One thing we’ve learned from Covid is that big companies are still run by flesh-and-blood human beings, not artificially intelligent data-crunchers. Despite frequent warnings about potential pandemics, most companies and CEOs did little to actually prepare for the...
In business, team players go unrecognized much of the time, yet they are the secret weapon that makes the difference between great players and great teams. You can often identify them by the questions they ask, instead of the questions they answer. They are constantly...
High impact, low probability events occur more frequently than you think.
People fret about their companies’ struggle to position themselves for the future, and they lay the blame on their culture.
Nearly all business risks can be sorted into one of four categories: financial, operational, external, and strategic. Typically, senior managers are tasked with looking out for financial, external, and strategic risks — with good reason. Over a 20-year period, these...
We tend to think that what happens every decade, in fact, only happens every century, and, furthermore, that we know what’s going on. Nassim Taleb When I started writing the book Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change, I made a list...
Leaders often assume that rules of competition will stay the same, even though they know the future is a volatile place. This is true of mature companies with rigid approaches to planning, but it’s also true of nimble startups.
At the end of the day, nothing is more valuable than survival. If you invest in innovative companies, and you want to see outsized performance, you should consider whether that innovation creates resilience for you, your investment and its customers. In this guide, I’ll show you how to identify innovations that will extract value, no matter what the future brings.
Leaders must project confidence. Their teams look to them for vision and stability, especially in volatile times like these. But confidence without a thorough understanding of what’s to come has another name: hubris. You don’t want to have the confidence of the...
Pundits frame US-China competition in economic, military and diplomatic terms. But it’s actually about something far more important. US-China competition isn’t primarily economic. As China builds its consumer economy and becomes less dependent on exports for...
Reposted from Forbes With all the time that companies invest in strategic planning, it’s surprising how little true strategy emerges. We see financial plans and near-term tactics, but few firms position themselves more than one or two chess moves ahead. Then...
Reprinted from HBR What would you do if one of your largest competitors attempted to force a takeover, your supply chain was obliterated, and your cash cow business imploded — almost overnight? This is exactly what happened to HP in early 2020. By all rights, the...
By Jonathan Brill and Dorie Clark When engaging in career planning, many of us end up unintentionally focusing exclusively on optimistic scenarios: “I want to do X, so I’ll do A, B, and C to make it happen.” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy...
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