Your Best Investment for a Business Strategy That Endures
It’s a wild world right now, and your instincts are right – this isn’t normal. Trade, global politics, AI, and climate risk are reshaping the world all at once. All this economic change has everyone asking: what’s coming next And from which direction? Only 39% of business leaders said they were optimistic about the national economy heading into 2026, down from 65% just a year earlier. And yet 71% are still confident about their own company’s performance in the year ahead[1].
Why does this matter to you? A structural shift, unlike an ordinary business cycle, can reshape how your organization operates, leads its sector, and shows up for its customers and communities. Let’s talk about what an economic structural shift is, why that matters to your business, and what you can do about it. We will touch on three moves to start this week to ensure long-term value creation is at the heart of your strategy.
A Structural Economic Shift Is Taking Place
Business leaders are used to cycles — booms, corrections, and recoveries. This feels different, and the data backs up that feeling. 56% of CEOs now name geopolitical tension as their top near-term risk, more than double the 28% who said the same in September 2025[2] A June 2026 report by PIMCO went further, calling the current moment a rupture: a break from the old economic order, not a dip within it[3].
What’s the actual difference? A business cycle has an expected rhythm: expansion, peak, contraction, trough. It plays out a little differently each time, but it repeats[4]. A structural shift doesn’t repeat. It replaces the paradigm you were operating in with a new one[5].
This is important to you as a business leader because, unlike weathering a normal ebb and flow of business, a structural shift will change how you operate, where you create value, and who your market is. Significant change that shakes the foundation of everything your business might be about and the usual tools to think through this will not work.
Moreover, you can only measure a structural shift in hindsight, but good leaders can feel the atmosphere changing in real time. There’s no roadmap when new ground breaks.
Or is there?
Real Value Creation Is Your Not-So-Secret Weapon
We tell clients the same thing whether the economy is calm or chaotic: the businesses that last aren’t the ones chasing the next shiny objects. They’re the ones that know exactly what value they create and keep sharpening it.
Chasing short-term wins is tempting (and we are not naïve that putting some profits in the bank helps), but it’s a well-documented risk to long-term strength[6]. Only about 10% of the companies on the original 1955 Fortune 500 list are still in business today, and Forbes traces it to the same root cause: they stopped delivering real value to the people who mattered to them[7].
Not every competency is an asset that will create value yet. That’s your work as leaders of a business – to find those potential competencies and develop them. It becomes a real, valuable capability once it’s rare, hard to copy, and organized well enough that your business can actually capture value from it. This isn’t a new idea. It’s the resource-based view of strategy[8], and it has held up for decades because it’s simple enough to apply on a Tuesday afternoon.
3 Moves to Make Right Now
Identify What Creates Value – An Honest Reflection
This step starts with honest soul-searching. What does your business actually have, or do, that creates value? Start with an inventory: what skills, knowledge, processes, tools, and other competencies does your business already possess? Most organizations, if they’re honest, can only point to a handful of things. They may show up in different products, services, teams, or client relationships, but they trace back to the same small set of core assets.
When leaders make themselves have this conversation, one of two things usually surfaces. Either they realize almost nothing they assumed was creating value is, meaning the business has been running on inertia rather than real value creation. Or they discover the opposite: the thing they thought was driving results isn’t, and some overlooked corner of the organization has been quietly creating real value the whole time, unnoticed and underinvested.
Frameworks like VRIO (Valuable, Rare, Costly to Imitate, Organized to Exploit) can formalize this kind of assessment, and they’re useful once you’re ready to go deeper. But the first pass doesn’t need to be complicated. It just needs to be honest.
Repeat: Purpose Drives Profit
Reframe success around purpose, not just quarterly numbers. Our experience with clients aligns with broader research: purpose and profit tend to reinforce each other rather than compete. Take an inventory of what your business does and why it does it, and check whether the two still line up. In essence, don’t give up if this feels unresolved at first. You’re not chasing a quick answer; you’re pursuing long-term value instead of a short-term fad. That distinction matters even more in a structural shift like this one. You need to know what you’re investing in before the market fully settles, not after.
Be Curious
Walk the halls. See what’s actually working and what continues to challenge your team. Build a habit of conversations up and down the org chart, and feed what you hear into real decisions. Is there a department-level workaround, or even a small hack one team member built, that deserves to be rolled out more broadly?
Building What Lasts
Real value creation isn’t a nice-to-have while the ground is shifting. It’s the whole strategy. When you invest in the capabilities that make your business genuinely valuable, rare, and hard to copy, you’re building something purposeful, productive, and profitable long after this shift settles.
Where would an honest look at your own business turn up the biggest surprise?
We’d love to help you find out. Get in touch and let’s talk.
AI assistance disclosure: This content was created, edited, and reviewed by MindSalt with AI assistance.
Sources
[1] J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking. “2026 Business Leaders Outlook.” January 2026. Retrieved from https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/markets-and-economy/business-leaders-outlook/2026-us-business-leaders-outlook
[2] EY. “CEO Priorities 2026: Growth, Resilience, and AI ROI.” May 2026. Retrieved from https://www.ey.com/en_gl/ceo/ceo-outlook-global-report
[3] “Rupture and Resilience.” PIMCO Secular Outlook. June 2026. Retrieved from https://www.pimco.com/us/en/insights/rupture-and-resilience
[4] edX. “What is a business cycle?” (2025). Retrieved from https://www.edx.org/resources/what-is-the-business-cycle
[5] Global X. “The Difference between Cyclical and Structural Themes.” October 2017. Retrieved from https://www.globalxetfs.com/articles/the-difference-between-cyclical-and-structural-themes
[6] Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment. A Model of Long-term Value Creation. 2021.
[7] Forbes.com. “Why Creating Value Wins.” March 2026. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2026/03/19/in-business-why-creating-value-wins/
[8] Strategic Management Insight. “Resource-Based View.” Retrieved from https://strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/resource-based-view/