How Foresight and an Aligned Operating Model Help Companies Thrive

In an unpredictable business landscape, an aligned operating model centered on customers, operations, and capital strategies is critical to resilience and growth.

Running an organization in this business environment means navigating choppy seas that rarely settle. With volatile markets, global disruptions, and new competition, companies can easily lose their sense of direction.

In this landscape, the best boards and leadership teams don’t shy away from challenges; instead, they embrace the discomfort, using it as a path toward a better understanding and orientation of their operating model. After all, understanding the core elements of a business is essential when making both strategic and daily operating decisions that pay dividends in the long term. Gaining clarity on a company’s customers, operations, and capital engagement strategy—including how those decisions are communicated to investors—is essential for steering the organization with confidence.

An Aligned Operating Model

Companies are vessels full of moving parts that need to be robust and nimble, ready to balance conflicting demands and shifting with even the most changeable tides.

With this in mind, below are the three core elements of a business that should guide all executive and board decisions:

• customers, which reveal where value lies and drive the direction of growth;
• operations, which show how value reaches the market; and
• capital engagement strategies, which determine how value is built and maintained in the long haul.

The intersection of these three elements should define every company’s strategic road map. These elements should be dynamically managed through a variety of different levers, which can be pulled to help soften blows, as well as fuel change and innovation. Above all, pulling the right strategic levers at the right times keeps these elements aligned so that they reinforce, rather than undermine, each other.

With customers, operations, and capital engagement strategies—including the narrative shared with investors—working in harmony, companies can respond faster to shifting market conditions, customer needs, and operational pressures with greater confidence. When turbulence inevitably arrives, this alignment becomes the difference between a company floundering or forging ahead.

Customers: Trust and Value

Every customer wants something, and it is the company’s job to deliver it. In turbulent times, customer consistency, including steady demand patterns, reliable buying behaviors, and predictable preferences that help stabilize planning and investment, is an anchor.

Leaders should know what different customers want and track their behavior, adapting as needed. Customer churn is poison unless a company operates at sky-high margins. Leaders should be accountable for maintaining trust, even when market pressures demand tough pricing and service decisions.

It is also crucial to zero in on true performance drivers and concentrate resources where they count: complex, high-value customers (i.e., those with layered needs, multiple stakeholders, or bespoke requirements) who ultimately sustain long-term profitability. Boards can work with management to develop this understanding by examining customer-level economics, tracking the cost to serve, and reviewing patterns in churn and renewal.

The strongest strategies are rooted in knowing which clients deliver meaningful returns versus those who drain resources. Losing sight of this can cause profit, as well as market standing, to quickly slip away.

If a company has fewer complex customers than needed to support long-term growth, the board should probe how management can build the capacity to attract and retain them. Boards should push for clear targets, investments, and timelines to close these gaps. And if an organization often loses this type of customer, the board should question management on the reasons why and ensure corrective actions are established.

Key customer levers boards should ask management to consider implementing include the following:

• Segment and prioritize customers.
• Analyze profitability to focus on real margin drivers.
• Strengthen customer experience through digital channels to increase loyalty and reduce costs.
• Introduce pricing flexibility to protect margins and maintain trust.
• Maintain clear communication to reinforce credibility, especially amid disruption.

Operations: Nimble Execution at Scale

Operations turn ambition into reality. Once customer needs are clear, the delivery plan follows. Boards can organize operations by scale, complexity, or geography. Above all, management should optimize operations so the company functions efficiently.

Understanding a company’s fixed versus variable cost mix is critical; high fixed costs magnify the impact of demand swings. This underscores the importance of creating operating levers to pivot as the market shifts.

Operational agility is not improvised in a crisis; it should be built into the company’s strategy from the start. As legacy structures may not be able to keep up with the speed of change, executives should ensure operations and workflows reflect current priorities and empower teams to adapt quickly and focus on what matters most during turbulent times.

Boards and the management team should never run away from risk; they should calibrate their decisions, investments, and operating posture around it. Boards should ask management for key metrics, such as customer churn, margin erosion, or cash-flow volatility, and respond to disruption only after substantial assessment.

Boards should also regularly review risk management plans, stress-test contingency strategies, and ask management for the metrics that express the real dynamics of the business. Strong oversight demands clear roles, open communication, stakeholder buy-in, ongoing reviews, and defined timelines for results.

Key operational levers boards should ask management to consider implementing include the following:

• Modernize supply chains for flexibility and resilience.
• Align the entire organization with proper structures and management layers.
• Update technology and core infrastructure for rapid adaptation.
• Continuously improve efficiency to boost productivity and customer satisfaction.
• Increase agility in resource allocation.
• Set clear performance metrics and ensure transparency.

Capital Engagement Strategy: Discipline and Opportunity

In tough times, investor expectations can feel heavy, but when understood and managed well, they become a powerful guide for the organization’s direction. Executives and boards must know who their investors are, why they invested in the company, and what they prioritize—whether it is sales growth, earnings, dividends, cash flow, or specific return metrics.

Strong relationships with long-term investors are especially valuable. This requires transparent communication about capital choices, expected returns, and how leadership is balancing liquidity preservation with strategic investment. Liquidity, investment decisions, and incentives should all fit into a cohesive capital narrative.

There is also a storytelling element to capital strategy: Companies must articulate the rationale behind their decisions, using the metrics investors care about as anchors. At the same time, leaders should be prepared to educate investors on industry or business shifts when needed, ensuring expectations remain grounded in reality.

Key capital levers boards should ask management to consider implementing include the following:

• Manage liquidity to preserve flexibility.
• Allocate capital to initiatives that drive growth.
• Divest noncore assets, such as underperforming business units, to free up resources.
• Align investors on why capital moves are made and how they reflect the company’s vision.

Charting a Steady Course

Turbulent times cannot be met with quick fixes; they demand an ongoing process of recalibration. Leaders must continuously pull levers to keep customers, operations, and capital systems harmonized and agile.

Boards play a critical role here by ensuring management has clear priorities, probing for early signs of misalignment, and holding management accountable for course corrections. While the details will differ depending on the company and industry, success means keeping the different parts working in concert.

Firms that can detect misalignment early and act decisively are able to move faster and with more confidence. When the operating model, customer focus, and capital engagement strategy—and the communication surrounding them—are tightly aligned, companies are empowered to make bold choices and seize opportunities, while others are swept away by the storm. The board amplifies this advantage by providing oversight, challenging assumptions, and ensuring the organization stays anchored to its long-term strategic direction.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the perspective of NACD.

Alvarez & Marsal is a NACD partner, providing directors with critical and timely information, and perspectives. Alvarez & Marsal is a financial supporter of the NACD.