business was profitable, but growth prospects had dimmed. In corporate life, if you don’t hit your year-over-year growth numbers, the team’s momentum and compensation package is significantly reduced. With that in mind, we had worked hard on which of the four growth plays we had researched would […]
The lockdown has been particularly hard on strategists. They have been receiving much of their information secondhand: reading articles, catching Zoom calls with the sales team and attending virtual events. All while trying hard to listen for the unspoken story behind logical data. But it turns out that secondhand clues are no substitute for first-person […]
It was two decades ago, but I remember the day like it was yesterday. I had been on airplanes for 17 hours. The reason? We had one rightfully testy customer who was threatening to remove us from the supply chain. The room was full of functional specialists and client “liaisons.” Everyone had the classic nonverbals […]
I was speaking with a strategy VP in an international firm who was getting ready to deliver a presentation for the executive team that showed a surprising under performance of projects to the business case benchmarks they had set. Just for the record, this is a high-quality team with sound leadership, strong values and a […]
As I speak to executives, there are two stories I’m hearing over and over: The demand for my products and services is soaring and I can’t keep up OR demand has shifted and I can’t reset my portfolio fast enough. These two create intense pressure and disrupt us as we are reaching to get back […]
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