The average lifespan of S&P 500 companies has dropped from almost 60 years in the 1950s to less than 20 years today. This dramatic decline explains an uncomfortable truth – past strategies no longer work.
Companies who thrive today have revolutionized their approach to thinking, working, and measuring success. Let’s explore why your current business strategy might hold you back and the solutions to tackle economic, geopolitical, and industry challenges before they can overwhelm your business in 2025.
Geopolitical tensions have emerged as the biggest risk to economic growth in 2025. These tensions have moved from background concerns to center stage, and leadership teams across North America need to address them right away.
The stark reality shows how geopolitics has become the dominant force shaping business decisions, disrupting traditional strategies that focused on market size, cost, and efficiency. If your organization is under these pressures, it must make operational resilience, risk mitigation, and workforce agility key strategic priorities to manage through multiple external challenges.
A recent survey revealed that almost all business leaders believed their company’s business models needed to change within three years while more than half worried, they weren’t adapting quickly enough. It has become apparent that traditional strategic planning – the annual review cycles and rigid execution plans which worked well in stable times will now lead to missed opportunities.
Companies who have employed successful agile transformations typically:
This agility assessment serves as a vital diagnostic tool. It reveals how well your company currently adapts to market changes. Our work with industry leaders from manufacturing and retail to healthcare and supply chain has led us to define these ten questions that will help you assess your business’ capability for strategic advantage:
An honest business assessment should uncover those areas that can improve with an agile mindset. Note that high-performing organizations go beyond implementing agile frameworks—they radically alter how they think, work, and measure success.
Your assessment will likely identify gaps which point to opportunities to make targeted improvements.
The first step to fix agility shortcomings is improving your strategic planning process. Senior executives should plan for frequent strategic reviews throughout the year, not just annually. A customized, criteria-based planning process will help them to respond better as market conditions evolve and the implementation of continuous governance for cross-functional initiatives will set the stage for dialogue year-round.
Consider these core principles:
Managing and continuously evaluating a portfolio of strategic initiatives allows your company to accelerate, pause, or abandon specific initiatives quickly. This agility will reduce waste by refocusing resources from non-value add initiatives to those that will drive performance in light of current challenges.
Agile organizations look at their business strategy and priorities regularly and plan through potentially disruptive scenarios to identify mitigation strategies that can be implemented rapidly when needed.
A culture of agility welcomes experimentation and calculated risk-taking that empowers your staff to make the right decisions when change occurs.
Business agility is the new buzzword. It will separate organizations that merely survive from those that thrive in 2025. Companies who don’t adapt quickly to change will become vulnerable to economic and geopolitical pressures. If your assessment revealed some concerning gaps, then now is the time to address them. By improving strategic planning, building cross-functional teams, and creating measurement systems that support continuous adaptation, you will begin to build a resilience framework that will prepare your business to weather or succeed unpredictable market conditions and capitalize on emerging opportunities as they unfold.
At The Poirier Group we blend deep industry insights with 20 years of hands-on operational and strategic expertise. With extensive experience working with clients across Supply Chain, Healthcare, Private Equity, Retail, Construction, and many other industries, our highly collaborative approach builds alignment with your stakeholders while harnessing the latest technologies and methodologies to support your team’s capabilities and the progress of your initiatives.
Our approach has consistently helped organizations bridge the gap from a solid strategic plan to necessary execution. We’ve built our reputation on delivering transformational outcomes and an exceptional consulting experience. If your business could benefit by transforming to an agile framework, we can help you get there.
