How does a company choose the right strategies and implementation to ensure they not only weather a crisis but come out ahead?

Like many new MBAs, I started out as a “strategy guy.” My first consulting gig was with a strategy boutique that created powerful insights. We developed elegant strategies for our clients. But a lot of those strategies stayed in the binders we had prepared, and the majority found a permanent and dusty spot on the CEO’s shelf. Because while this boutique was great at the front end of the strategy process, they gave short shrift to what it really took to make bold recommendations a reality.

“Where do I start?” It’s a question I hear a lot from clients in growth mode.

Contrary to what we usually hear, about 80% of small businesses do survive the first year. But only 50% make it through the first 5 years.

Now that you’re past the startup phase and you’re a growth-stage company rocketing up the growth curve, is how you're managing your decision making keeping up?

Many companies discover that their scaling journey is accompanied by operational and process breakdowns. Don't let finger pointing derail your momentum!

The very success that companies achieve in gaining market traction also plants the seeds of their own potential failure.

As your company grows, adding dozens of people quickly, and the stresses of growth multiply, your culture gets tested. Can you pass the test?

The CEO of a fast-growing professional services company told me growth was great but things were going “off track.”

If you’re on your company’s leadership team, you know first-hand that the pandemic has shown how a sustained crisis adds urgency and weight to just about every decision you make. These tough economic times bring into focus flaws and gaps that were tolerable and even unnoticed in “easier” times – but not any longer.

Among the many people handing out opinions about life after this year’s multiple emergencies are those predicting the end of globalization. The chaos of the last six months, they argue, will throw globalization into reverse. Goodbye to the free movement of goods and people and ideas.In moments of crisis predictions about the future are seldom accurate. But it’s safe to say Davos Man, the creature of globalization, isn’t going anywhere.

Our pandemic has revealed the desire of nearly all of us for a shared sense of mission, a better version of ourselves. Put another way, it has accelerated a reckoning with our broken systems that has been on its way for a long time.