We provoke deeper thinking and empower operators to build high-value companies.

Unlike previous economic crises, sustained government policies have masked the ill effects of long-term easy monetary policy. As government tools that hide these effects weaken, hard-working people will face a rough transition in their employment relationships. Transparency and predictability are the most basic expectations in any relationship, including an employment contract. Avoiding ecosystems prone to suboptimal outcomes with personal and professional costs is optimal. Minimally, it is prudent to predict involuntary separations to minimize impact.

Investors, CEOs, executives, supervisors, and all spend approvers must develop an objective investment effectiveness mindset to reverse their companies' productivity challenges. The first lever to drive productivity improvements is to embrace an opt-in mindset to curb wasteful investments. The second lever is to optimize human capital investment, which involves a fundamentals-focused recalibration of our labor force towards customer-centric work, skill-focused staffing, and reintroduction of up-skilling and performance management. An ability to connect every investment dollar to tangible intrinsic value creation for internal and external customers will characterize companies that can profitably and sustainably grow.

We are experiencing The Productivity Crisis worldwide, as companies and individuals. The predicament results from the easy money era of the last decade. Cost insensitivity, followed by investment ineffectiveness, set off The Productivity Crisis domino. Poor organizational designs, over-staffing, seniority and pay inflation, and decoupling of skill from employment rewards formed the domino that epitomizes this crisis. Self-diagnosing our organizations for this domino will set us up for remedial actions.

Discover how organizations can excel by enabling top performers and fostering competition. Let's explore the pitfalls of managing for the middle and learn how leading companies proactively identify and empower high-performing individuals for sustained success.

Given recent excitement and apprehension around “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) triggered by the public release of ChatGPT, the popular platform powered by OpenAI’s algorithm, we must parse reality from sensation and prepare for pretenders jumping in to clutter the powerful and dangerous space. Internalizing what really constitutes “AI”, what can “AI” really do for us, and what should scare us will simplify the conversation.

Explore the aftermath of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse and the vital lessons in risk management it offers.

We need a cohesive and comprehensive definition of a 'good' company. The lack of such a definition and its broad acceptance gives rise to dysfunctional behaviors within the concept of companies which is as natural to all of us as air and water. A holistic company satisfies all the intended conditions of a capitalistic enterprise while avoiding the most common form of its mutation - capital engineering.

Growth-at-any-cost era, spurred on by easy-money for fifteen years, is over. We turned a great and necessary idea of privately funded companies into a productivity-challenged, artificially inflated asset class. Let’s internalize the harmful distortions caused by the pervasive tendency to focus on capital engineering.

Many companies have built their businesses around recurring revenue models that determine everything from company valuations to employee compensation. Stickiness is the lifeblood of such a business model. Losing focus on aspects that truly impact stickiness risks losing the entire plot. Almost every sustainably growing company has one common factor—they directly inject value into a critical operational component within the customers’ journey.

The crux of a strategic plan is the firm articulation of how we solve the market problem using our unique strengths and how those strengths will be evolved to deliver our solution sustainably.

Macroscopic factors may not influence the short-term valuation or value creation ability of a company if they do not come to pass immediately. But when they eventually transpire, there won’t be a rock to hide under if we do not prepare a company for it.

A company’s people agenda dictates how it delivers value to customers. An effective strategic plan will frame an approach to dovetail the company’s people to behaviors customers consider valuable.

A company’s strategy and plan entirely depend on the ownership time horizon of majority shareholders. An effective strategic plan creates accountability by affirming our intentions and communicating our game plan to all stakeholders affected by ownership changes.