firmsconsulting

Most teams don’t fail because of bad strategy.

They fail because of broken trust.

(and it usually starts long before anyone notices)



I have a three-hour window before today’s executive coaching session.



(Sometimes these small-group conversations run up to four hours when the issues merit the time.)



I'm using this window to prepare for next week, including a Strategy Skills Podcast interview with Vanessa Druskat, an author of The Emotionally Intelligent Team (Harvard Business Review press).



While skimming the book for the first time, I revisited a quote from Eric Schmidt in 2019:



“You’d assume that as you get higher and higher in a company people would know what to do in a team.

In fact, not only do they not know what to do, they’re caught up in their own politics and egos…

Trust is essential, but it’s easier said than done.”



The comment aligns with what I see in executive teams every day:



• Positional authority does not confer collaborative skill.

↳ Titles often obscure the need to cultivate it deliberately.



• Intellect without relational discipline is fragile.

↳ Teams of accomplished individuals underperform if norms for candor and accountability are implicit instead of explicit.



• Trust is an asset that depreciates unless maintained.

↳ Routine reflection — brief check-ins, rotating challenge roles, structured debriefs — helps preserve it.



These are the themes I will likely explore with Vanessa:



→ How leaders can institutionalize emotional intelligence so that trust becomes an operating advantage, instead of a hopeful aspiration.



Now I have a question for you:



What one question would you like me to ask Vanessa?



Drop it in the comments or send me a DM —

(I’ll credit a selection during the conversation, unless you don't want me to.)



#Leadership #TeamEffectiveness #EmotionalIntelligence #ExecutiveCoaching

19 hours ago | [YT] | 1

firmsconsulting

What can a $2B concert tour teach us about business strategy? Quite a lot.

🎙 New Strategy Skills Podcast Episode

"The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift" with Kevin Evers, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review

We often speak about innovation and reinvention in the corporate world. Yet, few embody it as consistently and successfully as the artist and strategist Taylor Swift.

In this episode, I had the privilege of speaking with Kevin Evers, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review and author of There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.

Kevin brings a rare perspective, someone who has quietly shaped the voices of influential business thinkers over nearly two decades, now stepping into authorship himself.

A few profound lessons that stayed with me:

- Trust and consistency precede reinvention
Before Swift became known for continual transformation, she spent years establishing a track record of reliability and emotional resonance with her audience.

- Customers are not just recipients, they are co-creators
Her fandom is not a passive audience but an active, highly engaged community, an idea relevant not just to entertainment, but to any business that aspires to build meaningful engagement.

- Strategic missteps are often born from past success
Swift’s late pivot to streaming platforms illustrates a pattern seen in many market leaders: the captivity of a premium position. Her eventual course correction offers lessons in agility and humility.

- Instinct matters, but so does structure
Kevin’s reflection on Swift’s instinctual decisions, grounded in authenticity, reminds us that not all strategy comes from the boardroom. Sometimes, it’s a deep alignment with who you are.

🎧 Listen to the full conversation and reflect on how these lessons may serve your leadership journey.

#Strategy #Leadership #HarvardBusinessReview#TaylorSwift

Listen, watch, or read: firmsconsulting.com/kevin-evers/

1 day ago | [YT] | 2

firmsconsulting

This Week on StrategyTraining.com
April 14–20, 2025

Most professionals never get access to the right kind of training. They focus on surface-level skills. They chase tactics. They hope things will eventually fall into place. But to stand out requires structured, advanced training built by people who have actually done the work at the highest levels. That’s why we built StrategyTraining.com, the most powerful library of video and audio-based training in strategy, problem solving, critical thinking, communication, executive presence, leadership, case interviews, and consulting business building. This is not theory. It’s not motivational content.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/week-strategytrainingcom-ap…

6 days ago | [YT] | 3

firmsconsulting

🜂 New this week on the Strategy Skills podcast:

Monday

Guest: Sébastien Page, Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price

Topic: The Psychology of Leadership

Sébastien draws on two decades of leadership and research in positive and sports psychology to explore what drives sustained performance. He introduces the PERMA model (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) and explains how it applies to leadership and organizational success.

He also shares reflections from studying billionaires and what fuels achievement beyond financial gain.

Why the 🜂 symbol for Strategy Skills podcast?

This ancient alchemical symbol for fire represents the spark of transformation. It marks the moment when raw insight becomes progress, the first ember of understanding that, with discipline, leads to elevated thinking and lasting impact.


#podcast #strategy #psychology

6 days ago | [YT] | 3

firmsconsulting

As part of our Year of Sales in Consulting theme, we are continuing our support for strategy and business consultants within audit firms, what we call Audit-Based Consultants (ABCs).

Many ABCs have asked for dedicated help in developing an approach to compete more effectively with focused strategy firms. A new program in Insider, Legacy, and resources within the Strategy Control Room Advanced (SCRA) will expand this support.

ABCs can deliver strikingly superior results and value by leveraging the unique skills and institutional assets of audit firms.

To illustrate, we advised a multi-billion-dollar client preparing to enter a new sector. The business case was sound. Assumptions were reasonable. Calculations were correct.

The CEO assumed that raising capital, securing board approval, and obtaining regulatory permission would be sufficient. We advised that one final step remained. One that only an audit firm could lead. Specifically, we recommended PwC for the task.

He declined.

The division underperformed.

Eventually, it was divested.

The issue was not the cost of capital, inflation, or execution.

The strategy was sound. The financing was optimal. The operations were near best-in-class. Yet, one critical piece was missed.

The new program will show how to structure business cases and recommendations to reflect the unique advantages ABCs offer. It draws from the principles we teach in The Strategy Journal, Succeeding as a Management Consultant, and within the Strategy Control Room Advanced.

This will be released soon at StrategyTraining (dot) com.

1 week ago | [YT] | 1

firmsconsulting

There is No Zero Gravity.

That’s what Dr. Bernard Harris (physician, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and the first African-American astronaut to walk in space) told me about an hour ago as we were recording an episode of the Strategy Skills podcast.

For years, we were taught the term “zero gravity.”

In truth, it doesn’t exist.

Microgravity is what astronauts experience. Gravity is everywhere. Always present, even if only in trace amounts.

That small shift in language holds a larger insight:

Many high-performing professionals are operating on false assumptions.

We don’t question the phrases we’ve accepted.

We don’t re-examine what we were taught.

We often don't know what we don't know.

When I was a child I remember telling my beloved grandmother that I wanted to be an astronaut. She said women can't become astronauts.

I believed her.

And she believed it, otherwise she would never limit me this way.

So much of what holds us back isn’t real.

It’s inherited. Repeated. Unchallenged.

What beliefs are you still carrying that were never true to begin with?

What have you accepted as fact that’s quietly shaping your life?

It’s worth revisiting.

Everything changes when you start seeing clearly.

1 week ago | [YT] | 6

firmsconsulting

Would your team or clients know if it wasn’t you speaking?

Researchers tried to answer that question at Zapier.

Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj Choudhury and his colleagues built something they called the “Wade Bot,” an AI trained on CEO Wade Foster’s Slack messages, emails, and public statements. It was designed to write like him.

Then they ran a test.

Employees submitted questions. Both the real Foster and the Wade Bot replied. The team was asked to guess which answers came from the CEO.

They got it right 59% of the time.

But there is more...

When people thought a message was written by AI, they rated it as less helpful, even when the real CEO wrote it.

It’s an important reminder that perception matters.

We don’t just evaluate the message we react to who we think is behind it.

Choudhury’s team was exploring what happens when AI starts to “stand in” for us: communicating, attending meetings, maybe even negotiating.

It’s already happening.

How long does it take to lose client's trust or employee's respect?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 4

firmsconsulting

Zero stress ≠ peak performance.

Yesterday, I interviewed Sébastien Page for the Strategy Skills podcast and we spoke about psychology of leadership, including about stress curves.

We all have a stress curve.

And somewhere along that curve, not at the bottom, is where we perform at our best.

But it’s not the same spot for everyone.

Some people thrive under more pressure.

Others need calm to stay sharp.

And what worked for you last year may not work today.

The point is: if peak performance is your goal no stress is not a point where you will achieve it.

#leadership #executivedevelopment #executivetraining #leader #leaders

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 1

firmsconsulting

Former Time Editor on Being Richer, Wiser, and Happier:

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 535, an interview with the author of Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life, William Green.

In this episode, William Green talks about his journey from Oxford to becoming a renowned journalist. He shares stories of his unconventional career path, including unexpected moves to New York, then to Hong Kong, financial struggles, and being laid off. William discusses how he learned to handle failure with grace and experienced a spiritual awakening at 40 that changed his outlook. He offers practical advice for writers and thinkers on focusing on quality over quantity and finding work that aligns with their unique talents and personalities.

William Green has written for many publications in the US and Europe, including Time, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, The New Yorker, The Spectator, and The Economist. He edited the Asian edition of Time while living in Hong Kong, then moved to London to edit the European, Middle Eastern, and African editions of Time. Born and raised in London, William studied English literature at Oxford University and received a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. He lives in New York with his wife and their two children.

#StrategySkillsPodcast #leadership

1 month ago | [YT] | 4

firmsconsulting

This week, we begin the release of the very first documents (initial project plan and issues meetings) for a major and much-requested program: Building a Consulting Practice - from the first meeting all the way to the methodology, proposals, books, and a stream of work. Documents are being released to SCRA and video explanations will shortly be loaded to StrategyTraining.com.

It's go time. By now you should have thought through the questions from the program. You should have read the rough overview of the meetings that led to the pivotal sale. One of the key strategies we follow is to work for large companies and generate multiple revenue streams. In this step, we will show you the key slides from the initial engagement that led to the discussion that generated the new work streams.

The initial engagement was an operations strategy engagement described in Succeeding as a Management Consultant. The process was modified into a standard operations strategy process, which we explained in The Operations Management Strategy Journal. Both books are only available within the SCRA. The standard operations strategy process is unique to FIRMSconsulting and StrategyTraining.com. Most firms, including large consulting firms, have no process to develop an operations strategy. Instead, they focus on ad-hoc problems as they arise. This standard process allows you to conduct routine reviews of a client's operations, which uncovers additional work.

While this email discusses selected pages/slides, the entire document can be found in the SCRA under Building a Consulting Practice. Partner commentary on the strategies and tactics will be uploaded to StrategyTraining.com.

As the partner leading this engagement, where would you focus on next? What is the next logical problem that the client would need help on? Why do you believe this to be true? What would need to happen for this to be true?

The client, Global Corp. Inc. (GCI), has been struggling to grow. The initial engagement was to make the operations as lean as possible (cutting costs) while generating as much cash as possible (moving to continuous operations) to fund new growth opportunities. The client believed its core business was dying. We are already working with the client on their operations strategy and expanding into new businesses.

Before we developed the highly effective and unique approach in The Operations Management Strategy Journal, we sent in dedicated teams of consultants to solve operations problems we identified in the top-down financial analyses (See The Strategy Journal for the process). This worked well at this particular client since they had issues arising rapidly and we needed to act quickly to contain them.

Continue reading: firmsconsulting.com/building-a-consulting-practice…

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1 month ago | [YT] | 9