I’m celebrating ten years of Veridia Consulting! Being an independent consultant has allowed me to work with fascinating companies, run rewarding projects, and make good friends along the way. It’s a privilege to learn from the variety of companies that I have worked with.
Just like I did five years ago, I am sharing what I have learned from my clients. Here are ten things that remain true in business strategy, execution and value creation, regardless of the changes that new technologies bring.
- All companies need to grow, otherwise they will shrink. In order to grow, they need to have repeat customers. A business model where customer acquisition cost exceeds customer value will not be profitable.
- The most common obstacle to growth is lack of sales. If customers aren’t buying what you’re trying to sell, you need to look at what you’re selling (your value proposition) as well as your ability to sell.
- Companies cannot cost-cut their way to growth. A company needs to invest to grow, and it needs to know which investments are worthwhile. Not investing leads you back to point #1.
- Sustainable growth comes from creating value for customers before creating value for investors. If you create value for customers, the value for investors will follow. It doesn’t work the other way around.
- A back-of-the-envelope calculation of the company’s P&L should show where the profits come from. If the simple calculation doesn’t add up, neither will the complex financial model.
- The critical partnership for leading a company successfully are a strong CEO and CFO working in close alignment. If they are not in agreement, or one is overshadowed by the other, success becomes a lot harder to achieve.
- Change programmes stall on motivation. The entire leadership team needs to believe in and want the new strategy, improvement, or value creation plan. The leaders need to explain what it’s for and keep motivating their employees. If the employees don’t believe the change is useful, they will not support it.
- Companies lose execution speed by having ineffective meetings. Without a method for analysing and discussing a topic, making decisions and following these up, meetings are a waste of time. People try to solve this by getting rid of meetings. They should develop better meeting skills instead.
- When most company employees have never worked anywhere else, they only know how their own company operates. They don’t know what good looks like and can’t raise the bar on their own. Adding expertise from outside the company can help, but integrating it isn’t easy.
- Choosing is hard. When making a strategy, I explain the value of focusing resources on specific choices and ask a leadership team what they will not do. FOMO is real, and I’ve never had one give a good answer. I’m happy to be proven wrong on this one.
Thank you again to all my wonderful clients, collaborators, colleagues and friends. Next five years, here we come!
© Veridia Consulting, 2026
