Greater growth through stronger strategy, agile execution, and learning
Dr. Homkes is a high-growth strategy specialist. Her work focuses on strategic development, execution, and innovation in the face of uncertainty. To view featured press, publications, and podcasts jump to Media.
Homkes Areas of Expertise
Survive Reset Thrive
and Strategy Through Uncertainty
Survive Reset Thrive (SRT) is a proactive, pragmatic, and proven playbook for leaders looking for breakthrough growth, even in the face of uncertainty. The Survive Reset Thrive loop is a three-part practice that guides and prepares organizational leaders to Survive (stabilize their businesses when there is an industry shock), Reset (change and adapt their strategy as the situation changes), and then prepare to Thrive organization (consistently and successfully grow through any market condition).
SRT embraces uncertainty head-on by reframing the unknown as a series of potential future events rather than as an inherently negative state. It is then possible to proactively stabilize, reset, and thrive. We cannot predict the future, but we can become great at making good decisions informed by good beliefs.
High-Growth Strategy
Becoming a high-growth company is often portrayed as a mystical process that only technology companies can achieve, or it is discussed in a series of meaningless buzzwords untethered from reality. High growth – doubling every strategy cycle, for most industries – is not only achievable, it is also practical. Homkes’ proprietary approach makes it simple to understand the three types of high-growth paths, choose the appropriate one, and then gain traction through constant testing, learning, and market feedback as you execute.
Digital and AI Transformation
Over the past few years, especially with the launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT, the conversation about AI has gone from a niche subset of digital strategy to a vital part of organizational discourse. But few executives feel equipped to integrate AI fully into their business strategy and capture its potential value. They lack deep topical understanding, and mores so often don’t know where to start.
Homkes’s research, teaching, and practical work with leading-edge companies enables her refreshingly accessible approach to AI transformation. She helps leaders tackle the topic head-on, seek differentiation and competitive advantage, and lead successful transformations rather than isolated use cases for the most transformative digital technologies.
Learning
Velocity
Learn faster, grow faster. It is the simplest, most powerful statement that separates high-growth companies from others. Homkes’s research and practical experience helps leaders maximize the rate at which knowledge is acquired, shared, transferred, embedded, and used to further performance at an individual or organizational level. Homkes’s work explores how to identify and accelerate critical learning loops, build a culture of constant experimentation, and embed learning into the entire organizational hardware, software, leadership capability, and shared context of what matters most.
Strategy Execution
Strategy execution has consistently received less attention and deep research than strategy creation. When results don’t materialize, it’s too simplistic to blame one or the other. Both are needed, and it is their interconnectedness that determines success. In uncertainty, strategy development and strategy execution are a distinction without a difference: the real strategy is the one that is enacted.
Over a decade ago, with colleagues at the London Business School, Homkes began a large-scale endeavor to understand how complex organizations can better executive their strategies effectively, a project that led to debunking several widely held beliefs, captured in her 2015 Harvard Business Review article, which was placed/won HBR's 10 Must Reads 2016: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year.
Corporate Innovation, Scaling Strategies, and Spin Outs
It has been 75 years since Schumpeter wrote of the need for ‘creative destruction’ and 20 years since Christianson first warned us to beware of the ‘Innovator's Dilemma.’ In recent decades, senior executives have been warned to embrace digital, adapt, and transform their companies, lest they become the next Kodak or Blockbuster.
But even now, most enterprise leaders acknowledge that their digital efforts are not where they should be; some would even admit their teams do not even agree on what they’re driving towards. Organizations’ demand for innovation is not just a desire for newness, it is a need for lasting, sustainable growth in increasingly competitive markets. Homkes’s work explores how companies can overcome the challenges to innovation. Specifically, how they can prepare to innovate by placing their organization on the pathway to growth by having the right conversations about placement, people, and power; understand how to challenge fundamental assumptions in their industry and time industry shifts; internalize lessons from entrepreneurial companies, and better execute, scale, and grow their innovations in the market.
Recent press
Fast Company:
Don’t make another plan for 2024. Do this instead.
Plans articulate a base option, but they’re grounded in a series of events that are not only unpredictable but also often uncontrollable.
Publications
& Resources
“Homkes has an incredibly impactful professional style; she is able to present hard topics in an easy to absorb way with new concepts, frameworks, and models; far better than the stuffy academics”
Mike Haffenden
Director, Strategic Dimensions
A new survey finds very few senior managers think they can trust colleagues in different departments. Here’s how to change that.
Harvard Business Review:
Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It
Two-thirds to three-quarters of large organizations struggle with execution. And it’s no wonder: Research reveals that several common beliefs about implementing strategy are just plain wrong. This article debunks five of the most pernicious myths.
Harvard Business Review:
Why strategy chiefs succeed or fail
Why is it that some companies have great heads of strategy who make an outstanding contribution to their companies while others don’t? To answer this question, we evaluated 55 heads of strategy, and looked more closely at 11 who were particularly successful and 10…
London Business School:
Translating Strategy into Results
In this two-part blog, Rebecca Homkes, discusses how to frame our thinking of how to approach execution.
London Business School:
Five strategy execution myths exposed
Do you believe in these five strategy execution myths? Rebecca Homkes exposes the myths and examines the realities.
Forbes:
How The Fight For Independence Could Be The Death Of Your Business
Business history is replete with examples of companies that had it all: the hard assets, the skills, the strong market positions – and yet still lost their way.
