strategy+business Autumn 2021

For years, much of the talk around sustainability and business took place at a certain altitude—in some instances, literally. In the thin alpine air of Davos, where the World Economic Forum held its annual meeting, you’d hear high-minded talk of the need to save the planet, and high-level discussions about strategies and reputation. At 5,000 feet above sea level, it often seemed we were getting the view from 30,000 feet. But environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues have very quickly come down to earth. Not in the sense that ESG has declined in importance. Rather, it is rapidly becoming integrated into the nuts and bolts of organizations large and small, in strategy, operations, service delivery, finance, marketing, and even compensation. The imperative underlying all these impulses is to make businesses function…

At the height of the CO-VID-19 pandemic, consumers might have run low on toilet paper or flour, or might have searched online in vain for an inflatable backyard pool. But there was one thing in endless supply for many stuck at home: time. And given more time to contemplate everyday actions and choices, a lot of people started focusing on the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. Before the pandemic, consumers had begun to prioritize sustainability. But in PwC’s June 2021 Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey, half of all global consumers surveyed say they’ve become even more eco-friendly. In our 2019 Global Consumer Insights Survey, just 35% of respondents said they chose sustainable products to help protect the environment, 37% said they looked for products with environmentally friendly packaging, and 41%…

The first time I visited Google’s sprawling corporate headquarters was to attend a retreat for its human resources directors in 2012. The company was eager to help its employees form better habits around wellness and, in particular, to encourage more employees to use its on-site gyms. Research shows that healthier employees are happier and more productive. Not long after my visit, I called my friends at the tech behemoth and pitched a low-cost strategy that I and my longtime collaborator, Harvard Business School professor John Beshears, were convinced could help. John and I wanted to understand how people’s tendency to take the path of least resistance (what you might call laziness) could be harnessed to help improve important daily decisions that they can’t just “set and forget” with a clever default.…

The mythology of corporate boards goes something like this: put a group of high-achieving, experienced, strategy-minded, and diverse individuals in a room together. Add commitment and a lot of hard work. What you get is a top-notch board with a healthy culture that provides effective oversight. The reality, however, is somewhat messier. In practice, no boardroom culture is perfect. Every board is plagued by derailed discussions, dismissed opinions, side conversations, directors who dominate, and those who seem to be biting their tongue. Boards are quite rightly spending a great deal of time thinking about composition issues such as director expertise and diversity as paths to more effective governance. But, according to a recent PwC report, Unpacking board culture: How behavioral psychology might explain what’s holding boards back, board members may be…

In my firm’s frequent conversations with board directors, C-suite executives, and HR leaders, we continually hear the same refrain as companies hit the reset button for life beyond the pandemic: “We are rethinking everything.” We should apply this healthy impulse to the popular business expressions that inform reinvention—but that may have outlived their usefulness. Let’s start with the oft-quoted line “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Over the years, the line has been attributed to Peter Drucker, widely considered the grandfather of management wisdom. But it turns out he never wrote those words. It doesn’t even sound like Drucker. His tone was much more formal. The expression is so ubiquitous it’s become a truism. And I’m not arguing that it’s entirely wrong—just misinterpreted. Culture is important. And a good strategy can, in fact,…

As the world continues to struggle with highly contagious strains of the COVID-19 virus, businesses are grappling with a thorny question: should they require employees to get the vaccine? The travel and event industries, tourism-dependent countries, and universities have quickly embraced requiring proof of vaccination for boarding transportation and crossing borders, attending events, and returning to campuses. National, state, and local governments are piloting “vaccine passports,” documents that would prove one’s status. These new developments raise a tough set of practical and business strategy questions that go far beyond the distribution and efficacy of the vaccines themselves. They involve legal, human resources, governance, social impact, and reputational risks—and ethics. Indeed, the arrival of the vaccines can be a catalyst for valuable dialogue about how risk-taking and ethics play into an organization’s…