Strategic Clarity
Forbes ($) - Feb 10, 2021
Multicultural Marketing And Employee Resource Groups—An Alliance That Can Drive Growth
As corporations have become more aware of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) related opportunities, there has also been a surge of interest around Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), as organizations have turned to their employees for information that could help them build more robust employee strategies.
HBR.org ($) - Feb 10, 2021
How to Stop Overthinking Everything
Deliberation is an admirable and essential leadership quality that undoubtedly produces better outcomes. But there comes a point in decision making where helpful contemplation turns into overthinking. To stop the cycle of thinking too much and drive towards better, faster decisions you can: put aside perfectionism, right-size the problem, leverage the underestimated power of intuition, limit the drain of decision fatigue, and construct creative constraints.
E&Y - Feb 9, 2021
How to create value in an evolving business environment
Executives who can strike a balance between long and short-term thinking are able to make better decisions and create effective strategies.
E&Y - Feb 2, 2021
Will there be a ‘next’ if corporate governance is focused on the ‘now’?
A new survey of European business leaders shows sustainable corporate governance as key to long-term value over short-term pressures.
Long Range Planning ($) - Jan 8, 2021
Humanizing strategy
In this article, we apply our latest thinking on knowledge to provide insights on how to reconceptualize strategy to cope with a VUCA world, epitomized recently by COVID-19.
HBR.org ($) - Feb 3, 2021
Reimagining the Balanced Scorecard for the ESG Era
Companies are increasingly aware that their customers and society in general expect businesess to adopt and work towards social and environmental objectives as well as the traditional financial ones. This involves not only re-evaluating firms’ models but re-imagining new, more inclusive ecosystems from a multi-stakeholder point of view. In this article, the authors propose an update to the Balanced Scorecard, one of the most successful management tools of all time, so that it can better help align stakeholders coming from very different places around each other’s goals as well as their own.
Fast Company - Feb 2, 2021
How to tell if a company’s ‘net zero’ goals are serious—or just greenwashing
Here are some questions to ask when a company says it plans to get to zero emissions.
McKinsey & Company - Jan 25, 2021
Are you building employee capabilities across these four critical areas?
Leaders have the potential to capture value and drive impact at levels previously thought unimaginable by building individual capabilities across four quadrants.
McKinsey & Company - Jan 22, 2021
How incumbents can lay the foundations for hypergrowth
To accelerate core-business and new-digital-business growth, established companies should adopt the best practices of successful start-ups.
I don’t know why this article was such an Aha for me. However, the need to create priorities (“even overs”) instead of “both ands” is critical for building a culture where staff feel empowered to take initiative. Really liked this article. Kudos to the author.
Medium - Jan 11, 2021
Even overs: The prioritization tool that brings your strategy to life
… if everything is a priority, nothing is priority. As you’ve no doubt found from your own experience, the “we can have it all” mindset fails frequently as we repeatedly come up short trying to be the best at everything … A better approach is to make trade-offs explicit, by choosing one thing over another thing. Done well, it will result in focus, clarity, alignment, better decision-making, and competitive edge. We want to share with you a practical method that we often use with our clients: the even over statement.
This is a simple article that lays out the complex challenges facing most companies today.
strategy+business ($) - Jan 21, 2021
Practicing strategy in an uncertain world
A modern strategy that works will require leaders to learn new skills and apply new tools. Here’s a primer for a refreshed approach.
HBR.org - Jan 18, 2021
In the Digital Economy, Your Software Is Your Competitive Advantage
Many companies respond to digital competition by embracing methodologies like agile, building “innovation centers,” acquiring startups, or outsourcing app development to consulting firms. But the true disruptors know that in the digital economy, whoever builds the best software wins. Companies that want to compete need to empower their developers and adopt a “software mindset”…
Gartner Blog Network - Jan 15, 2021
What Is Driving Today’s OKR Renaissance?
If I were to name one big idea in business that is (A) highly impactful, (B) under the radar and (C) trending up, my first pick right now would be objectives and key results, or OKRs between friends.
HBR.org - Jan 11, 2021
A Step Toward Making Your Company More Sustainable
One model that holds great promise for sustainability is the circular economy (CE) — instead of digging up materials, using them once, and then throwing them away, companies in a CE recapture the enormous volume of resources in their value chain in order to use them again and again.
strategy+business ($) - Jan 14, 2021
Riding out the wave of disruption
In an era when the pace of technological disruption is rapidly transforming industries — think of streaming services challenging cable, ride-sharing apps versus taxicabs, or electric versus hybrid cars — both incumbents and new entrants must predict how consumers will respond to innovative offerings. A new mathematical model helps incumbent firms forecast consumer response to novel tech offerings.
E&Y - Jan 4, 2021
Three I’s that could reframe the future of retail
With COVID-19 accelerating deep changes in how people shop and what they buy, retailers must shape new propositions that will be relevant now and into the future. This will involve moving beyond their traditional definitions of customer centricity to become truly integrated into the life of the customer by addressing three underlying consumer needs: make my life easier, make it feel better, make it more fulfilling. To achieve this, retailers must develop their value proposition to deliver the right blend of saving time, solving problems or creating experiences for their customers.
Very nice job walking through what the authors call the four dimensions of compensation design. Though these four considerations are not hard concepts to grasp, the authors bring them to life by walking through five business scenarios and how the companies in each scenario structured their compensation packages to align with the situation. Solid article that left me wanting to find more content from the authors!
Harvard Business Review ($) - Jan 1, 2021
Compensation Packages That Actually Drive Performance
By aligning executives’ financial incentives with company strategy, a firm can inspire its management to deliver superior results. But it can be hard to get pay packages right. In this article four experts break down the key elements of compensation and explain how to put them together effectively.
Strategy + Business ($) - Feb 13, 2017
10 Principles of Strategy through Execution
“We are all in the gutter,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “but some of us are looking at the stars.” That is the nature of strategy through execution. You operate deep in the weeds, managing countless day-to-day tasks and transactions. At the same time, you keep a steady gaze on your company’s long-term goals — and on ways you can stand out from your competitors… Having a close link between strategy and execution is critically important.
This article combines two of my most pressing interests. The first is how organizations perform in dynamic marketplaces and the second is the need for organizations to satisfy more than just shareholder value. I had not found a natural way to integrate the two, so this was exciting to me. The article, under the premise of crafting strategy, goes on to present a two-dimensional matrix to determine the type of strategic change required and outlines specific actions that should be considered. The authors even link out to a self-assessment tool! I like the direction of the article, but I found it hard to decipher the train of thought. I have a follow up to try to read more of their stuff.
MIT Sloan Management Review ($) - Dec 17, 2020
The Essence of Strategy Is Now How to Change
When environments are complex and dynamic, strategy is about adaptability… Understanding when and how to change is the essence… Tools that help you spot the opportunities and challenges that exist or are emerging in your company’s specific context are now more relevant than the traditional strategy frameworks that rely on the premise of long-run industry stability and competitor benchmarking.
McKinsey & Company - Jun 1, 2002
Just-in-time strategy for a turbulent world
Uncertainty and rising levels of risk make it impossible for companies to determine the future. But a portfolio-of-initiatives approach to strategy can help ensure that companies take full advantage of their best opportunities without taking unnecessary risks.

All Time Favorites
McKinsey & Company - Jun 1, 2002
Harvard Business Review ($) - Jun 1, 2002
George Veth
Context is so important. And reiterating context around strategy and people’s role in the strategy is paramount for alignment and morale. Neat and succinct article.