At some point in your career, you’ve probably received feedback like “you need to think more strategically.” It’s one of the most common pieces of advice leaders give, and one of the least useful. You’re probably left wondering how to improve strategic thinking. And what does thinking strategically actually mean? Strategic thinking isn’t a personality…
March 13, 2026 — Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) has launched a new course, Strategic Problem Solving, designed to help business leaders and professionals tackle complex challenges with greater clarity, structure, and confidence. The course is available now to CFI members as part of the platform’s growing curriculum in strategic thinking and leadership. The Problem Behind…
In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained on FinPod, we examine how financial targets shape behavior inside organizations and why targets are never just neutral planning tools. Revenue goals, margin thresholds, return targets, and quarterly quotas may look like objective numbers on a spreadsheet, but in practice, they influence hiring, investment, risk-taking, and the day-to-day…
Many talented managers hit a ceiling, not because they lack skills, but because they never make the shift from execution to strategy. They’re effective operators: reliable, efficient, and deeply embedded in the work. But as organizations grow more complex and the pace of change accelerates, operational excellence alone isn’t enough. The leaders who advance are…
Depending on which study you read, somewhere between 60% and 90% of strategies fail to deliver the results leaders expect. That’s a striking range, but the more important question isn’t how often strategies fail. It’s “why does strategy fail?” The most common answer is execution. Leaders point to poor communication, misaligned teams, or insufficient resources….
A SaaS product team asks its AI assistant, “What should we build next quarter to improve customer retention?” The tool returns a polished priority list of integrations, analytics, and new products to create. The team implements several of these ideas, but customer retention barely budges. When the team assessed what went wrong, they traced the…
In this episode of What’s New at CFI on FinPod, we introduce a brand new course designed to help professionals tackle one of the most overlooked skills in business: Strategic Problem Solving. Meeyeon, VP of Content and Training at Corporate Finance Institute, sits down with Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, strategy expert and co-founder of Strategy Inc., to…
In this episode of Corporate Finance Explained on FinPod, we break down one of the most dramatic and misunderstood areas of corporate strategy: mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Every quarter, headlines celebrate billion-dollar deals as bold strategic wins. CEOs shake hands, stock tickers flash, and press releases promise “transformational synergies.” But beneath the hype lies a…
After a tough quarter, a department head notices rising turnover and assumes her team is burned out. To boost morale, she launches wellness perks and a recognition program. But three months later, the best employees are still leaving. The real issue wasn’t morale. High performers were resigning because of limited growth opportunities and a culture…
In business, the most costly mistakes are often not about making the wrong decision. They’re about solving the wrong problem. When Netflix began disrupting the movie rental industry, Blockbuster’s leadership focused on optimizing its brick-and-mortar store model rather than questioning whether it was solving the right problem. Under pressure, even experienced teams focus on what’s…
