Boards must drive the effort to answer a fundamental question: Why does our organization exist?

Empowering the CSO and restoring strategy to the front line is imperative in a challenging environment. See also “How to Refocus the role of the Chief Strategy Officer into a Competitive Advantage.”

With so much cash on company balance sheets, U.S. companies face competitive pressure to use the tax windfall strategically.

Three guardrails must be in place to allow these groups to perform well within an organization.

Resist the urge to react too hastily to major change — or to use it as an excuse not to take action. Focus instead on making the fundamental strategic choices necessary to strengthen your business. See also “Disruptors and the Disrupted: A Tale of Eight Companies — in Pictures.”

A quick interactive diagnostic tool shows whether your strategy is coherent, how well it stacks up against your competitors, and how you can improve it.

When you give voice to confidence, aspiration, prescience, or desperation, it can set you on a more powerful path. See also “How to Define Your Corporate Identity.”

By setting your company up for growth, you have already made a strong, implicit commitment to diversity. The political events of 2016 could help you deliver on that promise.

Inside every exceptional company are teams of people working across functions, year after year, doing things together they couldn’t do alone.

The most farsighted enterprises have mastered five unconventional practices for building and using distinctive capabilities.

The secret to sustainable expansion is to stop chasing growth; instead, build an engine that delivers it.

Companies that realize the power of their capabilities can shape how industries evolve. And watch the related video.

Conventional organizational structures may be obsolete. How about a model based on capabilities instead?

For consumer products companies seeking acquisition targets, the game-changing deals are those that bring more coherence.

To reduce expenses for the long term and lead the way to recovery, start by taking a strategic view of your capabilities.

Investing in a capabilities-driven strategy will equip your company for growth in uncertain times.