The new finance operating system: 5 key factors that CFOs must get right

Learn more about the five core components of a resilient finance operating system and how this new lens enables your organization to focus on growth in the face of unexpected shocks—and drive organizational success.

Signing to close: using the M&A golden period to your advantage

If the time between the signing and close of M&A deals feels like it’s taking longer, it’s not just you. However, companies can use this time to their advantage. The M&A golden period provides an opportunity to prepare for the combination. In doing so, executives can better ensure a smooth transition and help the future entity be more successful.

Arndt Heinrich, Denis Huebner, Jannik Trapp, Maximilian Rauh

It’s common nowadays for companies to have a chief sustainability officer and team in place. This bundles the responsibility and often capabilities for sustainability-related topics in one place. 

But while establishing clearly defined responsibilities is key to kickstarting the road to sustainability, one function alone cannot drive every sustainability-related decision that needs to be taken, day in, day out, or manage all of the trade-offs required … [ Read more ]

Accelerate corporate innovation ROI

Over the past 10 years, innovation has become a buzzword.

The use of the word has doubled during the earnings calls of S&P 500 firms and, according to the World Economic Forum, the top global corporate R&D spenders increased their investments in innovation by 10 percent in 2020. Yet, despite this frenetic activity, only 20 percent of CEOs believe their innovation investments generate value, according to … [ Read more ]

What’s Next in Organization Design?

Most organizations are set up for productivity and predictability. However, in today’s environment, where volatility and opportunity reign, this seems counterintuitive at best.

As the saying goes, it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, even if you have the best leadership and capabilities at your disposal. But everything we are seeing today, along with certain shifts that we have been tracking for some years, … [ Read more ]

Steven Berger, Neeti Bhardwaj, Ira Gaberman

Organizations are shifting their focus to inclusion and equity in order to advance beyond the state in which the workforce is demographically diverse, but opportunities remain unequal and voices go unheard. In an inclusive work environment, employees feel included and valued as their authentic selves, actively engaged in the organization and recognized without judgment for their contributions. Equity means that systemic barriers and unfair advantages … [ Read more ]

Mission, Metrics, or Somewhere in Between: Where Exactly Does the Purpose Gap Begin?

Over the past 10 years or so, “purpose” has become something of an organizational watchword. It’s everywhere—not least in the mission statements and brand identities of most major corporations. And in this era of stakeholder capitalism and pandemic soul-searching, purpose has evolved into a leadership imperative, a signal to those demanding action that the company can do business with this business, because it shares some … [ Read more ]

Unapologetically DEI: Designing Equity and Inclusion Into the New Era of Work

As a new era of work emerges in a post-pandemic world, leaders must take proactive action to avoid undoing decades of progress toward diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Eric Sauvage, Charles-Etienne Bost, Samuel Cazin, Luca Olivari

Expertise is the starting point of any added value. It exists both individually and in teams, both centrally and locally. The key is to identify and then leverage it. Experts should be identified, recognized, and shared wherever they can add value. Some experts are so important that they should spend half their time answering direct requests. They should be mobile, in order to allow delivery … [ Read more ]

Eric Sauvage, Charles-Etienne Bost, Samuel Cazin, Luca Olivari

Companies are often unaware that they have trust issues. In our consulting work, we are frequently engaged to help solve strategic and operational challenges, but nine times out of ten lack of trust emerges as a driving factor of the challenges.

Kristen Etheredge

Traditionally, time and money are invested in nurturing high performers or coaching low performers. But organizations actually get better results from improving the performance of the majority of employees—the average workers. The key is to identify the bright spots in the workforce (those “outliers” whose work exemplifies high performance), focus on what they do differently, and replicate it across the majority. We call this approach “Shifting … [ Read more ]

Jürgen Rothenbücher

Industries consolidate faster when the share of fixed costs is high. Slow-moving industries are those with few physical assets, such as restaurants, craftsmen, and medical care. Industries moving at a medium speed include automotive, aluminum, and food. Fast-moving industries have the lowest variable costs and high asset intensity, such as software, telecom equipment, and search engines.

Everybody Into the Pool

How employee transition pools can generate serious benefits for companies—and reduce job losses—during mergers and other moments of transition.

Bharat Kapoor, Scott Tsangeos

By gauging consumer sentiment, you’re not guessing what consumers want and tweaking prototypes. Rather, you’re either validating or disproving your assumptions with data that’s already in the marketplace. Compared with surveys, focus groups, and other traditional methods of obtaining customer feedback, sentiment analysis generates better insights faster, allowing you to incorporate those insights into product design more quickly. By shortening the product development cycle, you … [ Read more ]

Sentiment Analysis: What Do Your Customers Really Care About?

Long before people began plastering their likes, dislikes, loves, hates, thumbs up, and thumbs down across the Internet, companies relied on focus groups and surveys to gauge what consumers thought about their products

Divesting to Win: How Organizations Create Value from Divestitures

Companies divest assets for a variety of reasons, but many miss the boat when it comes to creating value from such events. In fact, more companies lose value than create value following a divestiture. Kearney’s ongoing research focuses on what separates the value creators from the value destroyers.

An End-to-End Perspective on Field Service Optimization

Optimizing service after the sale in the world of physical goods can have a significant impact on reducing field service costs.