The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

This discussion examines how senior leaders can navigate complexity, technology, and organizational change without losing clarity of purpose. Drawing on experience across global consumer brands, logistics, and technology, Louisa Loran outlines a practical approach to leadership that extends beyond execution into shaping direction. Key insights from the conversation: First, career progression at se...

Linda Hill, Professor at Harvard Business School, discussed how leadership must adapt to enable innovation in complex organizations. Drawing on research and fieldwork across companies such as Pixar and Pfizer, the conversation reframes leadership as the work of building environments where solutions are co-created rather than directed. Several core ideas stand out: Leadership for innovation begins...

In this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic interview with the author of Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business,  Michael Farmer. He also wrote the award-winning Madison Avenue Manslaughter, an inside view of fee-cutting clients, profit-hungry owners, and declining ad agencies (Third Edition, 2019). In this episode, Michael s...

Jim Hemerling  is Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group's San Francisco office and a leader in the firm's People & Organization and Transformation Practices. He has been the leader of BCG Greater China and is a Fellow of the BCG Henderson Institute. His work with clients and his research focuses on holistic human-centric approaches to organizational transformation. Jim is a co-author of BCG's...

Marc Canal , a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, examines how long-term economic progress is built and what current shifts in AI, demographics, and productivity mean for senior leaders. He explains that consulting is less about analysis than it appears and more about trust, judgment, and the ability to frame relevant questions. Building a small number of strong relationships is more valuab...

Amy Leneker , a former C-suite executive and advisor to Fortune 100 leaders, examines a common assumption in corporate life: that stress is an unavoidable cost of success. She argues that this belief is flawed, noting that when leaders feel disconnected from their values and priorities, "it doesn't feel like you're succeeding." The discussion centers on how stress operates at three levels: individ...

Jason Wild discusses the discipline of building and scaling businesses through careful capital allocation, operational focus, and a clear understanding of risk. He explains how leaders often misjudge growth by pursuing expansion without fully understanding the underlying economics, noting that "growth only creates value when the returns exceed the cost of capital." He emphasizes the importance of...

Dr. John La Puma discusses how everyday environmental choices shape sleep, cognition, and long-term health. Drawing on research from medicine, neuroscience, and environmental science, he explains why many professionals unknowingly experience what he calls "cognitive drag," the gradual decline in mental clarity caused by indoor lifestyles, poor light exposure, and excessive screen use. A central th...

Chris Bradley, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and Director of the McKinsey Global Institute, discusses the ideas behind his book A Century of Plenty and the long-term drivers of economic growth. Bradley explains that much of the public debate about the economy assumes growth is limited or zero-sum. His research argues the opposite. Over long periods, societies have repeatedly expanded prospe...

Julia Dhar, Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group and founder of the firm's Behavioral Science Lab, joins us to discuss why most organizational change efforts fail and what leaders can do differently. Drawing on behavioral science and her work advising major organizations, she explains why the challenge of change is rarely about strategy alone and more often about human behavior.  Julia beg...

Dr. Majid Fotuhi, neurologist, neuroscientist, and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, has spent decades studying how the brain ages and what determines whether cognitive performance declines or strengthens over time. In this discussion, he challenges one of the most widely accepted assumptions about aging: that deterioration of memory and thinking is inevitable. The evidence, he explai...

Nidhi Tewari, a highly sought after wellbeing and work culture speaker who applies her experience as a licensed therapist to the work world, has spent more than a decade advising high-performing leaders on burnout, trauma, communication, and work culture. In this conversation, she brings a clinician's precision to a topic many organizations still treat superficially: why capable professionals dise...

Charles Steel  reflects on "more than two decades in private equity, banking," combined with "public service roles, including advising Tony Blair," and how these experiences led him to a late but powerful discovery: "the best way to really find purpose in life is to be creative, to make stuff." He explains that "the things I'm writing about now I am only able to write about because of what I spent...

Lorraine Marchand, startup CEO, advisor to Johnson & Johnson, member of the Pharmaceutical Advisory Board at Columbia Business School, and faculty at Wharton, discusses how leaders can sustain growth through disciplined experimentation in an era shaped by AI and institutional risk aversion.  Marchand's perspective is grounded in a career that spans large corporations and entrepreneurial ventures....

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, leade...

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 capac...

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 respon...

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,...

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 wh...

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, f...

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 g...

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 unn...

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 ho...

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 w...

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 bu...