For years I have been working with executive boards and decision-makers. Through Covid, a war in Europe, the energy crisis, inflation, and shattered supply chains. Amid all these upheavals, I have experienced one thing again and again: leadership no longer takes place under stable conditions, but under permanent uncertainty.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
In recent months, I have conducted many of these conversations even more consciously. I asked: What is really preoccupying you right now?<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The answers are astonishingly similar.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Many business models \u2013 especially in our European flagship industries \u2013 are beginning to wobble. For decades, it was enough to continuously optimize existing products, processes, and structures. Efficiency was the growth driver.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The last few years, however, have shown: that is no longer enough. Optimization alone creates no new growth when markets, technologies, and geopolitical conditions shift simultaneously.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Growth does not arise in the obvious business fields, because these are heavily contested and therefore hardly profitable. The blue oceans of the future, by contrast, are not (yet) apparent at first glance – and are thus often associated with high risk. The truly effective levers therefore frequently lie precisely where uncertainty reigns \u2013 and thus also fear.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n To seize these opportunities, companies must learn to break away from pure process and optimization thinking and to think more radically again. This is not a purely strategic task, but also a cultural one. The step from maximum safeguarding toward consciously taken risk is difficult, especially for organizations that have been optimized for stability for decades.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen proven business models no longer hold<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n