Growth Leadership: How Effective Leaders Drive Unstoppable Business Success
To tackle today’s challenges and drive long-term success, leadership teams must continually evolve. Here, we outline how to shape effective leadership teams that can sustain momentum and navigate growth.
This year, we’ve been focusing on uncommon growth – how to unlock, create and execute it. Our latest insights confirmed something we’ve always known: leadership is fundamental to successful, sustainable growth. But the wrong kind of leadership can be disastrous.
On the flip side, Adobe’s leadership transformation sparked innovation, doubling its stock performance between 2018 and 2021. Shantanu Narayen’s vision and the capabilities of his team led to continuous improvement and growth. Similarly, LEGO’s focus on culture and capabilities turned an $800 million debt into $600 million in profits. Even in sports, the All Blacks’ leadership has driven them to win 75% of their games.
The takeaway? Leadership impacts an organization’s performance more than anything else. However, most are “teams of leaders” rather than true “leadership teams.” Our research shows that to drive sustainable growth, organizations need cohesive leadership teams, not just individual leaders. After years of working with teams at all levels, we’ve distilled key insights on how to shape effective leadership teams that can sustain growth.
1. Leadership Teams Need Continuous Nurturing and Development
Leadership teams, like people, are living systems that require constant care. Our annual Catalyst Change research found that successful transformations are built on true collaboration, where enterprise and individual interests are integrated. Effective teams shift from an individual focus to a shared team mindset. Figure 1 illustrates this shift from a “team of leaders” to a “leadership team,” with shared goals and genuine collaboration at its core.
Figure 1: Moving from a team of leaders to a leadership team
In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, leadership teams must understand their needs and ensure their mindset, purpose and goals remain aligned with organizational and stakeholder needs. Our research reveals that leadership teams failing to champion collaboration and shared goals risk fragmentation and siloed operations, leading to a 3.5-fold increase in the time it takes for strategic decision-making compared to teams with integrated structures. Gallup research also found that leaders who focus on development and use their strengths effectively are 6x more likely to be engaged, 7.8% more productive and 3x more likely to report a good quality of life. It was with this understanding that we helped the executive team of a 2,000-strong leading agricultural vehicle manufacturer optimize performance by shifting from an “I” mentality to a “we” mentality, driving success through effective teamwork that bridged functional divides and fostering both internal and external growth.
2. Address All Dimensions of the Human-Centered Leadership Team Effectiveness Model
Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model (HCTM) is a proven holistic and people-centered approach to driving growth across organizations. The model is built on the idea that organizations reflect the same makeup as a human including the DNA, mind, body and soul. Effective leadership teams need to follow a similar model that not only builds trust and effective ways of working but aligns individual members to a shared enterprise goal. The Human-Centered Leadership Team Effectiveness Model (Figure 2) shows that addressing all dimensions of the human system is essential for empowering effective outcomes.
Figure 2: Prophet’s Human-Centered Leadership Team Effectiveness Model
Questions that should be asked include:
DNA: What is our focus and shared ambition that drives the work of our team?
Mind: What new skills are required for the team to drive change?
Body: What might need to change in our operating model to enable team performance?
Soul: How might we ignite belief in the change to foster trust and productive relationships?
As Figure 3 illustrates, if any of these elements from the model are missing, this has a knock-on effect on leadership teams, increasing the risk of falling short on goals due to a lack of commitment, poor focus and low-quality work.
Figure 3: What happens when part of the leadership system is missing
3. Sustain Leadership Team Effectiveness Through Actionable Development
Continuing with the human system analogy, leadership team development requires establishing “healthy rhythms” of working and meeting. Figure 4 shows how these rhythms can propel an existing leadership team towards high performance and effectiveness.
Figure 4: Actionable approach to leadership team development
This approach combines both “art and science” to shape team dynamics, capabilities, identity and culture of the leadership team. It involves:
Conductinga leadership team diagnostic to help the team (and other stakeholders) identify opportunities for improvement based on how the team currently functions.
Early alignment of the team’s purpose, ambition and role within the wider organization, so it can provide both clear leadership and staff empowerment by knowing its distinct contribution to success.
Ensuring psychological safety through trust-building workshops. The team narrative and behavior workshops help teams build trust through sharing their whole selves, the meaning they derive from their work and committing to the behaviors to sustain trust.
Prioritizing trust, healthy conflict and accountability to align the team’s success over individual ego. To uncover this a team strengths and priorities workshop helps sets OKRs and leans into the strengths of the leadership team.
Systematically defining ways of working and decision-making processes. In a session around ways of working, the team can shape the purpose of leadership meetings, how decision-making works and define an effective cadence of meetings.
Focusing on both individual and team learning to sustain growth and development. This typically involves team check-ins (potentially with an observer to feedback on process), re-running of the team diagnostic, team and individual coaching and continuation of individual development.
Leadership teams are the driving force behind an organization’s performance, especially in today’s rapidly changing world. The key challenge lies not just in the competence of individual leaders but in the collective effectiveness of the leadership team. Like individuals, leadership teams require nurturing and careful development. Breaking free from functional silos requires a rhythm that fuses a human-centered approach with both art and science, creating a sustainable and highly effective team.
Unlocking the Next Chapter of Growth in Southeast Asia’s Financial Services
The Asian financial services landscape is diverse and constantly evolving, but also ripe with opportunities. One must-win area is the MSMEs.
Geopolitical tensions are causing uncertainty and driving a wedge between economies sending rippling effects across the region. Many companies across the United States and Europe have been reshoring, with manufacturing hubs and operations diversifying to the Southeast Asia (SEA) region. As a result, shifting trade flows in countries like Cambodia and Vietnam have helped to boost players who are entrenched in these emerging countries.
These shifting dynamics bring about increased challenges but also competition from bank and non-bank players seeking a piece of the pie. One such area is Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) who are already experiencing exponential growth and play a vital role in the economy. Among ASEAN member states for example, 85% of the workforce is employed by MSMEs and account for 44.8% of GDP. It is a segment that is a must-win. Coupled with the fact that 60% of MSMEs are underbanked in Asia, this represents a huge untapped opportunity for banks and non-banks looking to grow in the region. Moreover, the ASEAN trading bloc is the third largest economy in Asia and the fifth largest in th
So, how can banks and non-banks win in this dynamic environment?
We have identified three emerging trends across the experience frontend and the operational and foundational back end to give players in the region a competitive edge.
1. BaaS and Open Banking: Unleashing Collaborative Innovation
Embrace Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and open banking principles to fuel collaborative innovation, specifically targeting MSMEs. Banks can use BaaS to “rent” out their core banking infrastructure through APIs, providing MSMEs with services they might not be able to develop themselves. Open banking complements this by enabling secure data sharing, allowing MSMEs to connect their accounts with these new services and gain a richer financial experience.
Imagine third-party providers leveraging core infrastructure to develop financial solutions specifically designed for MSMEs. This could include tools for cash flow management, inventory financing, simplified loan applications and e-commerce integration. Banks and FinTechs can charge fees for its APIs, subscriptions based on volumes and share revenue with partners in both Open Banking and BaaS models. Furthermore, data insights and platform usage from these partnerships can help banks and FinTechs better understand MSME needs and develop innovative products. Many banks have started leveraging these collaborative strategies to drive further growth. Examples where this is already happening include:
Standard Chartered Singapore’s SC API platform opened its data to developers, enabling partnerships with FinTechs that specialize in personal financial management for MSMEs. Customers can connect their accounts to receive insights, budgeting and tracking goals, leading to a 15% improvement in customer well-being scores. This demonstrates the potential of BaaS in empowering MSMEs and improving their financial health.
Axis Bank in India implements a BaaS model that offers over 250 APIs through their portal. This allows startups and MSMEs to integrate banking services into their applications for seamless payment management and reconciliation. Their partnership with OPEN, a neo-banking FinTech company, specifically targets the micro-segment by launching a digital current account for freelancers and small micro-enterprises.
These examples showcase how BaaS and open banking can be leveraged to create a thriving ecosystem of financial solutions specifically designed to address the needs of MSMEs by fostering collaboration and innovation.
2. Ecosystem Platforms: Bridging the Gap Between Finance and Everyday Life
Unlike BaaS and open banking which provide the building blocks for other businesses to create solutions, ecosystem platforms (also known as Super Apps) go beyond providing access to core services. They actively curate and integrate non-financial offerings, creating a unique value proposition. This translates into significant benefits, including increased efficiency and reduced costs for businesses of all sizes, especially MSMEs. By eliminating the need for customized integrations, Super Apps can provide MSMEs with access to a wider range of financial and non-financial services in a convenient and cost-effective way.
Southeast Asia’s unique landscape, with a high smartphone penetration rate and a large unbanked population, has fostered the emergence of Super Apps since 2010. These platforms cater to the specific needs of the region, including those of MSMEs. Some recent examples include:
Grab, a Singaporean powerhouse, initially a taxi-hailing service, has transformed into a ubiquitous platform offering ride-hailing, food delivery and other services – all crucial functionalities for MSMEs in the region. GrabPay, its mobile wallet has over 80 million monthly active users (2023), facilitates cashless transactions, money transfers and bill payments, simplifying financial management for MSMEs.
SeaMoney integrated within the Shopee e-commerce platform, it allows users to make payments and access financial services directly within the app. This fosters financial inclusion for individuals and benefits MSMEs by providing them with a wider customer base and easier payment solutions. SeaMoney leverages Shopee’s vast user base and merchant network, which facilitated their rapid growth, scaling their financial services across SEA. This is also particularly attractive for MSMEs seeking wider reach.
These examples highlight how Super Apps in SEA are strategically targeting MSMEs by offering a comprehensive suite of financial and non-financial services within a single platform. This integrated approach can significantly improve efficiency and reduce costs.
3. DeFi and Blockchain: Taking efficiency, transparency and security to a new level
Despite being the least mature concept among the three, the global DeFi (decentralized finance) market has already exceeded $200 billion, and the surging interest in blockchain among Asian consumers present exciting opportunities for banks and FinTechs in the region. Tokenization of both data and assets (into unique digital tokens on the blockchain) has provided the industry with endless opportunities with heightened security, transparency and speed.
Imagine streamlined cross-border payments for migrant workers through secure blockchain platforms, replacing slow and expensive traditional methods. Trade finance can also be revolutionized by blockchain’s transparency and efficiency, fostering trust and reducing red tape. Furthermore, fractionalized investments in real estate and other assets, enabled by blockchain, can democratize access and increase liquidity, catering to the growing demand (from $4.8 to $22 trillion AUM over the past 20 years) for alternative investments among Asian investors (CAIA, 2024). While the use of blockchain technology for MSMEs in SEA is still in its early stages, many institutions are starting to experiment in this lucrative segment. Some recent examples include:
In Singapore, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched Project Ubin, a multi-year initiative in collaboration with leading banks like DBS Bank, UOB, OCBC Bank to explore the potential applications of blockchain technology within the financial sector, specifically focusing on its ability to improve efficiency, transparency and security.
Bank of Ayudhya, a Thai bank, partnered with Contour, a prominent blockchain platform, to streamline trade finance for MSMEs. This collaboration leverages the power of blockchain technology to address specific pain points for MSMEs in trade finance. By creating a secure, shared ledger accessible to all parties involved, blockchain eliminates the need for paper-based trails and intermediaries, streamlines communication, reduces errors, and expedites the entire trade process. This translates to potentially lower costs and faster transaction times for MSMEs.
Without a doubt, SEA’s unique financial landscape presents exciting opportunities for business growth. SEA customers are mobile-first, tech-savvy, and hungry for innovative solutions, creating a perfect ecosystem for exploring cutting-edge technologies like BaaS, open banking, Super Apps and DeFi. To truly thrive in this dynamic market, SEA banks and FinTechs need to embrace a growth mindset and explore beyond traditional models.
Prophet partners with leading financial services organizations across Southeast Asia to help navigate complexities and unlock uncommon growth. Connect with us.
How Companies in Asia Unlock Growth Through Platform Strategy
We explore the unique ways successful businesses in Asia are leveraging the platform strategy, a strategic framework defined by Ted Moser in his latest book.
Digital platforms such as Amazon, Uber and Netflix have reshaped industries, seamlessly connecting businesses and consumers, while leveraging data and technology to deliver personalized experiences that redefine modern commerce and entertainment. The success of platforms highlights the transformative power of digital ecosystems in fostering innovation while driving sustainable growth.
“Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One,” a best-selling book by Ted Moser, a senior partner at Prophet, highlights the essential role of digital platforms in achieving business success in the modern age across industries. The book serves as a playbook by diving into the different types of platforms as business models while decoding growth moves from a decade of platform competition.
This framework guides companies to leverage platforms for brand relevance, customer value growth and efficient customer acquisition.
Rapid Digitalization of Economies and Shift in Consumer Behavior
Asia, especially Southeast Asia, is experiencing rapid digitalization and reliance on online platforms fuelled by a multitude of factors – the COVID-19 pandemic, internet penetration, a burgeoning middle class and supportive government policies. This shift prompted digital transformations across businesses, leading to a boom of digital marketplaces and services such as Shopify, Grab and Lazada.
Meanwhile, companies are heavily investing in strategies to create and meet demand across the entire customer journey. Companies focus on Demand Plays and TransformationPlays to meet evolving consumer needs and transition traditional businesses into digital domains.
Temu: Aggressive User Acquisition Through Demand Plays
Temu, a brand of China’s Pinduoduo, entered the global markets in 2022. It has quickly disrupted the status quo of the global e-commerce landscape, becoming the No. 1 shopping app on Apple’s App Store, surpassing Amazon, Target, Walmart and SHEIN. Temu’s success is made possible by its unparalleled demand-gen capabilities. Through the campaign “Shopping like a billionaire,” Temu offers a clear yet differentiating value proposition of providing cheap and accessible products for everyone. Beyond a clear brand message, Temu employs a comprehensive demand–gen strategy, from agile supply chain, data-driven user analytics, to aggressive marketing campaigns and pricing schemes, as well as savvy digital marketing and user acquisition tactics.
Huawei: Leading at the Frontier Through Transformation Plays
Huawei stands out as a prime example of strategic innovation in action. Initially recognized as a B2B telecom leader, the company seized the opportunity to diversify into B2C markets by introducing smartphones renowned for their cutting-edge camera technology. This transformation underscores Huawei’s unwavering commitment to innovation, as evidenced by the staggering investment of over 11 billion RMB in R&D over the past decade. Amid U.S. sanctions, Huawei demonstrated agility by strengthening its own HarmonyOS operating system. Recently, Huawei entered the electric vehicle (EV) sector by launching startup EV brands AITO and LUXEED in collaboration with automotive players Seres and Chery, respectively. These EV models integrate HarmonyOS for Automotive, seamlessly synchronizing with Huawei’s mobile operating system to deliver a cohesive user experience. This integration reflects Huawei’s vision of creating an ecosystem centred around HarmonyOS, extending its influence beyond telecom. By leveraging its technological prowess and strategic partnerships, Huawei has embarked on a transformation journey to shape the future of multiple industries, cementing its position as a global leader in the ever-evolving landscape of technology and innovation.
Need for Innovative Solutions in Competitive Markets
E-commerce, fintech, AI, and IoT have become some of the most disruptive technologies for traditional business models, where a holistic platform strategy plays a major role. In Asia, a fast-growing consumer market that’s largely digital – and mobile first – this is especially the case. Leveraging these technologies to develop their own platform through digital transformation while taking a customer-centric approach now becomes a key challenge for traditional companies. To adapt and futureproof, the most resilient companies are often agile in prioritizing innovation efforts. Prophet’s recent research on how innovation builds resilience revealed that 35% of the respondents in China and Singapore have formal innovation incubation programs, compared to only 15% of the respondents in the U.S. and the UK.
Consequently, companies are channelling resources into the development of innovative platform features and services, leveraging Innovation Plays to continuously provide new and distinctive platform benefits for a competitive edge. Moreover, businesses strategically explore Portfolio Plays to diversify roles within the platform ecosystem, emphasizing continuous innovation across product development, market approach, and customer engagement strategies.
Grab: Achieving Impactful Growth Through Innovation Plays
Grab serves as a standout example of a platform business that maintains sustainable growth by bringing ongoing innovations to market. Originating as a ride-hailing service, Grab expanded into a super-app business, the “Everyday Everything App,” offering new products and benefits including food delivery, digital payments, and financial services. This strategic shift capitalized on Grab’s extensive user base and diversified revenue streams. Additionally, Grab deployed collaborative go-to-market strategies, by partnering with local governments and financial institutions, to extend its reach and tailor offerings to specific regional markets. To deepen its connection with a wide array of customers, partners and stakeholders, Grab has also further defined its company mission – to drive Southeast Asia forward by creating economic empowerment for everyone – while continuously implementing various ESG initiatives.
Nike: Connecting with Evolving Customers Through Portfolio Plays
Nike exemplifies effective portfolio diversification, transforming from product innovator to a digital marketplace leader. Nike integrates digital platforms with physical retail, offers market-specific mobile apps, and engages users through customized experiences and robust digital ecosystems. Through digital platforms like Nike Training Club and Nike Run Club as well as offline community activities, Nike engages with users beyond transactions. This platform-driven strategy not only solidifies Nike’s leadership in leveraging digital platforms for growth, but also resonates exceptionally well in the diverse and unique markets across Asia, where tailored experiences and integrated digital solutions are increasingly sought after.
Regulatory and Cultural Diversity of the Region
Asia’s diverse regulatory and cultural landscape poses unique challenges for platform businesses. With varying regulatory frameworks, cultures, languages and economies, consumer behaviors and preferences can differ vastly across different Asian countries. This complexity significantly impacts how companies approach market entry and expansion, where adapting their business models and marketing strategies to different regulatory and cultural contexts becomes pivotal.
To effectively navigate these intricacies, companies employ Design Plays to develop differentiated value propositions that align with local preferences and cultural sensitivities. Meanwhile, companies should also tailor O+O customer experiences to different Asian customers through Interaction Plays, to enhance engagement and foster brand loyalty.
IKEA: Mastering Localization Through Design Plays
IKEA’s entry and expansion in China is a textbook example of a strategic design play, reflecting a deep understanding of local preferences and behaviors. Going beyond furniture sales, IKEA adapted its business model to overcome unique market challenges and fit the Chinese lifestyle. Product designs were adjusted for smaller living spaces, which was a shift from its offerings in European markets. As part of its location strategy and with the support from an extensive logistics network tailored to China’s infrastructure challenges, IKEA placed its stores nearer to city centers with easy public transport access, catering to most Chinese consumers who are less likely to own cars. Furthermore, by quickly embracing digital transformation, IKEA offered online shopping, home delivery services and popular payment options like Alipay and WeChat Pay, exceeding Chinese consumer expectations for retail convenience.
Lululemon: Building a Loyal Community Through Interaction Plays
Lululemon’s approach in Asia exemplifies a successful full-journey engagement, seamlessly integrating online and offline experiences, offering personalized assistance, and fostering community experiences. Through dynamic segmentation, Lululemon tailors offerings to diverse Asian audiences, driving conversions with personalized recommendations and localized content. Lululemon also adopts an agile content strategy, featuring regional influencers and traditional Asian wellness practices. It leverages user-generated content, including customer testimonials and photos, to foster authenticity and engagement. This customer-centric approach has strengthened brand loyalty and deepened the connection with customers in Asia.
Reimagine Your Business Strategy with the Platform Mindset
From Huawei’s transformative journey to Grab’s and Lululemon’s innovative strategies, these best practices exemplify how companies are leveraging platform plays to navigate Asia’s diverse market dynamics and evolving consumer needs.
Whether your organization is already a platform business or not, adopting a strategic platform mindset is essential for companies to stay competitive today. From developing a comprehensive platform strategy to evolving existing capabilities, the six Platform Plays illustrated in “Winning Through Platforms” provide essential insights that inform actionable next steps for a futureproof growth strategy:
Assess your current capabilities and needs to determine the most suitable platform strategy. Understand which role your platform can play within your business portfolio and select the one that aligns with your strategic goals.
Consider developing a comprehensive platform strategy that goes across all aspects of the organization. This involves clarifying how the optimal platform role aligns with the company’s strategic objectives to maximize differentiation and growth. Leaders must also identify the strategic implications of what must change in the business.
Build an internal case for change and digital transformationwhile designing a transformation vision and roadmap. This includes the internal moves that need to be made from an organizational perspective, including structure, culture, processes, and capabilities.
For mature companies who have already found success in platforms, find opportunities to evolve your current platform strategy. Revisit customer experience strategies to deepen engagement and conversion; adopt more complex platform roles to drive deeper integration into the business; or harness the power of data and AI capabilities to refine and extend your ecosystems to new, differentiated offerings.
As Asian companies embrace innovation and customer-centric approaches, they are positioned to lead the way in shaping the future of digital commerce in the region. By harnessing the power of platforms, fostering strong customer relationships, and adapting to regulatory and cultural nuances, these companies are setting new standards for success in Asia’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Where is the Next Big Growth Opportunity for Streaming Services?
Emerging markets represent a new growth space for global streaming services with Africa as the prime opportunity. Discover five essential strategies for launching and thriving in this fast-growing market.
Global streaming services are facing a significant challenge: growth has stalled in many markets, forcing them to seek new avenues for expansion. Some, like Netflix and Disney, hope to boost revenues by cracking down on password-sharing. Other streamers are looking for growth by bundling. Warner Bros Discovery (owner of HBO Max) and Disney (owner of Hulu) recently announced a new package to capture subscribers in an increasingly competitive attention economy. And all this is happening in the context of a cost-of-living squeeze, impacting consumers’ willingness to pay for multiple subscriptions.
Audience growth is available, but it lies in emerging markets like Africa, a region that many Western media executives have yet to consider. Africa is on the verge of a viewing avalanche, with the population expected to double by 2050, when the International Monetary Fund predicts it will account for over 25% of the global population. Importantly, these will be young consumers, with 60% under 25. They will be hungry for programming and new ways to watch it, in sharp contrast to the West, where aging populations may lead to stagnant technology adoption rates. Africa’s youth bulge presents a dynamic market eager for digital entertainment solutions. These are mobile-loving audiences, with some 613 million in sub-Saharan Africa – about half the region’s population – subscribing to mobile services.
However, for streamers, growth in Africa is about more than demographics or devices. African content is a booming industry, making it a fertile land for streaming services. Nollywood – Nigeria’s film industry – is the second largest in the world by output, with over 2,500 movies annually. (It trails India’s Bollywood, but out-produces Hollywood.) And while early Nollywood content had a DIY video production quality, these shows and films have become increasingly sophisticated. Fuelled by new efficiency-saving technologies such as AI, the Nigerian film industry is honing its technique, expanding out of comedies and dramas and into horror, historical dramas, musicals and animation.
Prophet has been working with Showmax, a joint venture between South African broadcaster MultiChoice Group, American media conglomerate Comcast, and Peacock, the streaming platform from Comcast’s NBCUniversal subsidiary – to expand service across Africa. Combining reality, drama and sport with local output in multiple markets, Showmax is expected to reach almost four million subscribers by 2029. From this work, we’ve developed five critical lessons for successfully launching streaming services that will captivate and delight African audiences:
1. Local Content Is King
American hits may create evergreen content libraries across the pond, but African audiences are most interested in local content produced in local languages for local audiences. (Sorry, “Sopranos,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Stranger Things.”) Africa is rich in cultural diversity, with thousands of ethnic groups having unique traditions, languages and stories. Local content that taps into this diversity can resonate deeply with viewers by reflecting on their lived experiences, cultural nuances and societal values. Whether it is the “The Real Housewives of Nairobi” or “Cheta M,” a Nigerian Showmax original exploring young lovers who battle spiritual and political forces in their way, original African stories by local talent are the overwhelming favourites. And just as K-pop, Nordic noir and Brazilian telenovelas find fans well beyond national borders, these regional African narratives resonate with larger audiences, offering the entire continent a wider representation of people, places and perspectives.
2. Mobile-First Optimization
Optimizing streaming services for mobile viewing is crucial in all markets, but it is especially important in Africa, given the continent’s unique technological and market characteristics. Because of its limited fixed broadband infrastructure and the relative affordability of mobile technology, mobile devices are most Africans’ primary internet access point. A mobile-optimized service enhances engagement by improving usability on smaller screens and adapting to variable mobile data conditions. This approach aligns with the lifestyle of Africa’s young, tech-savvy population, who often consume content on the go. And it provides a competitive edge in a market where mobile connectivity is a norm.
Streaming brands need to act now to capture these audiences, diving into local market needs to develop a deep understanding. Customer centricity is essential: Only companies that immerse themselves in Africa’s varied and nuanced markets will be able to develop the strategies, offers, pricing and content required to win with increasingly sophisticated African audiences.
Tosson El-Noshokaty, Partner at Prophet
3. Cheap, Creative Access
Effectively launching in multiple African markets requires a telecom partner that can provide cheap data, attractive bundles – or both. This makes it easier for a broader audience to access streaming services, increasing adoption. The economic landscape in many African countries is characterized by lower average incomes than in Western nations. Budget-friendly data options make streaming services more attractive and feasible for regular use. Going to market with a strategic partner also creates a competitive advantage. Offering these services through fractional pricing is another tool adopted by African streamers. Rather than monthly subscriptions, providing weekly or fortnightly tiered packages with different bundle offers can make a difference, maximizing accessibility and adoption.
4. Direct Sales Impact
Direct Sales Forces (DSFs) drive sales across Africa, capitalizing on over 90% of transactions conducted in cash. Unlike markets dominated by digital marketing and online sales, the African landscape often requires a tangible, on-the-ground presence to effectively reach and engage consumers. DSFs are crucial for navigating these unique market dynamics, including limited internet penetration and the preference for face-to-face interactions. DSF teams provide personalized customer service, handle cash transactions safely and build trust within communities, essential for converting potential customers into subscribers. Additionally, DSFs help educate customers about product offerings and troubleshooting, which is vital in regions where digital literacy is still developing.
5. M-Pesa mobile money
Cash is king in Africa, with sub-Saharan African credit and debit card penetration rates low at 3% and 18%, respectively. However, M-Pesa – an innovative mobile phone-based money transfer service – allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money, pay for goods and services, and access credit and savings, all with a mobile device. With over 50 million monthly active users, M-Pesa’s widespread adoption highlights the need for streaming services in Africa to integrate mobile payment options and a complex suite of payment providers, including card, PayPal and other mobile money solutions. These various payment integrations ensure seamless accessibility and convenience for users.
The rapid evolution of global streaming services demands innovative strategies for growth, especially as traditional markets become saturated. Prophet’s collaboration with Showmax underscores the transformative potential of targeting emerging markets like Africa. To thrive in such a competitive landscape, it’s crucial to adapt and continuously evolve. We can help your organization unlock new growth opportunities and connect with diverse, untapped markets worldwide.
Ready to accelerate your growth? Schedule a workshop with us.
Discover four key trends to guide your 2025 marketing strategy, focusing on integrating brand and demand, leveraging AI, embracing data-driven marketing and adapting to an evolving media landscape.
We regularly have the great fortune to spend time with clients at their marketing leadership offsites. As they assess how effectively they have delivered against their current year plans, it is equally critical that they begin to look towards emerging trends that impact next year’s marketing plans.
Marketers today are wrestling with seismic change in understanding rapidly changing customer experience needs, marketplace disruption, competitive landscape and organizational challenges. At least 40% of U.S. CEOs expect CMOs to focus on five key growth challenges: revenue, market share, competition, reputation and company narrative.
The expectations for return on investment have never been higher. Navigating the noise and delivering business outcomes is the CMO’s new mission. It requires new skills, insights, measurement and tremendous focus on execution. In our recent analysis of key trends facing marketing leaders, we found four emerging trends for 2025 planning to build your strategy for staying ahead.
1. Integrate Brand and Demand
More and more clients are evolving their annual marketing plan to integrate brand and demand into a single growth plan. Some are even substituting the customer journey for the funnel as the backdrop to uncover gaps or identify more opportunities at every touchpoint. Our ongoing research, ”Brand and Demand Marketing: A Love Story” backs up this approach to break down silos and plan brand and performance plans together. Winning organizations are 3X more likely to take a fully integrated approach to connect brand and demand. Whether you’re preparing a brand or product launch or need to find other routes to growth, this could be the year you take integrated planning to a new level, building stronger relationships across the organization and a foundation for bigger impact. You’ll hear much more from us both on launching brands and how to integrate brand and demand as our latest research report launches.
2. Provide Marketing’s POV on AI
AI in marketing being top of mind won’t be a surprise to any marketer reading this post. It is estimated that AI will drive $100 billion in revenue by 2027. With more money than ever being funneled into new AI technology, it should be apparent that the impact on customer experience, insights and new ways of working will reshape how marketing is delivered. With a perpetual need to drive more personalized communication in the market and meet the insatiable need for content that resonates with buyers, AI holds great promise to deliver more with less resources. The C-Suite is grappling with broad-ranging opportunities to leverage AI technology, and the marketing leader is uniquely positioned to think through the firm’s position on AI, how it can be used to enhance customer touch points and how AI can drive more scale in marketing efforts. AI can be integrated into nearly every section of your 2025 plan. See how we started to organize use cases here to maximize AI’s value.
3. Embrace the Next Wave of Data-Driven Marketing
Delivering data-driven marketing and advancing customer insight remain a key domain of the modern marketing leader. Understanding the customer has been a staple of marketing’s role within the organization and there are more ways than ever to get more data on customer wants and needs. However, efforts to capture customer data and find prospective customers in the wild are growing more complex and challenging. More companies than ever before are embarking on building sophisticated first-party data understanding and reach. In addition, marketers are developing new lead generation and management capabilities that deliver more contextually relevant and personalized experiences. All of this is happening with a relentless focus on attribution, measurement, and the ability to prove business impact. More than half of brands (60%) quantify the value of engagement on social in terms of revenue impact, 57% use it to track conversions and sales directly resulting from social efforts and 51% use it to optimize their product development or marketing strategy. Data enrichment, identity management and the ability to leverage new technology are the newest set of differentiating skills that marketing leaders are addressing.
4. Rethink Effectiveness in an Ever-Evolving Media Landscape
Worldwide ad spending will grow nearly 10% in 2024, for a total of $992 billion. Almost 70% of that will be spent on digital advertising, which will see a spending increase of more than 13%—well above its 2022 and 2023 growth rates. As ever, diverse forms of media play a key role in the toolkit for marketers, with continued growth in out-of-home (OOH), fueled by digital OOH and eyes on emerging retail media. An evolving landscape in how media is delivered and regulated is creating significant disruption and opportunity. Global advertising spend continues to increase, as cookie-based advertising is being turned off, FAST TV is emerging, the influencer market is maturing, and there are a swath of regulatory and legal decisions pending. Each of these changes brings opportunity, a need for new capability building, impacts on budgets and an increase in marketing leadership needs.
Now is the time to start planning for what is ahead. New capabilities, technology and ways of working will need to be planned for. At Prophet, we regularly meet with marketing leaders across all industries to discuss these trends, offer our insight, and facilitate team working sessions for annual strategy, agile planning and always-on improvements.
Ready to build your plan to win? Schedule a workshop with us.
Transforming Healthcare: The Power of Platform Thinking
Platform thinking is the path to consumer-centricity in healthcare – and the key to its transformation.
Platforms are the key to illuminating the consumer journey. They allow companies to light the “dark” side of a consumer’s journey, the post-purchase “use” side, when previously, only the “choose” side was visible. As our colleagues Ted Moser, Charlotte Bloom and Omar Akhtar observe in their book, “Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One,” platforms are the way to enable companies to observe, interact with and provide value to consumers as they engage with the organization. Many industries are already immersed in the platform race – from Amazon Prime’s offering (i.e., ecommerce, Whole Foods, streaming content) to Uber and Uber One (linking rides and eats). Even financial services companies are in the game with strategies from Chase, Bank of America, and more. So, how will healthcare players engage in this new value exchange?
The beauty of healthcare is we know more about our customers than pretty much any other industry. It’s about how we use that knowledge to personalize, drive conversion, and close gaps in care.
Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director, Digital Marketing & Experience, Indiana University Health
Broadcast connection reflects the one-way communication that marked most of the 20th century. With the launch of the internet, websites and digital analytics, businesses were able to shine a light on the “choose” side of consumers’ engagement. While it’s often the darker side of the consumer journey, the “use” side that reflects the greatest value – both for business and for consumers.
(Lighting the choose and use journeys graphic Int. 1.2)
In the era of platform connection, health systems have an opportunity to capture and deliver greater value to their consumers. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. In healthcare, the data and knowledge gained by this level of consumer engagement could have profound effects not only on that patient and their care delivery, but a systemic impact on how to manage disease states, reduction of challenging SDOHs and improved health equity. Currently most health systems are focused on patient portals and transactional engagement, making this transformation feel daunting, elusive, or even operationally impossible.
Healthcare is behind, and we all acknowledge this. Think about the hospitality industry and how their rewards programs generate loyalty and word of mouth – the best experience you have anywhere is the experience you want everywhere – and that includes in healthcare.
Ken Chaplin, Chief Marketing Officer, City of Hope
There’s no doubt this is hard work. There are several reasons why healthcare leaders say it’s been an uphill battle – from a lack of integrated technology systems to concerns around patient data privacy – these are valid reasons to be concerned. However, other highly regulated industries have shown how to connect and protect consumers data. We spoke with several leading healthcare innovators to understand why this work is daunting and what they are doing to overcome the challenges:
1. Non-Proprietary Platforms Are Not Designed for Optimal User Experience
Health systems often started with their EMR as the main platform, and what was the EMR developed to do? Billing, coding or quality documentation. They certainly weren’t designed for the user experience of a clinical physician or clinical nurse user – let alone a patient.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
2. Barriers to Risk-Taking
We can have zero failure when lives are at stake, zero failure. That doesn’t apply to the business-oriented things we can do. We need to ask to experiment and fail and then fail forward, to learn and get better. But it’s just culturally very tough for people nowadays.
Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director, Digital Marketing & Experience, Indiana University Health
3. Internal Resistance to Change
How do you have large scale change when you are changing the way people work? Number one, we cannot innovate and bring customer centricity to life without the operators – we can’t move forward until everyone comes to the table.
Sara Saldoff, Head of Product Management & User Experience, OhioHealth
4. Overcoming Data Concerns With the Right Data Value-Exchange
I don’t think it’s truly a challenge to get consumers to believe their data is safe. I think it’s about translating, what’s the benefit to them? We must help patients and health consumers understand the value of sharing their data. How do we tell the story in the right way to facilitate their willingness to share private health information or behaviors?
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
5. Competing Priorities, Competing Investments, and Tremendous Pressure
You have to invest in building an appropriate infrastructure. You need talent that doesn’t necessarily exist in the system already. You’ve got to build a lot of capabilities. But these strategies, in the long term, will alleviate some of the pressures we’re all facing.
Nick Stefanizzi, Chief Executive Officer, Northwell Direct
Challenges aside, shifting to a platform-based model is the solution to achieving the transformation C-suite executives have been collectively working towards to achieve better business and health outcomes for patients.
There’s a massive amount of data that health systems today have access to. If we can get this right and gain more consumer trust, we can harness that data in a way that can help with precision medicine, drug discovery, disease prevention – it’s so incredibly powerful.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
Inherent in this shift to platform thinking is a value proposition for consumers: I share information about myself so that a company can provide me with more value via content, loyalty programs and tools. Equally as important is the value generated for the organization. Today, many consumer engagements with health systems are transactional, leading to drop off, and overall brand neutrality. This is exacerbated by behaviors of younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials) who often don’t have a PCP. For health systems, the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with consumers, whether they need care today or in the future, is essential for driving loyalty and patient volume in any market.
Beyond the acquisition and retention of patients, there is a halo of benefits for building strong consumer relationships including increased adherence, proactive preventative care, lower costs for the system (both administrative, e.g., faster bill pay, and clinical, e.g., getting preventative screening) and better negotiating power with payers. Properly collected, synthesized and actionable data could ultimately shape future innovations in disease prevention or treatments. Platforms help C-suite leaders optimize and personalize the patient experience with critical knowledge and data-driven insights.
Platforms are the way to:
1. Make Holistic Care Real
This has been an ongoing topic in healthcare. Health systems struggle to deliver holistic care, particularly for marginalized groups. Collecting data and applying insights to deliver better care, based on what patients really need, would drastically upend engagement and loyalty in healthcare. Consider how Amazon uses its data – from grocery shopping to prescription drugs to baby care essentials, to deliver better experiences.
Patients are doing all these things in the wellness space that are tangentially attached to their health, but that health systems don’t know about. We don’t know where it’s happening, and we don’t necessarily provide all the tangential services that customers want or need. The question is how much of that experience can we stitch together in partnership with the customer so we can treat the whole person?
Sara Saldoff, Head of Product Management & User Experience, OhioHealth
We’re creating communities that connect cancer fighters with prospective patients – it’s incredibly powerful and allows us to drive deeper, meaningful relationships with patients.
Ken Chaplin, Chief Marketing Officer, City of Hope
2. Empower Ongoing Engagement With Health
It’s no surprise that consumers are willing to pay to engage with their health (i.e., Fitbit; Apple Watch; fitness, sleep, wellness tracking apps, etc.) Connecting the healthcare experience to meet consumer needs and their desire to be “always on” has the power to turn engagements from transitional to longitudinal. Facebook enjoys regular engagement from users drawn in by sharing features, community connections, and a focus on life’s moments (“on this day,” birthdays, etc.).
So much of the journey happens outside of the clinical experience. What are we doing to engage patients in between those appointments, those procedures? Modern consumers demand autonomy- agency in their healthcare journey. If we can give them agency, they’ll take advantage of it.
Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director, Digital Marketing & Experience, Indiana University Health
We envision a world where care support is everywhere – a doctor prescribes a curriculum where the patient can access tools and educational content about their prescription regimen, diet, broader wellness – and not have to go digging and find it on their own.
Ken Chaplin, Chief Marketing Officer, City of Hope
3. Create and Drive New Revenue Streams
Platforms have the power to optimize white space opportunities to create new revenue streams. They also have the potential to shift health systems’ focus from “sick care” to “well care”. Northwell Direct saw an opportunity to disrupt the traditional payer model and better serve employers by strengthening the connection between health coverage and care. They implemented a plan to reduce the hurdles for providers and patients, to drive to more comprehensive wellness for the employees they serve.
We have an opportunity to serve our communities through a different pathway. We took this idea and said, how do we create a business around this? Yes, to meet employer needs through services…but also to disrupt the payer space because it’s our belief that a more direct relationship between those who provide the care and those who pay for the care is beneficial to delivering higher quality care and to better managing and improving outcomes.
Nick Stefanizzi, Chief Executive Officer, Northwell Direct
4. Make Personalized Care Scalable
The balance between the hyper personal and the need to scale across a health system is daunting. There are myriad nuances that impact or shift an individual’s health journey. Value-generating data collection through platforms can help to bridge this gap. Consider Nike’s app family – from workout classes and SNKRS drops to monitoring runs and alerts when footwear needs replacing based on the integrated mileage tracking, they can serve consumers what they need before they know they need it.
The dream of our Smart Rooms is to give us real time feedback so we can solve problems with a patient in moment – but down the road, we could use the increased data use and AI to help us anticipate when something could go wrong and recommend solutions so we can get ahead of an individual’s care needs.
Sara Saldoff, Head of Product Management & User Experience, OhioHealth
If we can hyper personalize, for example, for a person whose family was touched by asthma or coronary heart disease or cancer or diabetes, and determine how to engage that individual over a lifetime with preventative behaviors and interactions, it can cut across things like health, education, literacy, economic status and be inclusive of race, religion, gender, etc. It’s going to be hard – but it’s also going to be a big game changer.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
We see exciting signs of progress. It is still early days for health systems, though clear signs of progress are emerging. From OhioHealth’s “smart rooms” to City of Hope’s connected patient communities, there are signs on where health systems are heading. Others, like Advocate Health, are already leading with their LiveWell Platform, which helps consumers manage both their health and their wellness. Jamey Shiels, SVP Consumer & Digital Experience at Advocate Health emphasized that driving organizational alignment required connecting the vision with pre-determined patient needs with business requirements. For example, easier check-in process means less stress on front-line staff, on-line scheduling means reduced volume in the call centers and more
We are constantly improving LiveWell, listening to what our consumers are telling us about the experience to create a feedback loop we can engineer back into the experience. We mapped the consumer needs to the business metrics and showed how lifting those needs could improve the business metrics; connecting what matters most to the consumer to what matters most to the business is our biggest challenge but where I think platforms play a large role. We believe platforms are the business model of the future. Healthcare is behind, but we want to get into the game and lead the way.
Jamey Shiels, Senior Vice President Consumer & Digital Experience, Advocate Health
If platforms are the answer, how do we get started? To begin building a Platform Connection, start by thinking about how to align your platform’s needs with your organizational ambition. Winning Through Platforms lays out a path to success, and it starts with cultural shifts to gain three key advantages: Strategic, In-Market, and Alignment.
Strategic Advantage: Bring Something Structural to the Market That the Competition Doesn’t Have
How might the organization’s portfolio of solutions (i.e. care, coverage, ancillary services) better connect to demonstrate the value of the care network it offers?
How can teams better share assets to reduce efforts and increase flexibility?
How can the organization align on the customer personas (patients? payers? referring physicians?) and journeys to align strategic intention?
In-Market Advantage: Grow at Higher-Than-Market Rates Through Better-Than-Competitor Practices, Spanning Go-to-Market and Innovation
What technology is required to capture patient information and organize it for action that results in customer and system benefit?
How can content across the journey be personalized by life stage, condition type, and relevant social determinants?
What role might community and patient-generated content play in enriching the overall engagement experience – and keeping patients engaged beyond the transactional?
Alignment Advantage: Translate Better Internal Alignment and Teaming Into Stronger Customer Engagement and Superior Organizational Performance
How might the traditional functional silos be restructured into a full journey, collaborative, go-to-market model?
How will internal teams align on and ensure a consistent set of customer interaction standards?
What will define best practices when it comes to an elevated patient experience?
There’s too much at stake to not figure out the right way to partner for better outcomes for patients.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
Transformation in healthcare is not a new topic but rethinking how a health system organizes itself to better observe, engage with and deliver value to consumers is. Health systems that are infusing platform thinking into their organizations are starting to see the immediate return on those efforts – as well as the path ahead to greater impact across the communities they serve. Now is the time to activate and advance platforms in health systems, reimagine how an organization is set up to deliver a full continuum of engagement, differentiate against competitors and elevate the value delivered to consumers.
Prophet research reveals surprising perceptions and adoption patterns of AI with consumers.
Since the seemingly overnight emergence of ChatGPT, businesses everywhere have been buzzing about generative AI’s impact, particularly on process efficiency and workforce productivity. While the benefits in those areas are indeed transformational, we’ve been struck by how consumers and their perceptions and experience of AI have been largely sidelined in the conversation. Similarly, we see immense opportunities for GenAI to unlock growth, a frontier of AI transformation many businesses haven’t yet reached.
That’s why we’re launching a study to explore:
What are consumers doing with GenAI today, and why?
How will GenAI affect them?
What are their plans for the future?
The “tl;dr” on Our Initial Findings
While the quantitative research is still underway, we wanted to share initial findings from our qualitative sessions because we think the implications are potentially profound. Specifically, we see clear evidence of the rise of AI-powered consumers who are moving faster, doing more and expecting more in terms of fast, frictionless and individualized offerings. They seem increasingly ready to turn over more of their lives to AI, are watching brands’ commitments to ethical AI, and are deeply invested in finding even more ways to benefit from it.
Thus, firms looking to spark sustainable and transformative growth with GenAI will likely need to accelerate their plans to get ahead of – or even keep up with – the most creative-minded early adopters and power-users. That’s especially true for firms in retail, CPG, hospitality, financial services and healthcare, which are in the vanguard of GenAI adoption. We hope the insights in this article help you connect the dots between your AI strategies and the emergence of the AI-powered consumer.
What Consumers Are Telling Us
As is always the case with new technology, consumers have diverse views about GenAI. There are power users actively adopting GenAI across many facets of their personal and professional lives and more passive and cautious adopters. Tinkering is the norm for many in the middle. Each of these groups exhibits different uptake and usage patterns. There is also considerable nuance in their attitudes toward AI ethics and responsible adoption by businesses.
Despite these distinctions, the initial phases of our research yielded evidence of five meaningful patterns in consumer adoption of AI.
1. All Types of Consumers Are Moving Surprisingly Fast
Conventional wisdom says that businesses are leading the way on AI, but our research shows that consumers are moving faster than many companies realize. When talking to us about AI, consumers used their own terms and definitions. They clearly see the value of the apps and tools they use and do not feel overwhelmed by AI’s complexity. That’s true of even the slower and more cautious adopters. Natural language processing – and voice integration – are of great interest to all types of users, because they make GenAI tools feel more accessible than the digital tools and platforms of the past.
What consumers say: “With AI, I don’t have to go down the rabbit hole of Googling my ailments but can have a conversation. It says, ‘it could be this’ and I say, ‘no, it’s not that.’ That’s better than having to read and read. AI scans for me and has a conversation,” said a somewhat frequent 60-year-old user.
So what: Because consumers are moving fast, there is urgency to identify new ways to engage with AI-enabled experiences that map to consumer needs and preferences.
Who’s doing it right: Colgate-Palmolive is leveraging AI to improve consumer experiences across the journey – from enhancing search with AI, to personalizing creative, to rapidly prototyping and testing product innovations.
Consumers are using generative AI tools before, during and after purchases.
2. Beyond Personal Productivity, Consumers Prioritize Creativity, Fun and Inspiration
Productivity is a big part of AI’s attraction. But our research shows that inspiration, shopping and fun are other major motivations to use GenAI. One consumer told us about how he enjoys creating AI images on his phone and sharing them with friends.
What consumers say: “When I’m on the bus, I will click over to [an AI image generator] and put in some words and just play around for 15-30 minutes,” said an occasional 30-year-old user.
So what: For businesses, creative AI-driven marketing activations and experiences can boost engagement by creating joy and delight.
Who’s doing it right: Warner Bros.’ Barbie AI Selfie Generator allowed users to design their own unique Barbie. Reaching 13 million users in just a few months, the generator was a hallmark of Barbie’s world-class marketing campaign.
3. Consumers Have Strikingly Specific AI Aspirations
That old paradigm “if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” may be less applicable as modern consumers become more tech savvy and have easy access to powerful tools.Consumers don’t necessarily grasp the technical fine points or legal guardrails about AI; but they are pretty clear about the experience they want.
What consumers say: “If I could enter what I want to eat and if my fridge could use AI to analyze the ingredients I have, what I need from the shop, and then build a shopping cart I can review and order, that would be great,” said a somewhat frequent 65-year-old user.
So what: Because consumers are imagining new ways to use AI, they can help imagine and co-create breakthrough applications as part of clearly defined innovation processes.
Who’s doing it well: Coca-Cola’s Creations platform provides a space to engage consumers and capture their input for new product innovations. The Y3000 Flavor of the Future was created by leveraging consumer insight and the power of AI to drive engagement with Gen Z, the brand’s growth target.
4. In the Eyes of Consumers, ChatGPT is Only the Beginning
The first killer app of the GenAI age, ChatGPT is incredibly powerful for consumers and among the most popular and frequently used apps. But consumers hope to use many other applications in the future, largely because they see the limits of ChatGPT; as one consumer told us, “It only takes me so far.” In fact, they are looking for more nuanced, bespoke answers to the questions they need.
What consumers say: “I’ve tried things like ChatGPT for trip itinerary planning. It’s helpful but doesn’t get that detailed. If I want to know details like the safest place to walk around as a woman, it can’t give me that yet,” said a high-frequency, 23-year-old user.
So what: Consumers want more precision, meaning businesses can develop bespoke solutions based on proprietary data and look to deliver on unique brand promises. Build, buy and partner – depending on the use case, each of those approaches can be viable.
Who’s doing it well: Via a partnership with OpenAI, KAYAK used its historical travel database to train GPT-4, the large language model. The goal is to help users find travel experiences meeting their precise needs.
5. Consumers Are Paying Attention to How Businesses Talk About AI
Consumers told us they want to hear about AI, but within preferred contexts and applications. If an experience is piloting or experimenting with AI, consumers appreciate a call out that it’s AI, and that it’s “still learning.”
Some consumers are annoyed by “overly promotional” language about AI; they are looking for authenticity and transparency instead. We also heard about the importance of brands communicating their commitments to use AI in ways that align to the organizational purpose and values – clear evidence of consumer interest in AI ethics.
What consumers say: “I’m thinking about what brand do I want to support with AI? Who is investing and being thoughtful in terms of protection and checks? And which firms are brazenly advancing and not so worried about protection?” said a high-frequency 23-year-old user.
So what: Because consumers are paying attention, brands should be deliberate in crafting intentional, authentic messaging around AI, presenting it in the moments that matter.The focus should be on explaining brand intentions and providing helpful and transparent guidance. For more ways Marketers can use AI, see our Four Ways to Maximize Value
Who’s doing it well: S&P Global is taking a holistic approach in positioning its brand for the age of AI. It’s developing an AI brand narrative linked to its company purpose, designed to resonate across its wide array of audiences. From there, it’s integrating clear, consistent messaging across all of its brand communications and experiences that stem from that positioning.
Ethics Matter on the Road Ahead
Discussions of AI are incomplete without mentioning ethics. And, according to our research, all types of users – from cautious adopters to more pragmatic users – have AI ethics on their mind. The common theme is that ethics and brand intentions matter, though they will influence decisions differently in different contexts and for different users. Consumers aren’t just blindly adopting every GenAI app; rather, they are thoughtfully considering and – in the case of power users – calculating where they want to spend their time and engagement.
Imagine a world where multiple AIs work in the background to find bargains, negotiate better prices for consumers, and make smart purchase decisions. Or where personal assistants connect accounts and act on consumers’ behalf across financial services, healthcare and other sectors, particularly with those companies that have cultivated trust with their AI deployments.
Based on our research, we believe that futuristic vision may become reality much sooner than many brands expect. Consumers may not know precisely what’s coming next, but they seem well on their way to proactively figuring out how to embed AI more deeply in their lives.
There’s more to come as we complete and expand our research globally. Subscribe today for access to our newsletter to be among the first to receive insights and ideas for how to better know and serve the AI Powered Consumer.
New Strategy, Same Old Story: Your Story of Value Needs an Update
How updating your Story of Value can close the value gap and accelerate strategy execution.
The Frustrating Gap between Strategy Definition and Value Capture
The poly-crisis moment that we (hopefully) are all navigating has generated a nearly ubiquitous reset of corporate strategies. According to Gartner, 79% of CEOs will have revisited their business strategy for the post-crisis environment by the end of 2024. These companies are now shifting attention to strategy activation to capture both productivity gains and growth.
This is a profound pivot and, not surprisingly, teams are struggling to execute at pace. In our work with CEOs beginning in late 2022 and extending to today, we have seen a sharp increase in dissatisfaction with what you could call “value appreciation”. These laments commonly take one of the following forms:
The Valuation Gap – “Our topline performance is strong, and we’ve built a superior platform. We’re aligned to long-tail secular trends. But analysts are having to work too hard to find that story line.” – Technology CEO
The Differentiation Gap – “We have a unique collection of assets, especially our software/hardware stack, but no one, including our sales teams, can articulate a distinctive value proposition.” – Industrial CEO
The Narrative Gap – “Our balance sheet is strong. Our portfolio matches the market. We have talented teams and everyone is working hard. But our corporate narrative is outdated. Everyone has their own version of what’s going on. We need a new, clearer, more inspiring story to rally around.” – Financial Services CEO
These sentiments and others like them are being expressed by talented executives that have led global teams through multiple crises. They have successfully updated their strategies to meet the moment. Yet today they are also identifying a missing link between strategy articulation and in-market execution. Gaps that have material impact on share price, sales performance and talent economics.
The Story of Value
Working with these leaders Prophet has developed a new leadership tool, The Story of Value. At the highest level, the story of value brings the assets of business – both hard and intangible – into a sharp, distinctive and inspiring narrative. It is a story that crystalizes the value that the business creates for shareholders, customers and employees, defining its unique and essential role in the world. It simplifies a complex business into a compelling statement of value – a common language for executives and teams in words that are proven to win in the market.
Companies are using Stories of Value to pull business strategy forward into various strategy execution workflows, including:
Increasing performance of customer marketing and sales effectiveness through sharper value propositions.
Aligning corporate communications around a distinctive market narrative focused on core value.
Updating the employee value proposition and modernizing foundational corporate assets (e.g. purpose statements, values, brand positioning) to create a more cohesive culture.
Arming finance, corporate development and IR teams with stronger investor day and roadshow presentations.
Writing Your New Story of Value
Creating an effective Value Story requires going beyond frameworks and workshops. The Story of Value methodology combines a rigorous focus on asset value with market-back insights on value drivers. This data moves through a process that forces clarity and elevates language, culminating in market testing to refine the work and validate its business impact. The end result is both a practical, execution-ready deliverable and a leadership experience that builds cohesiveness and shared belief.
Is your company undervalued? Does your distinctiveness shine through? Are your teams on the same page with a winning narrative that drives commercial momentum and employee engagement? Have you updated your business strategy but feel that it’s not moving forward fast enough? It might be time to update your Story of Value.
Ready to build your Story of Value? Schedule a workshop with us.
Building a better future for our people, communities and the planet.
10 years ago, in our London office, a group of employees had an idea to see if we could condense a month’s worth of project work into one day and create meaningful impact for five local charities. Based on the success of this event, Prophet Impact Day was born. Over time it was scaled globally and expanded to include community service and consulting opportunities.
Over the past 10 years, we have…
Supported 270 organizations
Donated over 25,000 hours
Engaged over 4,000 employees
Last month we hosted our 10th annual Prophet Impact Day – closing our offices across the globe to work together and give back to our local communities. We supported a wide range of local community organizations like Save the Children, Clean Up Munich and Caritas of Austin. Our teams were supported things like:
Packing, sorting and distributing food and meals
Cleaning up parks, gardens and other facilities
Doing consulting work like developing value propositions and marketing strategies
Shanghai Propheteers posing after a day of pro-bono work for Save the Children!New York Propheteers connecting with seniors at Encore Community Center! Austin Propheteers ready to engage with the Ecology Action of Texas Organization! London Propheteers gearing up for graffiti removal at The Selby Center! Richmond Propheteers pose after sorting clothes for Girls on the Run!Hong Kong Propheteers preparing for meal distribution.Munich Propheteers collecting piles of garbage on their trail route. Singapore Propheteers huddled together in a hybrid consulting workshop for Save the Children. Berlin and Hamburg Propheteers volunteering at Caritas in Deutschland!
Year-after-year Propheteers proclaim that Prophet Impact day is their favorite day of the year. This initiative puts all four of our values on display: create with courage, give and grow, share joy and open minds.
“So much fun! I enjoy Impact Day and giving back to the community!”
“I enjoy doing pro-bono consulting work on Impact Day because it feels like we’re adding unique value, but it’s also so satisfying to do something physical with your colleagues, and team up with folks you don’t often work with, and see the physical impact of your had work.”
Darcy Muñoz, Partner, Verbal Branding
“Truly enjoyed working with me fellow ATOers and also having my son join us in giving back.”
Ashely Burgess, Executive Assistant
“With this day, you do not only give back to community, you can also enjoy a day with your team. Isn’t that great?”
Loes van der Westerlaken, Marketing and Office Manager
“Fantastic experience! Great to connect with other Propheteers and spend some time doing good on behalf of the organization.”
Avery Gross, Group Creative Director
“The day was great and so much fun, with high levels of participation. It was great to have one location where we could do lots of activities. One of the best Impact days I’ve attended.”
Hailey Armstrong, Engagement Manager
“A very valuable and positive experience as it is a day we can actually leave the office and interact with the community. Overall, I saw solid teamwork and love from the team in this event, and it was a truly satisfying experience.”
In total, this year we supported 25 organizations, donated over 3,000 hours and made a major impact inside and out of our global offices. We believe that our expertise, creativity and support help spark meaningful change – and we can’t wait to do it again for year 11. Learn more about our Prophet Impact initiatives.
Unlock. Create. Execute: A Guide for the New World of Growth
Three Pathways and Five Strategies for Accelerating Growth
Growth is rarely easy. Based on conversations with senior business leaders across industries, we sense an increasing recognition that it has never been more difficult to generate and sustain growth. To be clear, we are talking about growth driven by customer interest and market demand, rather than the temporary variety driven by acquisition, cost takeout or organizational restructuring. The bottom line is that not even top performers can expect that continuing to do what got them to market-leading positions will deliver the next phase of growth.
Some of the common barriers – continuous cycles of tech-driven disruption, relentlessly fickle customers, talent mismatches – are well understood. However, less tangible and often overlooked factors – including lack of C-level clarity and confidence, short-term thinking and a history of unactioned strategies and plans – may be even more hostile to growth. Consider how senior leaders may lose faith in growth strategies when market opportunities shift more rapidly than the organization can pivot, refine its go-to-market approach or reallocate resources. Even when the right strategy is in place, limited ability to execute – or execute at the pace which growth now demands – may undercut returns.
Because markets move faster than ever, we believe sustainable growth results from:
Unlocking compelling customer insights to inform growth strategies
Creating relevant, impactful growth moves
Executing faster and more efficiently
How Rapid Changes in Customer Behaviors Impact Growth
The customer often has the answer. In today’s volatile markets, growth comes either through a proactive insight-led and customer-back approach, which is more sustainable, or by riding the wave of macroeconomic or societal trends. Unilever proactively changed its portfolio strategy after scoping the impact of the weight-loss drug Ozempic on consumer behavior. Modeling the likely changes in eating habits, Unilever chose to spin off most of its ice cream business, retaining only a few key brands (e.g., Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum).
During the pandemic, companies like Peloton and Calm realized unprecedented growth as consumers re-evaluated their health and wellness priorities. Both companies have failed to make strategic, post-pandemic pivots to stay relevant.
For firms that don’t want to leave growth to chance or market timing, success starts with deep insights into customer needs, as Prophet research shows.
Insights From Prophet Research
Among innovative companies, 84% have a consumer and market insights capability.
Among all companies, 37% of leaders say senior executives pay too little attention to customer needs.
In devising growth strategies, firms should factor in the impact of external macro trends on customers and the opportunities to provide new products and services to help customers navigate them. Even more broadly, executives should reflect on how these changes may influence who their customers are today and who they should be tomorrow.
Charting the right course forward requires thoughtful decisions across key growth drivers that go beyond customer insight. In other words, firms must ensure that their good ideas are converted from slideware to clear action plans supported by necessary capabilities. Among the questions to address:
Who is our target customer?
What products, services and experiences should we offer?
Why should customers care about our products, brand and purpose?
How do they perceive the value we offer?
Where and when should we engage customers – via which channels, ecosystems, platforms and partnerships?
How will we capture value?
What is the optimal operating model to deliver?
The answers to these questions have short- and long-term implications. The resulting commitments will be ones the organization can sustain for years at a time. They will also determine what firms should do next quarter. Ideally, a clear customer vision will inspire the organization for the future while attentive, dynamic management of action plans will help firms keep up with constantly shifting customer needs and preferences. Firms should plan for frequent refinements and calibrations based on continuous learning about customer behavior, market feedback and competitors’ actions. Prophet research shows that organizations that meaningfully assess and recalibrate growth plans at least monthly are twice as likely to be successful, resilient innovators. Too many firms still think of growth investments as a matter of annual planning.
What Happens When It’s All About the Short Term?
Unfortunately, immediate-term pressures – specifically that increasing revenue this quarter is always the top priority – may restrict investment in new offerings and thus narrow future horizons. According to Prophet research, 34% of business leaders say their firms overemphasize short-term results. A similar proportion, 37%, say their organization has no long-term planning process. “You’re constantly in this space of change,” one told us. “Plans are abandoned almost as soon as they are made. There’s no real plan because things just sort of happen.”
Such reactive postures are no surprise given the pace of disruption. They necessitate that firms build new capabilities even as they are running their growth plays. Those capabilities are often housed in agile, test-and-learn oriented and cross-functional teams, which have proven to be more proficient in delivering against growth objectives. Fully 80% of respondents in our global survey said design-led innovation teams are important, but only 37% said their organizations have such units in place. Developing these capabilities is not easy, of course, but they provide the foundation for self-funding innovation programs and, thus, sustainable growth.
Insights From Prophet Research
63%: organizations lacking design-led innovation teams
37%: organizations lacking a long-term planning process
2x: organizations that meaningfully assess and recalibrate their innovation moves at least monthly are twice as likely to be successful, resilient innovators
Pathways to Uncommon Growth
Strategies aligned to these pathways will manifest differently in varying contexts and sectors and they are not mutually exclusive; some firms will emphasize one, while others will experiment with portfolio approaches that include all three. Boldness and creativity can be different makers for these approaches; the bolder the growth strategy, the more likely firms will differentiate themselves in competitive markets.
1. Expanding beyond the core. In this approach, businesses narrow in on customer needs to enter a new market or customer segment, offering complementary products or services to meet a broader range of customer needs. This approach requires the least risk tolerance and least amount of change within a business. And it’s likely to produce quick wins. For example, through the height of the pandemic, companies developed products and services to reduce transmission and care for the ill. Today, companies are looking beyond point solutions and specific problems to focus on more holistic views of respiratory health. Large pharmaceuticals with separate products in testing, treatment and prevention of upper respiratory infections have reorganized their product portfolios around complete and cohesive solutions offered through retail channels.
2. Venturing into adjacent territories: This approach is about uncovering value in products, services and experiences that are closely related to existing strategies. It requires a moderate risk tolerance and degree of change as it explores efficiencies based on existing strengths and capabilities. When done right, firms find differences from the core business but still share commonalities and avoid channel conflict.
One financial services company coordinated loan refinancing through third-party aggregators. Realizing it had a unique capability to simplify fragmented lender requirements for consumers, it saw an opportunity to own more of the customer relationship. Prophet helped the company refine its value proposition, create a product roadmap and launch its first pilot into market, all while building the product, technology and marketing teams needed to sustain the effort. As a result, the company remained vital through a volatile inflation and interest rate environment, deploying its direct-to-customer capabilities to launch new services, reach new markets and grow its relevance.
3.Pursuing net new growth from innovation and emerging customer demands: This is the boldest approach, the one most associated with breakthrough innovations from true disrupters. It involves playing in novel markets or industries, creating forward-looking solutions that get ahead of emerging preferences and aspirations that have yet to fully manifest in mass consumer behaviors.
Not surprisingly, this mode of growth requires the highest level of risk tolerance, the greatest creativity and most substantial change as it pushes businesses to step out of their comfort zone to pioneer new offerings that anticipate customer needs. Companies often invest in cutting-edge technologies, enter new industries or markets undergoing disruption or create entirely new business models by bringing together an original set of capabilities.
Durable goods manufacturers – faced with acute supply chain disruptions, a long-term trend towards higher-cost, near-shore manufacturing and mixed results from interventions by smart home technology companies – might reasonably wonder whether they can successfully stand up a services model to future-proof their businesses. Spurred by Tesla, car manufacturers now consider the automobile as an updateable software platform, requiring the application of digital integration, user experience and technology expertise throughout design and production processes; they then sell subscriptions to unlock services like OnStar and Apple CarPlay. Appliance manufacturers like Samsung continue to grapple with the elusive promise of Internet-connected screens on refrigerators, washing machines and other home appliances. And manufacturers of entry and exit points, like doors and windows, can seriously consider their products’ roles in connected, smart security services.
Five Key Capabilities for Unleashing Growth
Once firms identify the right path to growth as outlined above, they must determine the best way to advance quickly, efficiently and purposefully. Too often, this step turns into a stumbling block. However, organizations that possess a few key capabilities and cultural attributes can create the capacity and build the organizational muscle memory to launch new products, devise new business models and execute other types of growth strategies repeatably. They’ll also enhance their ability to operate these new businesses efficiently and scalably. The keys to success are:
1. Using cross-functional GTM teams to achieve speed to market: When growth is everybody’s job, it may become nobody’s job. On the other hand, growth is too important to be left to small innovation labs or single functions (e.g., marketing, sales, product development). Rather, firms should build cross-functional teams charged with launching new products quickly. Even if the team is small, it should pull from finance, HR, technology, design, strategy and other parts of the organization. Why? Because all of those domains make important contributions to the development of new offerings.
2. Building a coalition of stakeholders for informed decision-making: To execute successfully, growth leaders must have a clear understanding of the critical path of decisions, identify the necessary data inputs to inform key decisions and maintain a steady pace against clearly defined milestones and gates. However, informed decision-making typically doesn’t happen fast enough, especially in large and complex organizations. Delays are especially likely when decision rights are unclear, contested politically or when a large number of stakeholders must be involved n. Ideally, growth leaders will develop a comprehensive coalition of stakeholders throughout the organization parallel with the work to ensure that everyone is on board with coming changes and understands their role in execution. Such a coalition can help ensure depth and alignment of key capabilities.
3. Making GTM innovation BAU (business as usual): Any organization seeking sustainable, customer-led growth must find ways to make the capabilities necessary for organizational reinvention, portfolio refresh and continuous learning part of business as usual. For instance, cross-functional growth teams should work within a well-defined go-to-market process, reflecting the reality that launching, operating and scaling new products and business are not “special projects” but an essential part of ongoing operations.
4. Moving at the speed of growth: Across both growth strategy formulation and go-to-market execution, speed is the name of the game. Some organizations are equipped to strategize and execute at speed, but many struggle. To make these plays work for your organization, you need to increase your organization’s speed to:
Customer insight: understanding what they want, which channels they prefer and where they’re likely to go next
Strategy: converting customer insight into strategic priorities
Market: turning strategic ideas into in-market action
Impact: accelerating the delivery of real-world results
Capability: creating the foundation to scale and sustain higher levels of performance
Speed matters because organizations can only grow as fast as their ability to adapt.
5.Getting up to speed with AI: Faced with the need to go faster, many companies are turning to AI. One media company used AI to track consumer preferences, which led to the creation of a new business model centered on interactive and original content. AI tools are helping CPGs to develop prototypes more rapidly. A hospitality leader has embedded AI in enhanced search experiences to drive discovery and rentals of vacation homes.
While these applications make sense, leaders should recognize that AI is not a silver bullet to accelerate capability development. Rather, businesses need to understand the targeted ways AI-powered customers interact differently with AI-enabled employees. From that customer-back vantage point, organizations can look to create opportunities to optimize, enhance and reinvent engagement (Be on the lookout for upcoming Prophet research that reveals how consumers really feel about and use AI.)
One More Thing: Balancing the Risks and Rewards of Growth
Strategic discussions often emphasize the external barriers preventing firms from realizing the upside. The risks of growth – and the organizational appetite or tolerance of such risks – is less frequently examined. We believe this is an oversight. Senior leaders must attend to the necessary cultural aspects of unleashing growth, including management mindsets.
While everyone automatically says they want growth, they won’t necessarily be comfortable with the risks involved in launching new products, deploying resources, modifying operations and all the other necessary steps to achieve meaningful growth. As such, leaders would do well to explore just how “growth tolerant” their firms really are. That’s especially true of today’s dynamic, “high-VUCA” (Volatility, markets. When firms face high degrees of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, growth demands greater organizational resilience. In other words, senior leaders that help the organization become more flexible, adaptable and agile are laying the foundation for sustainable growth.
Acknowledgments:Marc Anderson and Griffin Olmstead
How Prophet Helps
We take a collaborate and human-centered approach to help leaders unlock compelling customer and market insights; create relevant growth moves; and develop the capabilities to execute faster and more efficiently.
Growth has become even more challenging to generate and sustain driven by customer interest and market demand. Even top performers can no longer rely on their past strategies to achieve the next phase of growth. Beyond well-known barriers like tech-driven disruption and fickle customers, less tangible factors such as lack of C-level clarity and short-term thinking pose significant threats. Sustainable growth now depends on unlocking compelling customer insights, identifying impactful growth moves, and executing strategies quickly and efficiently.
Ready to accelerate your growth? Schedule a workshop with us.
AI’s Take on the State of Queer Visibility & Progress
Pride @ Prophet delves into the intersection between artificial intelligence and LGBTQIA+ advocacy.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) intersects with LGBTQIA+ advocacy in powerful ways. As we explore the landscape of queer visibility and progress, AI plays a crucial role in shaping conversations, amplifying voices and fostering understanding. However, AI faces challenges related to discrimination, as biases in algorithms can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. By addressing biases and promoting inclusivity, we can harness AI for positive change.
Recently, during a virtual event hosted by Pride @ Prophet—the firm’s LGBTQIA+ employee resource group—an internal panel of AI experts and users engaged in a thought-provoking discussion on the intersection of AI and identity.
Pride @ Prophet Panel Discussion
Every June, Pride @ Prophet hosts interactive panel-led discussions on topic areas that delve into the queer community’s intersection with workplace, culture and DEI trends. This year, our panel focused on the convergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and identity. Given AI’s increasing influence in the workplace and its implications for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), our hybrid presentation featured a live ChatGPT demonstration alongside an expert-led discussion. The event was engaging and informative for the global Prophet community.
Pride Panel 6/12/14 starting from the top left to right Ashely Burgess, Jesse Smith, Mario Mugrace, Christian Cortes
AI and Biases Around Identity
Panelists discussed the explosion of AI-driven technology emerging in the workplace in just the past year alone and its lightning speed pace in which queer identity is being extrapolated from complex data sets that are rich with knowledge but littered with biases around identity, DEI and the ongoing crusade towards equality and inclusion.
For instance, sexual orientation and gender identity are often missing or hard to measure in data because they can’t be directly observed. This absence perpetuates inequities and opens the door for algorithmic discrimination. Researchers and organizations like Queer in AI are actively addressing this issue. They anonymize data and explore ways to mitigate bias in large language models (LLMs) to ensure fair representation and avoid perpetuating stereotypes. By promoting inclusivity and cooperative AI systems, we can work toward a more equitable future.
Inherent Queerness in the AI Industry
Another topic explored was the inherent queerness within the AI industry. Influential leaders like Sam Altman openly embrace their queer identities both personally and professionally. And groundbreaking platforms such as ‘AI Comes Out of the Closet’ are shaping a uniquely queer industry within a predominantly heteronormative technology landscape.
“AI Comes Out of the Closet” is an innovative system developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It merges AI technology with LGBTQIA+ advocacy by simulating social interactions related to “coming out of the closet.” Users engage with AI-generated virtual characters, allowing them to refine their approach to LGBTQIA+ support in a safe and controlled environment.
Live Demonstration: ChatGPT & DEI
The session took an exhilarating turn as our AI experts engaged in real-time interactions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT software. Crowd-sourced word prompts were quickly transformed into three paragraphs per second of generated content. Nearly 100 Propheteers participated, dissecting the platform’s tone regarding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). They explored the accuracy and usefulness of the responses, as well as the platform’s limitations related to identity.
The prompts spanned from practical requests like ‘Give me 10 reasons why workplace acceptance is crucial for people who identify as queer’ to creative challenges such as ‘Compose a Shakespearean Sonnet about a queer professional coming out at work, infused with an Aussie flair.’ The platform’s captivating responses fueled even wilder crowd-sourced inputs, including cultural colloquialisms and their reflection in the generated content.
Image 1: ChatGPT Prompt and Answer
Conclusion
The session concluded with our experts and attendees sharing real-world examples of how AI has empowered their day-to-day work, particularly in the context of DEI-related initiatives at Prophet. Our global community gained valuable insights, practical tips and cautionary considerations for using these platforms, especially when discussing sensitive topics like identity, DEI and broader LGBTQIA+ advocacy.
I had a great time moderating this panel and want to thank the panelists: Jesse Smith, Mario Mugrace and Ashely Burgess.
Other exciting Pride @ Prophet programming this month includes:
Lunch & Learn: Identity & Innovation with the Co-Founders of Ringlet, a social planning technology with big ambitions to fight the loneliness epidemic.
Keynote Speaker: Queer Code and Migrant Consciousness: Crafting a New Poetics of Home with Halim Madi, a global poet whose work delves into queerness, the immigrant experience and the vivid colors evoked by plants.
Local Events: Pride Social Gatherings in Prophet’s offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Austin.
Curating diverse content remains essential for increasing queer visibility. AI algorithms play a pivotal role by recommending inclusive media that ensures representation across various identities. Additionally, AI-driven moderation fosters respectful dialogue within online communities. As we continue this journey, let’s harness the power of thoughtful AI to create a more inclusive and understanding world.
Avoiding Common M&A Pitfalls: Three Key Strategies to Maximize Value
Unlock post M&A success with three simple plays: engage customer-facing leaders, craft a value narrative, and revamp talent models.
It has never been more critical to get post-M&A value creation right. With markets in a state of protracted uncertainty, businesses are more cautious about deploying capital and less patient for concrete returns. M&A activity continues in the pursuit of both revenue and margin growth, but only the most focused operators can achieve each deal’s potential on short timelines and tight budgets.
We consistently see companies leave value on the table: they fail to reach their goal for value realization, don’t reach it in time, or back away and hedge due to a lack of confidence in the investment thesis. In the end, closing these gaps falls to the business leaders tasked with running the post-deal entity. Here are three key strategies to close those gaps.
Conversations with business leaders involved in post-M&A activities revealed three crucial yet often overlooked factors—referred to as executional gaps—that executives must address to successfully achieve the value of the deal.
Leaving customer-facing leaders out of the loop
Deals with no value story
Rigid talent models that erode people value (talent and culture)
Gap 1: Leaving Customer-Facing Leaders Out of the Loop
For practical and legal reasons, deal teams typically operate with secrecy. This leads to scrambling across the organization when a deal nears announcement. Marketing, communications, and talent teams often become disconnected, resulting in lackluster strategies. This inefficiency puts a time lag on customer-facing decisions and can result in the wrong decisions being made. Brand changes, go-to-market portfolio construction, talent integration plans, and other high-level decisions end up being led by an isolated deal team rather than in partnership with the organization’s functional experts.
One M&A leader at a large healthcare company said: “Customer value isn’t realized until much later on because it isn’t planned for. [You are already] considering customer [downside risk] in the deal valuation, [why can’t the upside potential] be considered and planned for as well?”
Recommendation: It’s unnecessary to complicate the M&A process by adding members to the team during due diligence. Instead, build a new step or action within the playbook to pulse out information from the core deal team directly to operating teams when moving toward close. This will help line leaders immerse themselves in the deal thesis and adopt accountability earlier in the process.
Gap 2: Deals With No Value Story
Just because deal teams and capital committees understand the value creation thesis; it doesn’t mean that the deal has a value story. Ultimately every audience affected by the deal will need to know how this deal is adding value for them. Yet, internal and external stakeholders often receive very different versions of the story, if they hear anything at all. These fragmented stories don’t always connect, functioning like “point solutions” that speak to the short-term implications for a specific team, rather than amplifying the impact of the deal through a consistent, cohesive narrative that flexes across audiences and still ties back to a single core idea.
One M&A leader underscored that “the deal story aligns the organization, and it gives them the fuel to change, doing the hard work to realize the value at the core of the deal premise.” This reflects what we’ve seen in market with acquisitions like Danaher’s acquisition of GE Lifesciences. Danaher had a unified plan and story for the acquisition, clearly creating a cohesive message that flows through each key audience. Danaher understood how the entire GE asset – from technology and product portfolio to customer relationships and brand equity – would combine into a powerful new life sciences operating company well before the deal’s close. That plan was then echoed to leaders across the company and into the marketplace. In the end, that cohesive story powered a new operating company, Cytiva, which was central to Danaher’s 110% share performance in the two years following the close of the deal.
Recommendation: Identify an expert, usually from the marketing, brand or communications team, to develop a story of value with the help of a cross-functional team communicating to different audiences. Marketing might personalize the core story for customers while investor relations might develop messaging aligned to what investors are looking for. The communications team might tweak the message for partners and Human Resources might build a North Star narrative for employees. While each message might be slightly customized for the intended audience, each must ladder up to an overarching message to drive alignment and spark value creation.
Gap 3: Rigid Talent Models That Erode People Value (Talent and Culture)
While it’s critical to capture value by addressing internal synergies post-close, it’s also important to de-risk the integration plan by recognizing the unique cultural and talent contributions the acquired team brings. The asset likely carries new capabilities, usually with hard-to-hire skill sets which must be thoughtfully redeployed in the post-close entity. Moreover, if it was a successful operation before being acquired, it would have been fueled by a unique culture that needs to be acknowledged, and potentially leveraged as a touchstone for renewal or transformation.
Several M&A leaders echoed this perspective saying, “If the primary driver of value is something tangible, the culture is overlooked because it is hard to value,” “If you force rigidity on a company, that drives culture mismatch, and it skips over the secondary value question of if the talent and culture could improve your own,” and “If you say ‘hey we love your asset,’ you need to consider the culture and people that created that asset, or you have blinders to the full value of it.” They also spoke to the importance of HR leaning in, as their insights can be critical to understanding what employment shifts will resonate within a company.
Recommendation: Build an employee ignition module into the playbook to build a human-centric strategy for retaining and activating the talent and cultural assets acquired in the deal.
Tech companies have adopted this approach; recognizing the significant value of the talent assets they are acquiring. Apple maintains an acquisition pipeline primarily looking for top talent from the acquired business or redeploy throughout their earn-out tenure. Apple views the acquired talent as a flexible, scalable asset to be used to drive growth well beyond the specific team or company in which they entered the firm. This flexibility not only lowers talent acquisition costs but also serves as a new “Talent Model” lever for value creation, speeding up value realization by applying the strongest talent to the most critical tasks.
These gaps slow value capture and erode M&A returns. However, in our work with corporate development and business leaders, we have seen teams apply these three plays to close these gaps and improve deal performance.
Instead of leaving customer-facing leaders out of the loop, build a step in the playbook that pulses information to critical post-close operational leaders.
Instead of running diligence and integration without a clear narrative, write a story of value that focuses teams on strategic intent and execution priorities.
Instead of rigid talent models that erode people value, build an employee ignition module into your playbook that scales new capabilities, preserves key talent and leverages cultural capital.
If you want to get the most out of your M&A deals, we’re here to help you unlock success.
Ready to build your Story of Value? Schedule a workshop with us.
