The Strategy Skills Podcast: Management Consulting | Strategy, Operations & Implementation | Critical Thinking

Ashley Herd, former Head of HR North America at McKinsey, joins this episode to discuss what effective leadership looks like in practice, especially in environments defined by speed, pressure, and increasing expectations around AI. Drawing on her experience training more than 250,000 managers, she introduces a simple but rigorous framework: pause, consider, act. In fast-moving organizations, leaders often default to speed over reflection. Herd argues that the brief pause before responding to a mistake, delivering feedback, or making a decision materially changes outcomes. It allows leaders to ask: What result am I trying to achieve? How would I want to be treated in this situation? What will the ripple effect of this action be? Several practical insights stand out: First, performance feedback remains one of the most persistent leadership failures. The issue is not usually saying the wrong thing, but saying nothing at all. Delayed or avoided feedback creates confusion, resentment, and surprises in annual revie

John McGinnis, law professor at Northwestern University and author of Why Democracy Needs the Rich, examines constitutional design, democratic stability, and the accelerating force of artificial intelligence. Drawing on the Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, and public choice theory, he argues that a realistic understanding of politics is essential to preserving both liberty and effective state capacity. McGinnis traces his intellectual formation to a "hard-headed realism" learned early in life and later reinforced by the American founding. At the center of his thinking is a practical constitutional question: how to build sufficient state capacity while preventing its abuse. He emphasizes the importance of an entrenched constitution that is difficult to amend, arguing that stability enables long-term planning and protects society from short-term political passions. Several themes shape the discussion: Public choice and political incentives. Politics does not operate in a purely public-spirited way; concentrate

Dr. Guy Winch explains why we must treat emotional injuries with the same urgency as physical ones. "We ruminate, we beat ourselves up, we criticize ourselves, we think we're weak… and we end up compounding the emotional injury." He introduces the idea of "emotional first aid" and why we need a psychological toolbox to stop that downward spiral. Guy breaks down the difference between how we respond to physical pain versus emotional pain. "We go to the medicine cabinet for a physical injury, but we have no cabinet for emotional injuries." He explains why we must learn emotional hygiene: "The injuries don't just go away." We also discuss how emotional neglect works and the long-term consequences of unacknowledged wounds. "The mind does not heal itself. The mind broods." Finally, Guy offers a new model for how to respond when people open up to you emotionally. "Start with compassion. You can offer logic later." Key Insights: Insight 1: "We ruminate, we beat ourselves up, we criticize ourselves, we think we're we

Adam Job, Senior Director at the BCG Institute and leader of its strategy research, offers a clear-eyed examination of growth, uncertainty, and value creation in today's business environment. Drawing on long-term empirical research, he explains why growth remains the primary driver of value over time, while also outlining why it has become structurally harder to achieve amid geopolitical tension, demographic shifts, affordability pressures, and changing political priorities. The discussion moves beyond slogans and focuses on decision-making under uncertainty. Job explains that politically driven risk differs from other forms of uncertainty because corporate responses can amplify consequences, both economically and reputationally. He introduces a small set of strategic postures, making a bet, defending the core, waiting while preparing contingencies, or building a portfolio of options, and explains when each is appropriate. Key insights from the conversation include: Over long horizons, roughly three-quarter

Daniel Coyle, New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code and adviser to organizations ranging from Navy SEALs to global technology companies, joins the Strategy Skills Podcast to explore what truly drives leadership, performance, and flourishing. Drawing on decades of research into elite performers and high-functioning cultures, Coyle explains why performance alone is not enough, and why many highly successful people still experience emptiness and burnout. He shares pivotal moments from his work observing leaders, including a defining insight from a Navy SEAL commander who described the four most important words a leader can say: "I screwed that up." The conversation challenges conventional thinking about leadership, power, and problem-solving. Coyle distinguishes between complicated problems that can be solved with instructions and complex problems that require experimentation, learning, and trust. Through examples ranging from kindergarten classrooms to professional sports teams and Pixar's creat

Liz Tran, former venture capital executive and author of AQ, examines why agility—not raw intelligence or experience—has become the defining capability for leaders operating amid persistent uncertainty. She introduces Agility Quotient (AQ) as the capacity to adapt thinking, identity, and decision-making when familiar structures no longer apply. Tran explains how traditional markers of success, from credentials to past wins, can quietly become liabilities when environments shift. She describes how the pandemic, rapid AI adoption, and labor volatility exposed a gap between competence in stable conditions and effectiveness under change. Agility, in her view, is not a personality trait but a practiced discipline. Key insights from the discussion include: Why leaders who anchor identity too tightly to past success struggle most when conditions change, and how agility begins with loosening that attachment. How burnout often reflects a loss of agency rather than excessive workload, and why articulating a future-

In this episode with Rishi Dave, a partner in Bain's Commercial Excellence practice with deep expertise in B2B marketing and digital marketing, he explains the concept of a "Day 1 List" in B2B sales and marketing and the three things that will get a supplier or seller on the list. Rishi also discussed what a "sales play" is, how to build it, institutionalize the knowledge within the company, and get the sales team to adopt the sales play to fulfill their potential and increase their productivity and sales. Rishi Dave partners with CMOs and management teams to drive marketing transformations and build modern marketing capabilities. He serves as an expert on the implementation of Bain's B2B Marketing Diagnostic and Sales Play System. Rishi has held global CMO roles at public technology and cloud companies, including Dun & Bradstreet, Vonage, and MongoDB. Prior to these roles, he served as the global head of digital marketing for Dell's B2B businesses. Rishi started his career at Bain & Company. As a ma

In this episode, we dive deep into the critical topic of self-deception and its profound impact on leadership and personal effectiveness. Mitch shares powerful insights on how self-deception can undermine our relationships and professional success, often without us even realizing it. He explains the concept of self-betrayal and how it leads to a distorted view of ourselves and others, creating unnecessary conflicts and reducing our influence as leaders. Mitch shares a valuable advice on how to rebuild trust in relationships damaged by self-deception and how to not let it happen again.   Mitch is the co-author of Arbinger's latest bestseller, The Outward Mindset. He writes frequently on the practical effects of mindset at the individual and organizational levels as well as the role of leadership in transforming organizational culture and results. He is an expert on mindset and culture change, leadership, strategy, performance management, organizational turnaround, and conflict resolution.    Mitch is a sought-

Neri Karra Sillaman, entrepreneurship advisor at the University of Oxford and author of Pioneers: Eight Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs, discusses why immigrant-founded companies are disproportionately successful and tend to last longer than their counterparts. Drawing on her experience as a former child refugee and on research that began with her PhD, she explains how longevity is built through clear vision, perseverance, community, shared value, and disciplined decision-making. She begins with the formative role of vision. At age eleven, while living in a refugee camp, education became her "north star." That clarity helped her interpret rejection not as failure but as "not yet," a mindset she later observed repeatedly among immigrant entrepreneurs. Clear intent, she argues, allows setbacks to redirect effort rather than extinguish it. The conversation then turns to the principles she identified through interviews with immigrant founders of companies such as Chobani, Duolingo, W

This episode examines what happens when strategy is applied in environments where institutional stability, reliable data, and conventional partners cannot be assumed. Former McKinsey partner and University of Notre Dame Professor Emerita Viva Ona Bartkus draws on decades of experience across management consulting, academic research, and frontline fieldwork in conflict-affected regions to explain why many standard strategy doctrines collapse outside developed markets. Bartkus reflects on her path through McKinsey, including what truly determines advancement inside elite professional services firms. She argues that early career performance is less about isolated brilliance and more about establishing trust, judgment, and reliability in the first months, when reputations are formed and remembered long after individual mistakes are forgiven. The conversation then turns to "frontline environments," defined as regions typically far from international hubs, under-invested, and operating with weak formal institutions

In this episode, Tim Koller, co-author of Valuation and a leading authority on corporate finance, offers a substantive examination of capital allocation decisions under real-world constraints. The discussion moves beyond theory to explore how CEOs and CFOs should approach resource deployment in mature, capital-rich companies—where investment opportunities are limited not due to lack of ambition but due to economic reality. Key insights include: - Share Buybacks as Rational Policy: Many firms undertaking significant buybacks—particularly in tech, life sciences, and consumer products—do so because they generate more cash than they can reinvest profitably. Koller argues that, in such cases, returning excess capital to shareholders is not a sign of strategic failure but of disciplined decision-making. - The Fallacy of Diversification Without Advantage: Koller highlights repeated failures by capital-rich companies that expand into unrelated sectors to deploy cash, citing historical missteps in energy, utilities, a

Elizabeth McBride and Seth Levine return to discuss the ideas behind their book Capital Evolution and the shifts they see across capitalism, innovation, and work. They describe conversations with young people who believe "socialism is the right answer," and explain why "nearly half of people under forty now don't think that capitalism works." They share experiences from a World Bank launch event where one attendee "jumped in his car and raced to get there" because he was "so engaged in entrepreneurship and this idea of we need to build things really rapidly." Elizabeth explains that the book argues, "capitalism is a flawed system" and that "we need to always be working on making it better," while Seth adds that history shows socialism "has literally, and I mean literally like never in a single instance, actually worked." They describe how disillusionment arises when people "don't have a stake in the market system," and why "we want more people… to have a stake in the system." They also highlight stories of co

Michael explains that people often struggle because "adding and adding must be more effective," yet humans are "more confident when just one advantage is presented." He shares that Five Guys succeeded because they "only do burgers and fries" and that "if you say you are best at one thing most of all, they're more likely to believe that." He emphasizes that "buyers…have a top force-ranked prioritization of the most important thing," and focusing on the thing you are "best in the world at" is "more believable and more memorable." On pricing, he notes that "thinking is to humans like swimming is to cats. They can do it. They just prefer not to," and the brain "uses twenty percent of the calories in your body." He explains that humans rely on shortcuts and that price is "a relativity game." He describes how Red Bull "broke the comparison" by avoiding the soda can format and launched at "two dollars and fifty cents" instead of one dollar. He explains left-digit bias: "Forty-nine ninety-nine is going to be a much m

When most executives discuss AI, they focus on automation. Dr. Ben Zweig, NYU Stern professor and CEO of Revelio Labs, explains why the real disruption isn't machines replacing people, it's our failure to rethink how work is structured. "Labor markets are not as sophisticated as capital markets," Ben explains. "We allocate capital efficiently, but not labor. That's a huge weakness in how our economy operates." In this conversation, we explore: Why every company must learn job architecture, seeing jobs not as titles, but as bundles of tasks that must constantly evolve. The three factors that determine whether AI causes unemployment: How quickly firms adopt new tech How individuals adapt their skills How flexibly jobs can transform Why middle managers now sit at the center of organizational adaptation. "The top can't really affect this meaningfully, it happens through line managers." Zweig challenges the old idea of "delegation." Instead, he calls for reconfiguration, a manager's ability to resh

In this conversation, Mark explains that "we often build our lives on things we are certain about that simply are not true." He describes how "we don't actually see the world… we see screens of how we think the world is." He explains that these screens create "a double paradox" shaping what we think is safe, what we think is risky, and how we choose to act. Mark describes the difference between someone who sees a large employer as stability versus an entrepreneur who sees it as danger, saying "which screen is right? Well, it depends on which screen is going to give you more power in life." He talks about choosing the entrepreneurial screen because "I detested the idea of being a piece of a cog in a major machine." He explains how a "victim type screen" once took over his thinking when he was diagnosed with osteonecrosis: "I was catastrophizing… I went into a very negative spiral." He recalls seeing children receiving chemotherapy and realizing "Mark, you are really self-absorbed… You don't get to live a life

Adam McGraw is a Fortune 100 VP turned entrepreneur and co-founder of CREW, a leadership community. "We try and really curate it for folks that are in the VP and above through CEOs as well, founders, etc., so that they have this kind of safe white space atmosphere to really consistently plug in and build community." "Not just transact network-wise in things that are typically narrow and niche… we really love the idea of a melting pot for leaders." "This is kind of the new normal: constant change, constant uncertainty, constant transition." "Being in crew keeps me grounded and conscious and aware." "I want folks by the end of the day to feel like even though I dedicated and carved out time in my busy life and work week, I came out of here actually feeling juiced up and energized because I had some fun and obviously I learned some stuff and I got to be myself."   Claim your free gift: Free gift #1 McKinsey & BCG winning resume www.FIRMSconsulting.com/resumePDF Free gift #2 Breakthrough Decisions Guide with

Technology is reshaping the world at a pace few people, inside or outside the industry, expected. But every so often, you meet someone who has not only witnessed the major waves of technological change, but helped build them. In this conversation, Marcus Fontoura, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, CTO for Azure Core, walks us through the story of AI, what leaders are getting wrong, and how to develop the one thing that will matter more than any model or algorithm: human agency. Marcus has lived through every major inflection point: early search, the rise of cloud computing, and now large-scale AI systems. One of the first things he challenges is the popular narrative that we are heading toward an AI apocalypse, or an AI utopia. Both extremes, he explains, miss the point: "My approach was more like, let me just explain what the technology is and what it does… it's basically a prediction system." Marcus offers a clear explanation of modern AI. He compares today's large models to a syst

In this episode, Dr. Julia Garcia explains why hope is a habit and why it is critical for us to remove what blocks hope. She describes what happens inside teams when leaders lose hope, including "the culture that creates, the burnout that leads to, the discouragement and defeat." Julia shows how unprocessed emotions drain leaders even when they appear high-functioning. "If we emotionally feel disconnected, we're going to start looking elsewhere or we're going to end up in a place of hopelessness where maybe we completely shut down in our career and now we're just a robot." One of the most memorable insights is the use of the word "maybe" to interrupt destructive thought cycles. She explains: "Maybe your next idea is the one that's going to change the game for you." "Maybe that failure wasn't a failure. It was a setup." "Maybe you have everything you need right now." Julia also demonstrates how holding unspoken emotions limits our capacity. "We can function by holding all these things in emotionally…

In this conversation, Anthony Vinci explains that "AI is going to be able to do more and more of what people do." He describes a future where "AI is going to get better and better at doing what people do," and highlights that leaders must understand "how do you figure out what AI is good at and then implement it to do that" and "how do you manage your workforce so that they are able to partner with that AI." He warns that leaders often "overestimate what AI can do and underestimate it at the same time," and stresses the importance of "getting that balance right." As he shared, "sometimes they can sense that, oh, AI can do anything," while others say "it will never do that," and both assumptions can mislead decision making. He offers direct guidance for staying relevant: "The number one thing I would recommend is literally to just go use AI for thirty minutes a day." He urges leaders to "push the envelope" and "see where the holes are, what it won't do." Vinci describes how workflow—not just technology—defines

When was the last time you played, really played? For Cas Holman, founder and chief designer of Heroes Will Rise and star of Netflix's Abstract: The Art of Design, play isn't childish. It's the foundation of human creativity, resilience, and connection. She worked with LEGO, Disney Imagineering, and the LEGO Foundation and on a mission to help adults rediscover what children know instinctively: that play is how we learn, adapt, and feel alive. "Play isn't what happens after work," Cas explains. "It's how we manage uncertainty. It's how we cope, experiment, and find our way through the unknown." In this conversation, Cas reframes play not as a distraction from productivity but as the engine of it. She explains why play is essential for innovation, executive presence, and emotional agility, and how suppressing it has drained creativity from our professional lives. "Playful thinking lets us reframe success," she says. "It makes us flexible enough to keep moving when things don't go according to plan." We discuss