Every Board Has the Same Problem.
The number of issues competing for leadership attention is growing.
The attention available to address them is not.
Every day, boards and executive leadership must decide how to allocate scarce organizational resources—including executive attention—across an expanding universe of legal obligations, regulatory developments, market expectations, technological change, operational risks, stakeholder demands, and strategic opportunities.
Those decisions shape the future of the enterprise.
McAlan assists boards and executive leadership in determining how scarce organizational resources—including executive attention—should be allocated in response to an evolving business ecosystem.
Sustainable Business Success
A company has achieved sustainable business success when it:
- performs to the satisfaction of its owners and other financial stakeholders,
- is well-governed,
- is resilient in the face of disruption and change,
- complies with applicable laws,
- does not harm the environment beyond acceptable levels, and
- operates in reasonable harmony with its non-financial stakeholders.
Resilience is not a separate objective; it is an integral component of sustainability.
The Business Context: An Emerging Global Business Ecosystem
To achieve sustainable business success, companies must understand and navigate the evolving rules and expectations of a new global business ecosystem. Two defining characteristics of this ecosystem are:
1. Uncertainty
- What is expected, required, or prudent is often unclear.
- Legal, regulatory, market, and stakeholder signals are incomplete, evolving, and sometimes conflicting.
2. Expansion of Scope
The concept of sustainability is expanding across multiple dimensions, including:
- Jurisdictions — increasing regulation, often with extraterritorial reach
- Stakeholder universe — accountability beyond shareholders to a broader set of stakeholders
- Value chains — responsibility extending upstream and downstream beyond the enterprise boundary
- Subject matter — including, for example, modern slavery, deforestation, and other emerging issue areas
Being Well-informed, Exercising Sound Judgment and Allocating Resources Wisely
Company resources need to be allocated in accordance with priorities. We humbly submit that the most important resource may be the board’s “units of attention” and that the Sustainable Business Success paradigm is the best way to guide those decisions.
The Leadership Challenge
Leadership today is confronted with unprecedented complexity.
New laws and regulations emerge continuously.
Investor expectations evolve.
Technology transforms industries.
Supply chains become more interconnected.
Artificial intelligence creates opportunity and risk.
Customers, lenders, insurers, regulators, employees, and communities increasingly influence enterprise value.
The challenge is no longer simply obtaining information.
The challenge is determining what deserves leadership’s attention.
Every decision to devote resources to one issue is simultaneously a decision not to devote those resources elsewhere.
There is no more fundamental responsibility of governance.
The Business Ecosystem Is Evolving
The enterprise no longer operates within a stable legal or commercial environment.
It operates within an evolving business ecosystem characterized by:
- Expanding legal and regulatory obligations
- Increasing stakeholder expectations
- Globalized value chains and supply networks
- Accelerating technological change
- Growing demands for transparency and disclosure
- New forms of operational and reputational risk
- Increasing uncertainty regarding future expectations
The environment continues to evolve.
Leadership attention does not.
The Cost of Misplaced Attention
Organizations rarely fail because they lack information.
Increasingly, they fail because leadership attention and organizational resources are directed toward matters of lesser importance while more consequential issues remain insufficiently addressed.
The consequences may include:
- Loss of customers or strategic opportunities
- Increased cost of capital
- Reduced insurability
- Regulatory enforcement or litigation
- Reputational damage
- Strategic rigidity
- Reduced enterprise value
The greatest risk may not be failing to act.
It may be failing to determine what deserves action.
Sustainable Business Success
McAlan’s distinctive perspective is grounded in the Sustainable Business Success (SBS) paradigm developed by Allen Campbell.
The Sustainable Business Success paradigm explains the characteristics of enduring organizational success within an evolving business ecosystem.
McAlan’s mission is to assist boards and executive leadership in determining where scarce organizational resources—including executive attention—should be directed in order to move the enterprise toward Sustainable Business Success.
How McAlan Helps
McAlan provides independent, senior-level advisory designed to improve the quality of board and executive decision-making.
Our engagements assist leadership in determining:
- Which issues require immediate attention
- Which emerging developments warrant preparation
- Which opportunities justify early action or leadership
- Which matters require continued monitoring
- Which proposed actions may create unnecessary cost, risk, or strategic constraint
Our role is not to manage the enterprise.
Our role is to assist leadership in exercising informed judgment under conditions of uncertainty.
Regulatory Intelligence
Effective judgment requires more than knowledge of today’s rules.
It requires understanding where the business ecosystem is heading.
McAlan provides forward-looking regulatory intelligence and strategic analysis concerning:
- Emerging legislation and regulation
- Disclosure and reporting developments
- Cross-border regulatory trends
- Market and stakeholder expectations
- Investor, lender, insurer, and customer requirements
- Areas where prudent restraint may be preferable to premature action
Because leadership must prepare not only for the world that exists today, but for the one that is emerging.
The Central Question
Every board ultimately confronts the same question:
Among everything confronting this enterprise today, what most deserves our scarce organizational resources—including executive attention—if we are to achieve Sustainable Business Success?
Most organizations have no disciplined methodology for answering that question.
McAlan does.