In 1987, a professional wrestling match between Bruiser Brody and Lex Luger in Florida took an unexpected turn. Instead of the standard cage match fans anticipated, the bout transformed into a strange, unscripted encounter. This serves as a reminder that even the most carefully choreographed events can veer off course. Businesses, like wrestling, often face..
When it comes to business, it’s not uncommon for owners to avoid discussing money. Many business owners are hesitant to raise prices and potentially harm a good relationship with their customers. But what happens when increasing costs have already been absorbed and there is no other option? Sometimes, it’s either raise prices or close up..
In today’s uncertain economic climate, many small business leaders recognize the importance of developing and accelerating alternative engines of growth for the future. These new businesses, known as “Engine 2s,” use the scale benefits of the core business to grow faster than an independent start-up could. During downturns, companies make bold moves that enable them..
In unusually difficult situations, a counterintuitive response to stress is what many leaders should aim for, say Jacqueline Brassey, McKinsey senior knowledge expert, and McKinsey senior partner Aaron De Smet as they talk about their new book, Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World (HarperCollins, November 2022), on The McKinsey Podcast..
“The received wisdom is that risk increases in the recessions and falls in the booms. In contrast, it may be more helpful to think of risk as increasing during upswings, as financial imbalances build up, and materializing in recessions.” – Andrew Crockett Everyone loves discussing returns, as they are tangible, boast-worthy, and indicative of one’s..
Via: McKinsey & Company CEOs who helm companies owned by private equity (PE) firms face a leadership challenge unlike any other. They must master everything a great public- or private-company CEO does, all while operating at a higher metabolic rate. A newcomer to PE also faces the conundrum of having limited access to insight about..
VIA HBR.org When Covid-19 burst upon the scene in early 2020, startup ventures faced dramatic shifts in markets and the importance of strategic agility became axiomatic: If you wanted your venture to survive, let alone thrive, pundits (including ourselves) almost universally advocated deep internal cuts accompanied by pivots to new markets and business models. As..
How will AI change strategy? That’s the single most common question the three of us are asked from corporate executives, and it’s not trivial to answer. AI is fundamentally a prediction technology. As advances in AI make prediction cheaper, economic theory dictates that we’ll use prediction more frequently and widely, and the value of complements to..
It sometimes appears that the traditional rules of business are being upended by today’s mega-trends of multisided platforms, big data, machine learning and AI, crowdsourcing, the internet of things (IoT), and more. These trends have transformed the world of business immeasurably. But they have certainly not repealed the timeless rules of strategy. Yet for too many entrepreneurs,..
Even firms that typically prefer to centralize decisions needn’t miss out on the benefits of opening up their strategy making. Strategy making has traditionally been the purview of the top management team. Leaders in the inner circle of organisations pride themselves in being the architects of their plans. Open strategy is a more recent concept..