Vic Malhotra, former McKinsey senior partner and coauthor of CEO Excellence and A CEO for All Seasons, examines the strategic pressures that now define the CEO role: a "30- to 40-year tech revolution," intensifying geopolitics, shifting consumer behavior, and demographic change. As he notes, "every business at some level is a tech business," and this multipolar, fast-changing environment places a premium on leaders who can "thread the needle" between paradoxes, short-term delivery versus long-term reinvention, legacy versus disruption, and analysis versus decisiveness.

The conversation connects these macrotrends to practical leadership mechanics, how to set direction, allocate scarce resources, and design institutions that can learn, adapt, and scale without losing their core.

Key strategic insights and takeaways

Set an audacious, persistent north star.
"The very best leaders set bold, some might say audacious, aspirations early in their tenure," Malhotra explains. Through downturns and market noise, they "persevere" and repeat a few priorities "until the organization internalizes them." Consistency, not novelty, creates credibility and followership.

Treat resource allocation as a hard choice.
"Capital, expense, and talent, it's a zero-sum game," he recalls from his interview with Jamie Dimon. Great CEOs "starve something" to fund their boldest bets and resist spreading resources "like peanut butter."

Make culture operational and selective.
Effective leaders focus on one or two levers that reinforce strategy, Satya Nadella's emphasis on a growth mindset at Microsoft being a prime example. They design rituals, incentives, and role modeling that embed new behavior.

Build a star team, not a team of stars.
As one CEO told Malhotra, "This is not about a team of stars, it's about a star team." Complementary strengths, mutual accountability, and candor matter more than individual brilliance.

Institutionalize continuous learning and reinvention.
Exceptional leaders avoid the "sophomore slump." They systematize learning—internally by seeking dissent and externally by "looking around corners." "You can never be complacent," Jamie Dimon told him. "You've got to keep pushing forward."

Operate as a technology-native company.
"Every company is a tech company," Malhotra insists. Technology must be business-led, embedded in cross-functional product teams, and scaled deliberately beyond experimentation, especially in AI.

Anticipate nonmarket shocks.
Leading teams now run geopolitical and demographic scenarios "to understand how the company might have to pivot." This preparedness extends to smaller firms "thrust into geopolitics" for the first time.

Distinguish between experimentation and bet-the-company decisions.
Leaders should allow "rapid, cheap failure" to learn quickly, but apply exhaustive risk management to the few "truly consequential, bet-the-company" decisions.

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Few leaders have run Fortune 500 giants on different continents. Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld has.

As CEO of Siemens (Germany) and Alcoa (U.S.), he has led global transformations across industries and advised presidents and heads of state.

In this interview, Klaus shares:

• Why time management is a myth and energy is the real driver of performance

• How leaders must "AI-ize" their organizations or risk irrelevance

• What skills will still matter when AI automates analysts, lawyers, and even screenwriters

• How purpose condenses energy "like a laser beam"

• The universal leadership lessons from four decades across Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East
  
  

His book, Leading to Thrive, combines the inner game (energy, resilience, purpose) and the outer game (leadership, strategy, boards, and competition).

Listen now and learn what it takes to lead at the very top and to stay there in the age of AI.

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In this week's Strategy Skills episode, we spoke with Ben Swire, author of Safe Danger and former leader at IDEO.

His thesis is trust and psychological safety aren't byproducts. They're designable conditions. And when designed correctly, they create room for calculated risk, creativity, and deeper collaboration.

Below are a few insights that stood out:

1. Experiential culture > Instructional culture

"There's a difference between handing someone bullet points on how to build trust and giving them a space to practice it."

Swire's workshops deliberately use low-stakes emotional challenges to normalize openness and risk-taking. The result: teams that critique, challenge, and share more effectively.

2. The right environment for growth is neither 'safe' nor 'dangerous', it's both

"Safe danger is the space where people feel secure enough to step outside their comfort zones."

This is about systematically building tolerance for uncertainty, while preserving respect and inclusion.

3. AI makes human insight more, not less, valuable

"AI converges. Humans diverge. That's where value creation happens."

The strategic challenge for leaders is to identify which human capabilities (empathy, contradiction, surprise) will grow in relevance as AI adoption expands.

4. Most resistance to AI is cultural, not technical

About 15% of executives Ben sees reject AI outright. But those who fail to define the human contribution clearly are still at risk.

"If you want to preserve jobs, don't argue with AI. Focus on what people can do that AI can't."

5. What actually builds durable teams

"Teams that feel safe take more risks, make fewer mistakes, and outperform others. There's strong data behind this."

This conversation is relevant if you're leading transformation, team design, or trying to calibrate your culture for the post-AI workplace.

📚 Get Ben's book, Safe Danger, here: https://shorturl.at/GuVGP

Here are some free gifts for you:

Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach

McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf

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