Kearney News

As we begin another year, I’m reaching out to share some Kearney news—I’ve been asked to take on a new role as the Global Practice Leader for our newly combined digital and analytics teams. This is a clear build on our success in growing our communication, media, and technology practice where we developed a great team, from semiconductors to mobile and fiber to the media running across that fiber. I’m thrilled to be working with an experienced team of folks such as Eric Stettler, Scot MacGillivray, Stephan Krubasik, Dieter Gerdemann, Bharath Thota, and many others. And it’s easy to get inspired by the super-smart, innovative, and emerging talent of 650+ existing team members across Kearney. They have a pulse on how the world is changing and are leading the way to a strong digital and AI future.

As the world undergoes its fifth significant technological shift (at least in my career), spanning the PC era, client-server paradigm, the advent of browsers and the internet, the mobile revolution, and now the era of AI, it’s a big challenge for our clients that demands practicality, innovation, and relentless focus on results. I am excited to lead this team of Kearney Originals each with their own unique magic and personalities to make this happen, as we work to build the next generation of Kearney.

As we approach the new challenges in this area, we will continue to bring our unique and renewed Kearney style of authenticity versus attitude, impact versus ideas, and enthusiasm versus ego. The world needs a bit more Kearney and a bit less of this other stuff.

Not surprisingly to any of us, strategic operations is where AI has the potential to create the most tangible impact. We are already using AI to forecast rapidly changing consumer demand with real-time adapting supply chains and fully AI-powered procurement functions. And the best is yet to come, as we advance our work with AI models, utilizing all capabilities of large operations platforms and data. We’re working with our clients to build speed as their strategic advantage—as we all know, the pace of adoption of digital and analytics capabilities is core to those that are “regenerators” vs “optimizers.”

Over the past several years and under Alex's leadership, I’m proud of what the firm has achieved. Alex has positioned us well to make bold, strategic moves to reclaim our rightful position as industry leaders. If you didn’t know, I'm a boomerang, I left as partner in 2002 and rejoined in 2017 as Alex became Managing Partner. I had spent a bit of time trying to retire, including seeing 26 college football games in a year. I give Alex, alongside Jeff Ward and Bob Duffy, a lot of credit for playing an instrumental role in coaxing me out of my failed retirement. And I’m not the only one who has found my way back to Kearney; other notable boomerangs include?Steve Berger, Polly Shrewsbury, Ken Quaglio, Jeff Greer, and David Hanfland, to name a few. David, by the way, who has been leading Kearney as region chair for the Americas, has been a huge part in getting Kearney Analytics off the ground and overseeing the success of the Cervello acquisition.

Our strategic bets on entities such as Cervello, Optano, Kearney Venture Capital, and Silicon Foundry have proven our commitment to digital and innovation: with these investments, we are all-in on strategy and consumer insights, operations, artificial intelligence, information technology, analytics, and data transformation. Working together, we are making shift happen.

Special thanks to David for supporting my efforts to rebuild the communications, media, and technology practice. I have a great deal of gratitude for his backing to go long on Kearney in this new role (even if it meant once again resisting the allure of another failed retirement). I must also mention the impact of the former Intel CEO and operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Bob Swan, who knew the firm as a client and as CFO of EDS when our partners bought the firm back from them in 2006 (he just re-joined us this summer as an external member to the Kearney board). His presence and continued push for excellence have been a source of inspiration that motivated me to fully engage and “run with this.”

Whether we know one another or worked together previously, your input and contribution to Kearney has been important in shaping the collaborative spirit that defines our firm today.?We are looking for talent, advisors, partnerships, alumni engagement, client discussions, and most importantly, inspiration, from our alumni.

I’d love to connect and get your input—reach out, email me, or call so we can grab some time to talk.

In the meantime, Roll Tide.