597: McKinsey Senior Partner, Vik Malhotra, on What Distinguishes the Best Leaders

597: McKinsey Senior Partner, Vik Malhotra, on What Distinguishes the Best Leaders

Vik Malhotra, 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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104: How to resign from your job the right way

104: How to resign from your job the right way

How can you resign from your job with dignity, compassion, and grace, without burning any bridges with your employer? Here we share simple principles to help you leave your role in a way that leaves a positive impression with your superiors, colleagues, and organization. Do you have a story about resigning? Tell us more with a comment below. ---------- Get access to free training episodes: https://www.firmsconsulting.com/promo SUBSCRIBE TO FIRMSCONSULTING'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW http://bit.ly/Firmsconsultingsubscribe CONNECT WITH FIRMSCONSULTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA https://www.youtube.com/user/firmsconsulting https://www.instagram.com/firmsconsulting/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/firmsconsulting/ https://www.facebook.com/Firmsconsulting/ https://twitter.com/firmsconsulting https://www.pinterest.com/firmsconsulting/ This video is all about how to resign, how to resign from a job, resignation, how to quit, quitting a job, quit a job, leaving on good terms, career, business career, career growth. #howtoresign #howtoresignfromajob #resignation

9 Maj 202018min

103: The secretive world of Samsung, the South Korean tech giant. Geoffrey Cain

103: The secretive world of Samsung, the South Korean tech giant. Geoffrey Cain

Strategy Skills Podcast 103: The secretive world of Samsung, the South Korean Tech Giant. With Geoffrey Cain Access advanced training episodes: http://www.firmsconsulting.com/promo An explosive expose of Samsung, one of the biggest and most secretive companies in the world, as the Korean juggernaut battles Apple and Sony to dominate the world of technology. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to become a market leader in the United States and around the globe. They have captured one quarter of the smartphone market and have been pushing the envelope on every front. In SAMSUNG RISING: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant that Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Forty years ago, Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural conglomerate that produced sugar, paper, and fertilizer, located in a backward country with a third-world economy. However, with the rise of the PC revolution, Chairman Lee Byung-chul began a bold experiment: to make Samsung a major supplier of computer chips. The multimillion-dollar plan was incredibly risky but Lee, wowed by a young Steve Jobs, who sat down with the Chairman to offer his advice, became obsessed with creating a tech empire. In SAMSUNG RISING, readers follow behind the scenes as the company fought its way to the top of tech. Today, Samsung employs over 300,000 people (compared to Apple's 80,000 and Google's 48,000). The company's revenues have grown more than forty times from that of 1987 and make up more than 20 percent of South Korea's exports. It is also one of Apple's chief suppliers of technology critical to the iPhone, while its own Galaxy phone outsells the iPhone. Yet their disastrous recall of the Galaxy Note 7, with numerous reports of phones spontaneously bursting into flames, reveals the dangers of the company's headlong attempt to overtake Apple at any cost.

15 Apr 20201h 30min

102: Current crisis = golden opportunity to transform your life

102: Current crisis = golden opportunity to transform your life

Our clients are often facing crises and catastrophes somewhere in the world. From virus outbreaks to earthquakes, wildfire evacuations and more. And they write to us about their immediate plans to manage the situation. What we find is that they almost always take actions that damage their careers and hurt their lives. They let external factors, the media narrative and their social network influence them to make poor choices that handicap their lives. Often severely. They don't realize that the biggest, fastest and most sustainable way to transform one's life and career is to leverage a crisis. Don't run from a crisis. Run into a crisis. This is a short episode released on Strategy Skills iTunes channel and YouTube which includes an overview of the full program we released for FC Insiders (StrategyTraining.com/Strategy Training apps). The full program: https://www.strategytraining.com/how-to-manage-a-crises

19 Mars 20207min

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