To prepare for the post-COVID-19 era, leaders need to do more than fine-tune their day-to-day tasks; they need to be ready and willing to rethink how they operate, and even why they exist. To put it another way, leaders need to step back, take a breath, and consider a broader perspective.
The pandemic has both revealed and accelerated a number of trends that will play a substantial role in the shape of the future global economy. In our conversations with global executives, they have identified five priorities. Companies will want to adopt these five priorities as their North Star while they navigate the trends that are molding the future.
Take sustainability, the principle of producing goods and services while exacting minimal damage to the environment. Many companies have taken earnest steps in this regard because they wanted to. In the very near future, however, doing so will be as fundamental to doing business as compiling a balance sheet: consumers and regulators will insist on it. In this context, sustainability needs to be done as systematically as digitization or strategy development because it will be an important source of long-term competitive advantage.
Read the article at McKinsey & Company.