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Leaders and managers are often advised to scrutinize their market and customer data to spot possible “weak signals”—these micro-changes or these burgeoning expectations that prefigure future megatrends. But how can we determine if a given anomaly in the data is a weak signal, or simply a value that diverges from the average? The processing of important masses of data necessarily involves the presence of numerous anomalies, which does not however mean they are all significant.

To make a judgment, experts in strategy advise that we evaluate each anomaly according to three dimensions:

- Its dynamic: is the anomaly persisting over time? Is it rapidly growing? Do the pioneers in your sector appear to show close interest in it?

- Its robustness: does the anomaly appear in several sets of data? Is it coherent with other changes in your environment?

- Its impact: does the anomaly reveal a dead angle which is not covered by current offerings? What would be the consequences if it became widespread?

A simple analysis framework, to experiment in your next strategic thinking sessions.

Source: The Power of Anomaly, Martin Reeves, Bob Goodson, Kevin Whitaker, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2021. 

Faced with a question that catches us unawares, who has never dreamed of immediately formulating a striking response?

In these situations, our desire to bring the best response is paradoxically our worst enemy, as it impairs our attention. Did you never find yourself thinking of your response before your counterpart even finished their sentence? This desire to mentally prepare is natural: in a dialogue, our brain permanently seeks to elaborate stocks of “good answers” to be ready when the time comes. This presents two disadvantages: we respond more to what we think we have understood of our counterparts’ statements than to what they have actually told us; and if, in addition, the topic is sensitive, our brain focuses its responses on the key words that put us in alert, which leads us to answer in an exaggeratedly defensive manner.

The priority thus consists in slowing down our thinking. Forcing yourselves to actively listen, until the end, enables more targeted responses and reduces the risk of an irrelevant answer. Finally, we will gain by reformulating the situation, not as a challenge or a threat, but as an opportunity to clarify our point of view, to nuance it or to bring a complementary light, which considerably influences the tone of our responses.

Source: Think Fast, Talk Smart: Communication Techniques, Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business, December 2014.

We sometimes associate the rise to power with negative personal characteristics such as aggressiveness, selfishness, manipulation. What about in the corporate world? Do unpleasant personalities, who dominate others and put their personal interests above those of the collective, have a greater chance to reach positions of power?

That is the thorny question that Berkeley researchers tackled in conducting two studies with hundreds of master’s degree and MBA students. They gave them a personality test to assess their tendency to be “disagreeable” (aggressive, selfish, manipulative). They then evaluated their level of power within their respective companies fourteen years later. Their conclusion: there is no correlation between a selfish or aggressive personality and an elevated level of power. And this remains true whether the organization is characterized by a competitive or cooperative culture.

Indeed, these toxic personalities generally underperform on other strategies that are equally important for rising within an organization, notably altruistic behaviors—which show others that we are driven by the general interest rather than by self-interest. Reassuring news for our social regulation mechanisms, but which does not absolve us from the responsibility to monitor and sanction unacceptable behavior.

Source: People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work, Cameron Anderson, Daron L. Sharps, Christopher J. Soto, Oliver P. John, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), August 2020

A lack of opportunities for promotion is the number one cause of resignations, according to a 2021 study conducted by the Pew Research Center in the United States. 63% of respondents who had left their job cited this reason, in the same proportion as a too-low salary. For companies wishing to hold on to their employees in the context of a taut job market, the message is clear: the support of career development must be improved.

Too often, the reflex is to entrust career development to local managers. Are they not the ones who best know their team members and who are therefore best equipped to assess their potential? In reality, this approach has proven to be rather misguided. On the one hand, managers are often poorly informed about potential career paths. On the other, they want to hold on to their best people and tend to dissuade them from leaving the team.

The highest performing companies in this regard entrust career development to a dedicated team, with three key missions: making careers paths more visible to all, providing the means to pick up new skills, and offering opportunities for feedback and coaching beyond the immediate support of the person’s N+1.

Source: Why Companies Should Help Every Employee Chart a Career Path, George Westerman, Abbie Lundberg, MIT Sloan Management Review, March 2023.

Geopolitical events can greatly affect companies. The war in Ukraine is sad witness to it. Its economical impacts are many: closure of subsidiaries in some countries, disorganization of the supply chains, tensions on some raw materials, soaring costs…

But be careful: confronted with the impact of the crisis, we easily forget that any change can also offer new possibilities. For example, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, whilst disrupting the European energy market, accelerated the transition towards renewable energies. When the parameters that governed a sector are suddenly upset, it is time to wonder. Could what represented a marginal differentiation on the market become an asset to exploit? Isn’t it time to revive an innovation project that was abandoned because of a lack of profitability? Similarly, the constraints on the supply chains boost the emergence of pivotal geographic areas, such as India and Vietnam. Isn’t it time to establish operations there? When a crisis happens, we must of course protect ourselves—but also know how to overcome the ambient pessimism to actively explore the possibilities offered by the new context.

Source: Black swans, gray rhinos, and silver linings: Anticipating geopolitical risks (and openings), Andrew Grant, Ziad Haider, Anke Raufuss, McKinsey, February 2023.