Margaret Reynolds 
One of the magazines I look forward to reading for inspiration is Harvard Business Review. Typically, full of new strategic ideas, innovation, and best practice, it challenges my thinking and informs my consulting processes. The last issue was depressing. Its focus was on leading in a low-growth economy and covered topics like “subtraction” strategies and …
Sad, but true. In a world where seeking out modest growth isn’t always easy, high performance requires even more from leaders—boldness, innovation, and vision built on the confidence of market insights. Leaders work incredibly hard to provide those things and yet the results may miss the mark. What keeps so many of us in the …
This summer, I hardly had a chance to ride my horse. Last weekend I was blessed to ride 21 miles on Saturday and 13 miles on Sunday. They were very different rides. Saturday was a slow and steady pace. I had time to look all around me and even stopped to take pictures. I rarely …
Change. Are you tired of that word? By now, we have realized that it is just another word for life. Another expectation of leadership. Things do not stay the same. While some changes may actually be welcomed, most are usually not. A change is typically one more thing that you have to understand, grapple with, …
The age-old question we all ask is “Why is company X growing but not company Y?”. Or maybe it is more personal and it is “Why aren’t WE growing?” The answer exists but you won’t learn it in business school. Some organizational leaders will go their whole career and never discover the reasons. It is …
Have you heard of the three-legged business stool? Price. Quality. Service. Most organizations have a model that defines how they approach each of these levers. One thing we sometimes forget is we can’t own them all (best price, best quality, best service). There are limited resources and choices to be made. Typically, we see examples …
Three times this week I have dealt with clients who are having internal strategic conflict. Perhaps that is not surprising in our culture where everyone seems polarized about everything, and no one is wrong. The truth is that most decisions and rationale are based on emotions and experiences not facts. Here are a few scenarios: …
One of the things we can count on is change. We have it in abundance right now, with market shifts responding to new government policies as well as AI taking off without us in a driver’s seat. What happens when leaders face a future that doesn’t look like the past? Often, they retreat to their comfort …
Every year at about this time I take a weeklong sojourn to a far-off place to ride horses. Then I come back and share something about what I learned that may apply to all of us. This year was the same—yet incredibly different in every significant way. The ride was called the Long Ride, advertised …
It is mid-February in 2025 and time to ask the question, are we where we wanted to be? Fourth quarter planning identified new opportunities, better ways to do things, high-potential projects and a path to growth. Are you on track? As I write this, it is actually still 2024. So, I am time traveling a …
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