I founded McKinsey's CEO practice: Here's why operational excellence is a liability right now

McKinsey senior partner Carolyn Dewar argues that a decade of market rewards for operational rigor has left leadership teams with atrophied strategic muscles, and that boards and executive teams must now confront the foundational question of where they would choose to compete if building the business today. The piece frames the current moment as one demanding scenario-based strategic re-anchoring rather than incremental optimization. For SEA scale-up founders and their boards, this is a direct call to replace execution-first default thinking with explicit, pressure-tested strategic choices.