In a world of rising rates, fierce competition, and tighter margins winning will mean “smarter, leaner, and faster.
Rising rates, shrinking runways, more competition, and tighter margins are rewriting the business playbook. Growth for growth’s sake is giving way to a new metric: Efficiency.
McKinsey reports that 77% of executives now list efficiency among their top-three priorities, a sharp jump from pre-2020 levels. Investors echo the shift, rewarding sustainable unit economics over blitz-scaling. In this climate, every redundant workflow, idle tool, and manual hand-off drags on cash, visibility, and speed.
The fix isn’t another cost-cut, it’s engineering smarter systems that automate waste, surface real-time insight, and scale without excess.
Companies that master this discipline will move leaner, decide faster, and leave growth-at-any-cost rivals struggling to keep up.
