{"id":1043,"date":"2026-06-09T11:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1043"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:40:24","slug":"i-founded-mckinseys-ceo-practice-heres-why-operational-excellence-is-a-liability-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1043","title":{"rendered":"I founded McKinsey\u2019s CEO practice: Here\u2019s why operational excellence is a liability right now"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>\u201cIf we were building this business today, where would we choose to compete, and how would we win?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1041\">The man behind Claude Code says you\u2019re comparing AI costs to the wrong thing<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For many leadership teams, wrestling with a question this fundamental requires exercising\u00a0long-dormant strategic\u00a0muscles\u00a0that\u00a0have not\u00a0been\u00a0used at full strength in years.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>For the last decade, markets rewarded companies\u00a0for extraordinary execution: operational rigor, resilience, digitization, and scaling proven models consistently. In many cases, this operational discipline created enormous value. The challenge now is that the environment\u00a0has shifted rapidly<s>,<\/s>\u00a0and is now\u00a0demanding new leadership capabilities faster than teams\u00a0can adapt.<\/p>\n<p>Geopolitical fragmentation, industrial policy, infrastructure constraints, and AI are all reshaping markets at the same time. While many senior leaders came of age in this era focused on operating the current business, fewer have been\u00a0trained to challenge\u00a0the beliefs underneath it \u2014 or\u00a0to use\u00a0creativity and bold thinking to rethink what their companies could become.<\/p>\n<p>Which business models remain defensible and structurally advantaged as technology and economics shift simultaneously? Where will value actually accrue in this new world? What capabilities or positions could suddenly become far more valuable? What inherited assumptions are we still defending simply because they made us successful in the last era?<\/p>\n<p>These\u00a0strategic\u00a0questions are becoming harder to avoid because market dynamics that once felt relatively stable are now shifting simultaneously across multiple dimensions. In many sectors, value pools are moving faster than leadership teams are accustomed to navigating. In some industries, investors are already repricing future advantage faster than leadership teams are reassessing the foundations underneath their own business models.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Execution discipline still matters enormously. But you cannot OKR your way out of a moment that requires fundamental strategic rethinking.<\/p>\n<p>(Moved this paragraph up as it relates to point above)\u00a0Leaders need to articulate a direction that employees, investors, and customers believe in<s>,<\/s>\u00a0for this new future.\u00a0The most common blind spot: staying\u00a0too committed to assumptions embedded in yesterday\u2019s success formula.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1039\">Your career needs a \u2018gym membership\u2019 to keep up with continuous AI advancements, says Campus founder Tade Oyerinde<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The leaders navigating this best are going back to first principles: reassessing what customer problems they are uniquely positioned to solve, where meaningful friction still exists, and what new possibilities technology suddenly makes achievable. They are asking what they would build differently if they were solving the customer problem from scratch today. And importantly, they are putting their strongest operators and leaders on these questions \u2014\u00a0<s>vs.<\/s>\u00a0rather than\u00a0treating them as side projects delegated elsewhere in the organization.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The day-to-day business, for the most part, can continue running in the near term.\u00a0It is the job of senior leadership to lift their heads up and wrestle directly with the future business as a team, especially when the answers are uncertain and the implications are uncomfortable.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>A\u00a0final\u00a0challenge is emerging underneath all of this.\u00a0The traditional way many organizations approached strategy \u2014 annual planning cycles and three-year strategic roadmaps \u2014 increasingly feels disconnected from the pace and scale of change in the world. For years, leadership teams could operate within planning horizons long enough to execute against with confidence. Today, they are being asked to make bigger strategic decisions\u00a0quickly,\u00a0under far greater uncertainty, while the environment itself continues shifting beneath them.<\/p>\n<p>The leaders navigating this best are not treating strategy as a periodic exercise. They are creating\u00a0real time for\u00a0strategic debate, continuously pressure-testing assumptions, revisiting where value is moving, and making consequential decisions before the full picture is clear. Because increasingly, waiting for certainty is itself becoming a strategic risk.<\/p>\n<p>The hardest strategic decisions increasingly involve\u00a0clean sheet thinking, founder-mentality vision,\u00a0portfolio choices and reallocating capital, talent, and leadership attention away from businesses or advantages that may no longer compound value in the same way.\u00a0Making such bold changes are\u00a0uncomfortable precisely because it requires new muscles \u2014 different from the execution-oriented ones the last era rewarded most.<\/p>\n<p>Judgment. Imagination. Strategic courage under uncertainty.\u00a0These are deeply human leadership capabilities. And they suddenly matter again.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of\u00a0<\/em>Fortune<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1037\">Twitch CEO: Social media has become \u2018antisocial\u2019 and can\u2019t match the shared, human connection of livestreaming<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carolyn Dewar has advised hundreds of CEOs. She says the execution discipline that rewarded leaders for a decade is now holding them back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I founded McKinsey\u2019s CEO practice: Here\u2019s why operational excellence is a liability right now - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1043\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I founded McKinsey\u2019s CEO practice: Here\u2019s why operational excellence is a liability right now - Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Carolyn Dewar has advised hundreds of CEOs. 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