5 key questions for businesses

In today’s difficult economic conditions, many organizations face unprecedented levels of complexity. Supply chain challenges, shifting investor sentiment, and evolving market demands mean that companies must operate with heightened vigilance. Those enterprises that strongly prioritize and focus on the elements directly under their control stand a greater chance of maintaining and earning the trust of their employees, customers, investors, and other key stakeholders. By concentrating on controllable factors and executing strategies with discipline, these organizations improve their resilience, strengthen their market positions, and build lasting credibility.

Leading companies, even in the face of widespread uncertainty, keep their operations as straightforward as possible. Rather than succumbing to panic, they direct their attention to what can be managed internally, using strategic thinking to guide their actions. Such firms determine their overall approach by asking five key questions designed to refocus their priorities and sharpen their competitive edge:

1. Am I different?
2. Am I fit for growth?
3. Are my IT costs effective and at appropriate levels?
4. Is my portfolio too complex?
5. How do I reduce the risk?

These five questions serve as a framework for guiding decisions, refining business models, and ensuring that management teams allocate resources effectively.

1. Do I Stand Out?

Differentiation is essential in markets where growth may be slow and buyers are increasingly cautious. Standing out can involve strategic pricing models that capture consumer interest without eroding margins. It can mean evolving a company’s value proposition to address shifting customer needs, ensuring service quality remains consistent and dependable, minimizing response times to inquiries, executing effective cross-selling, and providing an extraordinary customer experience that compels buyers to return. Achieving these goals often involves deploying multiple levers across both physical storefronts and digital platforms, optimizing engagement before, during, and after the sale.

In slower-growing environments, it becomes noticeably harder to gain customer mindshare. Leading companies in all industries are applying these strategic methods not just in one channel, but across all relevant touchpoints that matter to their audience. The question they repeatedly pose is: “Why would a customer choose us over another provider?” This examination drives them to explore how best to distinguish themselves, how to boost market share when demand is static, and how to refine product or service offerings so that they appeal more strongly to the target audience.

The encouraging news is that differentiation lies fully within a company’s own influence. Leadership teams that maintain laser-like focus on what they can control—such as improving product features, refining service quality, tailoring the marketing message, or upgrading the buying experience—position themselves to develop a truly unique identity in the marketplace.

2. Am I Fit for Growth?

Many enterprises experienced robust growth during and after the pandemic, which led to the rapid onboarding of new employees and the creation of numerous “special projects.” At the same time, some companies delayed integrating recent acquisitions or postponed difficult decisions related to their operating models and standardization measures. These choices were often made during periods of cheap capital and bullish markets, when financial pressures were less severe and there was greater tolerance for inefficiency.

In today’s stricter economic setting, however, profitable growth must be self-sustaining. Investors have far less patience for weak margins, unproductive spending, or growth strategies that cannot fund themselves through operational efficiency and revenue generation. The message is clear: Scale your operations effectively, streamline costs where sensible, and finance your own growth. These efforts—ranging from reorganizing internal processes to identifying and eliminating cost inefficiencies—are fully under a company’s control.

By asking “Am I fit for growth?” leaders can systematically identify redundant projects, unify scattered initiatives, and encourage organizational agility. They can revise their internal structures, remove unnecessary layers of complexity, and ensure that each aspect of the business contributes meaningfully to profitable expansion.

3. Are My IT Costs Effective and at Appropriate Levels?

For many modern businesses, the future hinges on transformation within cloud environments, digital ecosystems, and advanced data analytics. True IT reinvention offers opportunities to deliver distinctive customer experiences at lower cost. Yet some organizations remain far from achieving significant technological renewal. They may not fully understand the financial or operational benefits of cloud adoption. The capital markets want evidence of disciplined technology strategies—meaning they seek explanations when a company’s digital ambitions fail to produce measurable results.

Internal misalignment among executives, outdated beliefs about the firm’s digital trajectory, or insufficient execution capabilities can hold back necessary improvements. To address these issues, business leaders must collaborate closely with their executive teams, broaden their perspective on how digital resources can fuel growth, and become more decisive in translating IT investments into tangible business outcomes. They should commit to operational digital transformation, speed up managerial decision-making, implement more assertive changes, and hold individuals accountable for meeting technology-related targets.

In line with these imperatives, current research (including the latest PwC Pulse Center survey) indicates that 52% of CIOs aim to incorporate analytics into their processes to accelerate decision-making. This includes pursuing automation strategies, digitizing legacy infrastructure to reduce overhead, and considering managed IT solutions that streamline operations. Such initiatives not only cut costs but also enhance productivity, and all these endeavors remain well within the company’s control.

4. Is My Portfolio Too Complex?

Modern organizations grapple with a wide array of forces: moving to cloud-based architectures, contending with the era of energy transition, managing geopolitical frictions, and questioning the merits of becoming a “global enterprise” in a more fragmented world. These shifts can prompt businesses to reassess whether their portfolios—encompassing products, services, markets, and partnerships—make coherent sense.

In response, we see many large companies spinning off niche segments, whether to generate capital for strategic transitions (such as advancing cloud initiatives or adopting new forms of energy) or to simplify the business and boost the odds of successful reinvention. Recalibrating what belongs in the portfolio and what does not is completely under the company’s control. By evaluating the strategic fit of each portfolio component, leadership can streamline operations, strengthen core offerings, and ultimately make the enterprise more nimble and responsive to future changes.

5. How Can I Reduce the Risk?

The stakes are undeniably higher now. Today’s economic and political environment produces multiple risks, including potential disruption in supply chains, concentration risks in key markets, energy supply concerns, and a host of other challenges tied to inflation, regulatory shifts, shifting public perceptions, data accuracy, and cybersecurity.

Developing a robust risk management function is essential for leading enterprises in such turbulent times. This begins with conducting objective risk assessments, rapidly addressing vulnerabilities, and instituting mitigating measures that strengthen operational continuity. Many companies seek to diversify supply chains, ensuring they are not over-reliant on a single region. Others consider automation, outsourcing to strategic partners, investing in cost controls that address margin pressures, or adopting methods that minimize geopolitical and regulatory uncertainties.

Proactive risk mitigation is now a strategic asset. Organizations that integrate risk considerations into growth plans and decision-making frameworks stand a better chance of achieving sustainable profits. Maintaining disciplined, forward-looking risk management processes, and acting promptly on insights gained from them, remains entirely within a company’s sphere of control.

The Upside of Maintaining Control

While headwinds have intensified, it is essential to recognize that the business landscape still produces both winners and losers. Enterprises that strictly prioritize and focus on what they can influence increase their chances of earning and preserving the trust of employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders. Conversely, companies that fail to focus on these controllable areas risk losing investor confidence, attracting shareholder activism, and—perhaps most critically—eroding the trust of their own workforce.

Workers today are attuned to the quality of leadership in their organizations. They look to leadership teams that exhibit steady guidance and a willingness to confront change head-on. Fortunately, each of the five areas discussed above can be successfully addressed with the right focus, and all these actions remain fully within management’s control. This path will not always be easy, but seizing control in these dimensions paves the way for resilient performance and stronger stakeholder relations.