Strategy
Build a Board That Improves Decisions
The quality of governance becomes visible in the choices a company makes, the assumptions it challenges and the speed with which it responds to contrary evidence.
THE BOARDROOM AGENDA
Growth Is Uneven. Your Strategy Should Be Precise.
The next planning cycle calls for a sharper view of customers, cash and commitment. A global forecast is the beginning of that work.
The average is a poor operating plan
An executive team can agree on the economic outlook and still make incompatible decisions. Sales assumes customers will accept another price increase. Operations plans for volume recovery. Treasury prepares for tighter funding. Each assumption can sound reasonable in isolation; together they may describe a business that cannot exist. The central planning challenge is to make those assumptions meet before capital, hiring and inventory turn them into commitments.
The IMF's July 2026 outlook projected continued global growth while describing uneven conditions and persistent inflation and conflict risks. That is a useful starting point, but a company earns its results in particular markets. Our argument for the coming planning cycle is that strategic precision should be measured by how well a leadership team connects external conditions to a small number of controllable decisions.
Start with the customer economics
A strong plan begins below the regional revenue line. Separate customers whose spending is necessary to keep operating from those buying capacity, convenience or discretionary improvement. Identify which groups can pass higher costs to their own customers and which must absorb them. Then examine the evidence: repeat orders, contract renewals, order cancellations, payment delays and the time between an initial conversation and a signed commitment.
This exercise changes the growth discussion. A healthy pipeline is less persuasive if every opportunity requires unusual discounts or extended payment terms. Conversely, a modestly growing market may support attractive returns when a company solves a costly operational problem. Ask commercial leaders to show how the offer changes the customer's economics. A planning process that accepts only a revenue ambition misses the practical question of why customers will pay for it.
Give every assumption an owner
The OECD's September 2026 interim outlook described resilient activity alongside continuing energy disruption risks and elevated borrowing costs. For management, these conditions suggest testing several connected assumptions rather than changing a single growth cell in a spreadsheet. A rise in input costs may affect pricing, demand, inventory funding and supplier solvency at the same time.
Assign an executive to each material assumption and record what evidence would change it. The commercial chief might own achievable price realization; the operating chief, qualified capacity; the finance chief, accessible liquidity. The owners should agree on common definitions before business units submit their plans. Otherwise, one division's conservative volume case may depend on another division's aggressive purchasing commitment, and the contradiction will surface only after the budget is approved.
Separate commitment from possibility
Our recommendation is to classify proposed spending by how difficult it would be to reverse. Maintaining an essential production asset, launching a limited market trial and building an entirely new facility deserve different approval logic. A staged investment can create information as well as revenue. Its first phase should answer a specific uncertainty, with a defined ceiling on the resources at risk and a decision date for proceeding.
Treat postponement as a decision with a cost. Waiting can preserve cash, but it can also lose a customer, a permit, a scarce specialist or a favorable site. The right comparison is between the cost of committing too early and the cost of learning too slowly. Directors should expect management to explain both. Flexibility has value only when someone knows how to exercise it and the business has retained the capabilities to act.
Use scenarios to rehearse choices
The World Bank's June 2026 Global Economic Prospects examined how an energy shock can weaken growth and complicate financing, particularly for exposed developing economies. The management implication is to test how a shock would travel through the actual business. The relevant question is which customers, suppliers, contracts and funding arrangements would transmit it most quickly.
A useful scenario session ends with decisions that can be prepared now. These might include a revised sourcing qualification, an alternative product configuration or a preapproved spending pause. Avoid elaborate narratives that never change operating behavior. Give each response a trigger, an accountable person and a clear boundary. A scenario should help a manager act under pressure without waiting for the next annual strategy retreat.
Protect the capacity to execute
Leadership attention is also a scarce resource. Count the major changes each operating team must absorb, then compare that load with its demonstrated capacity. A market expansion, a systems replacement and a reorganization may each be defensible while their simultaneous execution is unrealistic. Require sponsors to identify dependencies, scarce expertise and the work they are willing to stop. Strategic focus becomes credible when it changes the calendar.
At the next board review, ask for the few assumptions that have moved, the decisions those movements require and the commitments that remain justified. Keep the ambition visible, but make the evidence equally visible. An effective plan gives people a direction and a way to respond when conditions diverge. In an uneven global economy, the company that connects judgment to execution can build an advantage without pretending to know the future.
Evidence & further reading
Go to the source.
- World Economic Outlook Update, July 2026: Global Economy in Crosscurrents of War and TechnologyInternational Monetary Fund · 2026-07-08
- OECD Economic Outlook, Interim Report September 2026OECD · 2026-09-23
- Global Economic Prospects, June 2026World Bank · 2026-06-16
Executive analysis informed by the linked sources. Hypothetical examples are identified in the text. Published 3 October 2026.
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