The Blog
Long-form essays, field notes, and frameworks from the FIRMSconsulting team — published weekly.
All posts
Published weekly-
If You Are Not Growing, You Are Degrading
A letter on why the most successful leaders never stop investing in themselves. Through the stories of two exceptional clients, why building capability that stays with you for life beats any quick fix or shortcut.
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A Company Is Not Valued on Its Past. Neither Are We.
Most people cannot tell the difference between a bad decision and a bad outcome. Here is how to tell a real setback from a right decision that simply has not paid off yet — and how to rebuild momentum after a streak of them.
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AI Strategy Is Not a Strategy
Most companies launch an AI strategy without asking how it serves the corporate strategy. It must — long term, that means the ROIC–WACC spread and growth.
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The Success Trap: Breaking the Cycle of Never Enough (with Brooke Taylor)
Brooke Taylor spent more than a decade inside high-performance environments, including leadership roles at Google, before turning her attention to a question that many accomplished professionals quietly wrestle with: why does achievement so often fail to produce a lasting sense of fulfillment? In this conversation, she examines what she calls the “success wound” — the…
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Adjunct Professor at Cornell University, Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, on Critical Thinking vs. AI
In this conversation with Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, the discussion examines what happens to judgment and critical thinking as AI becomes embedded in daily decision-making. Drawing on her background as an investigative journalist at Barron’s, Einhorn explains how questioning assumptions and searching for disconfirming evidence shaped the development of her AREA Method for decision-making. She argues…
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The Habits and Systems That Shape Success (with Fredric Marshall)
Fredric Marshall spent decades helping companies including Apple, Pfizer, and Genentech solve problems in sales effectiveness, product launches, and organizational change. In this discussion, he explains why he views sales and leadership primarily as change management challenges: helping people move from where they are to where they want to be. The conversation centers on several…
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BCG Managing Director and Partner, Kristy Ellmer, on Why Change Fails and How Great Leaders Build Real Transformation
Kristy Ellmer has spent her career leading large-scale transformations across industries, countries, and operating environments. In this conversation, she explains why most change efforts fail — not because of bad strategy, but because organizations underestimate the human side of execution. A central idea from the discussion is the imbalance between the “what” and the “how”…
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Associate Director of Culture and Change at BCG, Philip Jameson, on Why Most Transformations Fail
Philip Jameson discusses why most organizational transformations fail despite strong strategic intent, significant investment, and broad awareness that change is necessary. Drawing on his work at Boston Consulting Group and the research behind How Change Really Works, Jameson argues that the core problem is often not strategy itself, but a poor understanding of “how humans…
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Joe Pine, Author and Lecturer at Northeastern University, on the Future of Business
Management advisor and author Joe Pine explores a question that sits beneath most business strategy discussions but is rarely addressed directly: what business is ultimately for. Drawing on decades of work spanning mass customization, the experience economy, and his latest research on transformation, Pine argues that many companies misunderstand the real value customers seek and…
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Executive Skills That Still Matter in the Age of AI
We host a podcast, Strategy Skills, where we interview senior thinkers across business, strategy, and increasingly, artificial intelligence. There is one question I have been asking the guests for some time now. The question is some version of this. Given everything you have just told me about the trajectory of this technology, what skills should serious operators…
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Nobody Decides to Become Irrelevant. Are You Becoming a Phone Booth?
Nobody Decides to Become Irrelevant. Are You Becoming a Phone Booth? Do you remember phone booths? I do. They were everywhere. On city sidewalks, inside diners, in hotel lobbies. You planned around them. You remembered where they were. If you needed to make a call and you were away from home, you found one. I…
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Growth at Scale in the Age of AI (with McKinsey’s Marc Canal)
Marc Canal, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, examines how long-term economic progress is built and what current shifts in AI, demographics, and productivity mean for senior leaders. He explains that consulting is less about analysis than it appears and more about trust, judgment, and the ability to frame relevant questions. Building a small…