The new normal - The McKinsey Quarterly - The new normal - Strategy - Strategic Thinking

The new normal - The McKinsey Quarterly - The new normal - Strategy - Strategic Thinking

This is the return to normal capitalism, where productivity gains, technological innovations and creation of new markets have been the traditional sources of value creation.

The period where value creation was achieved by financial innovations and extremely high leverage (eg. 30-1 in some hedge funds) is over. The price of risk is going to be higher from now on.

Is this so difficult to understand and assume? I find this is back to normal. For management teams, it means refocusing on long term value creation through the creation and maintenance of unique capabilities. And defocusing from tyring to make up next quarter results.

Again, back to normal.

The Responsiveness Scorecard - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org

The Responsiveness Scorecard - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org

I liked the idea of this post by Umair Haque in Harvard Business Publishing. This cosmic crisis is showing us the difficulties that financial institutions are experiencing. It's difficult to understand how have we been living for such a long time in such a mess, but that's a different topic.

The interest of Umair's post is that he highlights an important concept. It's not only banks that have been completely lost in recent years. It's also other industries.

Look at car makers: they have been for a long time loosing money (the US ones that is) and continued manufacturing the products that were not needed (who needs another SUV?). Or look at media, where a myriad of newspapers are struggling to define a viable business model that keeps them alive.

So, are banks just another example of a bigger trend that affects many other industries, one that shows their inability to adapt and respond to market changes? In other words, are we lacking a systematic method to question the validity of our strategy? Rather than asking how can we improve yet another % point of efficiency, are we asking the question of what will the consumers of tomorrow want and how is our industry being affected by the evolution of the market?

Pretty simple questions, but deep organizational challenge underlying. This is not an issue that leaders alone can solve. This is about creating a culture of constant challenging and reinvention that many executives in century old corporations would not like to start.