Know What's Happening in Management Consulting
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Management Consulting Pulse
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Daily
Every morning
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Ram Charan unveils AI‑driven manufacturing playbook for cash‑flow gains
Renowned advisor Ram Charan has released a manufacturing playbook that uses AI to unlock immediate cash‑flow improvements. He urges CEOs to map the entire value chain, spot cash traps and deploy low‑cost AI tools such as ChatGPT analyses of vendor data to achieve roughly ten‑percent savings quickly. The framework also calls for aggressive pricing and a reassessment of China‑dependency.
Organizations face a volatile environment where two‑thirds of strategy implementations fail. Aligning a project portfolio with corporate strategy maximizes resources, drives performance, and reduces waste. The article outlines a step‑by‑step framework—defining goals, assessing the strategic landscape, establishing a PPM process, applying weighted scoring, and continuously monitoring—to ensure every initiative supports strategic objectives. Effective cross‑department collaboration and iterative review further embed strategic execution.
The article warns that attempting to improve every process simultaneously leads to sub‑optimization, where overall performance barely shifts despite local gains. It introduces the Theory of Constraints (TOC) as a disciplined alternative that focuses improvement on the single bottleneck limiting...
I've noticed something about the organizations that tend to bring me in for optimization and strategy work. They're almost always in some state of chaos. Restructures still working their way through the system. New leadership with new priorities. Strategic pivots that...
The biggest plays in #hockey don’t always happen on the ice. In the National Hockey League (@NHL), front offices make thousands of decisions involving contracts, trades, and salary cap strategy—often under intense time pressure. On the latest episode of the SAP Better...
Embridge Consulting announced the appointment of Alex Ashley‑Roberts and Lucy Fox to its board, bolstering senior leadership as the firm targets the next growth phase in technology‑enabled business transformation. Ashley‑Roberts, former interim head of marketing, will guide sales and marketing...
Service desks are shifting from ticket‑centric operations to product‑team models that prioritize business outcomes over volume metrics. Traditional KPIs like ticket count and handling time are being replaced by measures of employee productivity, user sentiment, and time‑to‑value. By adopting product‑owner...
Most strategies fail before execution. They fail when the bet is made. While in Paraguay preparing to speak on strategy, I reflected on a conversation with Brett Hickey of Star Mountain Capital about why scale exposes weak assumptions and how...
I was in a discovery call this week with a large charity that's got two fundraising products in decline. Both showing appetite from users, but conversion rates are dropping. One product launched strong a few years back but has been falling...
Executive coaching only delivers impact when anchored to a clearly defined business purpose. CHROs must identify the specific leadership gap, transition or cultural challenge before any session begins. Research shows 61% of new executives feel unprepared, contributing to a 50‑60%...
HM Treasury has awarded a £17,000 contract to Red Badger to create an Agile Practice Service for its Corporate Centre Group. The three‑month engagement, running from 12 January to 31 March 2026, will deliver a standardized Agile model, toolkit and light‑touch standards. Red...
Clay Parker Jones’s new book *Hidden Patterns* offers a systems‑level playbook for building more human workplaces. It catalogs 75 recurring organizational problems and pairs each with core solutions framed as reusable patterns rather than prescriptive procedures. Drawing on behavioral science...
We offer unique, tech-agnostic consulting across industries and platforms, capturing real-time data. Unlike specialized firms, we analyze the entire program, including operational aspects. #Consulting #AI #BusinessStrategy https://t.co/LWi1a9dS98
Why Agentic AI Demands a New Architecture “Bain's latest AI readiness survey finds that 80% of generative AI use cases met or exceeded expectations, yet only 23% of companies can tie initiatives to measurable revenue gains or cost reductions. The gap...
Lumina Health Partners has joined ECG Management Consultants, integrating its co‑founders into ECG’s Payer Strategy and Contracting Division. The move deepens ECG’s expertise in value‑based care, combining Lumina’s ten‑year track record advising hospitals with ECG’s national scale and tech‑enabled solutions....
Companies often have strategy slides. But when real decisions happen, people still ask: “What does strategy mean here?” On March 17 at 10 AM ET I’m joining Adam Zales of Amplify to discuss how strategy leaders translate strategy into action. #Strategy #Innovation #Leadership #CorporateStrategy...
Executives: AI is great, and will serve nicely as co-workers to humans. Workers: Okay, but please tell us how this will work. Accenture research finds a yawning gap between executives’ plans for AI, and employee readiness. via @forbes https://t.co/ryb4hnwrws
The article outlines a six‑step framework for selecting an executive coach that truly fits a company’s culture and leadership needs. It emphasizes starting with clearly defined coaching goals that tie directly to business outcomes, then narrowing the pool to coaches...
The "how does AI improve individual productivity" discussion is much less interesting than "how does AI improve organizational efficiency?" We have a lot of answers to the former, but it will always get eaten by the latter if we don't...
Buying more AI tools won’t fix broken workflows. Cisco found 75% of project management tasks are identical across departments. Most companies redesign in silos and duplicate the effort. Map the work first. Redesign second. Deploy tools third. https://t.co/n8xR4tuo7g
Enterprises are awash with AI pilots, yet most struggle to turn them into enterprise‑wide operating models. The Frontier Firm Initiative (FFI) at Harvard identified seven structural frictions that stall this "last‑mile" transition, ranging from governance gaps to fragmented platform stacks....
AI doesn’t replace hard work. It replaces: • friction • repetition • bad process design Tool lists don’t create leverage. Workflow redesign does. https://t.co/vA5qiq9PJH
"No matter the decade you went to school, the time frame is about the same as it is today, but the demands keep increasing. That is an unsustainable model. Focus on subtracting before you even consider adding." 3 Things to Consider When...
The Williams Group has signed a one‑year contract to provide strategic counsel, tactical planning, and government‑relations services for war‑torn Sudan, earning a $60,000 monthly retainer. The engagement follows a February peace session that secured preliminary approval for a $1.5 billion package...
In a climate where 70 percent of CEOs cite high disruption, boards are shifting focus from résumé credentials to executive agility. Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA) uses its 26‑year‑old Leadership Portrait to quantify traits such as curiosity, resilience, and social intelligence, adding...
Recent AI‑driven layoffs at Block, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley illustrate how market‑focused headcount cuts can boost share prices but leave surviving teams struggling. The article explains that rapid reductions erase informal networks, blur decision authority and damage the psychological contract,...
Michael Porter's productivity frontier concept is playing out in real-time. We have 1-2 years where the frontier is getting pushed out by AI before it settles. We get to decide: wait for best practices to emerge, or engage in rebuilding?...
Last week, 20 business coaches and strategists flew in from New Zealand, Australia, Vancouver, and Europe to meet in Miami. The goal: learn new ways to open strategic possibilities for our clients. If you do strategy work, join us next time. https://t.co/Lfav5nA7hV #BusinessCoaching #Strategy...
A Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud survey shows 21% of 759 CIOs have repatriated workloads, driven by cost, security and reliability concerns. Despite this trend, two seasoned CIOs—Josh Hamit of Altra Federal Credit Union and Sue Bergamo of BTE...
Sometimes Delegating to AI Causes Damage. Sometimes It's Extremely Useful and Saves Time. But When Should You Use It, and When Shouldn't You? #ArtificialDecisions #MCC https://t.co/hgIwLXkh0v
"What pain points emerged this month?" Same question. Six answers depending on your role: investor, researcher, strategist, innovation lead. Same intelligence. Completely different lenses. The depth changes everything.
Generative AI now turns dense, unstructured corporate text—especially 10‑K Item 1 disclosures—into structured, decision‑ready metrics. Researchers fine‑tuned a GPT model on 3,500 labeled sentences and applied it to nearly 10 million sentences from 39,710 filings, creating a climate‑solution intensity score for 4,483...
The AI Commodity Trap: Why Your Private Data is the New Gold Rush https://t.co/YPhUm65OcN via @DLAIgnite #SocialSelling #DigitalSelling #Sales #SalesLeader #leadership #Marketing #ArtificialInteligence #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #Technology #Tech #TechNews https://t.co/KKtghDgXXJ
Is this how to prepare for an agentic AI driven future? “Organizations that succeed in the agentic AI era will earn autonomy through visibility, clear policy boundaries and the ability to audit and override decisions when necessary.” https://t.co/dTtFlFp2Cy #AIGovernance #AIAgents
The article warns that the casual “agree to disagree” habit silently damages team trust and stalls collaboration. By ending conversations prematurely, leaders leave root issues unresolved, allowing tension to fester. It introduces a four‑dimensional framework—connection, clarity, curiosity, and commitment—to turn...
AI agents will soon be the biggest users of software in the world. And hardware as well. Why? They scale. Humans don’t.
Two identical companies. One difference: Your CAC = $1 My CAC = $2 We both spend $2 on marketing. You acquire 2 customers. I acquire 1. Over time, you dominate the market. CAC isn’t just a metric. It’s a strategic advantage. #CAC #CustomerAcquisition #BusinessStrategy #GrowthStrategy #Marketing
The City of London Corporation has launched a £2.4 million Future Ready Programme aimed at building a financially sustainable, digitally enabled organization. It is seeking a strategic partner to guide project management, R&D, consultancy and public‑relations services. Suppliers must complete an...
Things we’ve been up to (and feel proud of): — Helping @cbmeditates bring his new offering Tantric Rebirth into the world. — Strategizing and setting up all the things for @thehotgirlcfo and her new baddie offer FinSalon. — Managing multiple...
I was talking with Orlando Oliveira about AI and where it fits into design work. I've been using a simple framework to decide what to delegate to AI and what to keep for myself. Mundane thinking versus strategic thinking. Mundane thinking is...
Sometimes the breakthrough doesn’t come from working harder, it comes from building the right operational foundation.
A client asked me about democratizing UX research when you're a team of one. They wanted other people across the organization to be able to tap into user insights without needing them to run every query. I suggested something I've been...
Cloud cost management strategies for upcoming volatile decade. < My comments within... https://t.co/Zpgqt1oMun #CIO #CostManagement #TBM #FinOps #Cloud
Anybody else tired of all the fear porn about AI emanating from some industry leaders? How about: "Okay, you axe all your professional or white-collar employees (accountants, marketers, lawyers) over the next 18 mos. We'll check back then to see...
Q4 FY 2026 Earnings for @Okta Highlight Agentic Identity Positioning https://t.co/oqESh3att1 My take on how a top enterprise identify firm will try to flip the category into a major agentic entry point.
1/ It’s a watershed moment for enterprise IT. For the 1st time, we’re seeing major public cloud infra in the Middle East physically damaged by war, not just cyberattacks or power events. Two AWS data centers in the UAE were directly struck...
How will your clients know they have the same problem solving approach as you? You show them yours @TBorreson11 https://t.co/TLj9GWzHCh #personalbranding #networking #community #digitaltransformation #digitalmarketing #digitalselling #socialselling #belonging #culture https://t.co/6xqHhZ71Jl
Question for your next meeting: "If 95% of AI projects fail before production, and the reason is data quality, what percentage of our AI budget goes to data quality and governance?" The follow-up that makes it uncomfortable: "How confident are we that...
#TimTalk - Many organisations “lean out” by removing middle layers. What is the cost to a company when they remove this “middle” glue? with Gary Cookson https://t.co/fW8twRPAgo via @DLAIgnite #SocialSelling #DigitalSelling #Sales #SalesLeader #Leadership #Culture #Management #HumanResources #HR
Moving Beyond “Simple” Content: The Reality of Enterprise AI by @Timothy_Hughes https://t.co/xoVl3qVnAP @DLAIgnite #SocialSelling #DigitalSelling #Sales #SalesTips #SalesLeader #Marketing #Leadership #ArtificialInteligence #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #Technology #Tech #TechNews
Who’s Accountable when AI Agents Act “Agency isn’t a feature—it’s a transfer of decision rights,” says McKinsey Partner Rich Isenberg. “The question shifts from ‘Is the model accurate?’ to ‘Who’s accountable when the system acts?’” https://t.co/Lgqcxr3zq4 @McKinsey #AIGovernance
