From Coal to Biotech

Former COFCO International CEO shares leadership lessons on globalization, cross-cultural management, and building a global agricultural business.

Spot pseudo-engagement in teams and learn six proven steps to restore genuine collaboration and high performance.

The case investigates the supported search fund model pioneered by Novastone Capital Advisors (NCA) through which mid-career executives can achieve their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs though the acquisition of an SME. NCA provides support through the various phases of the program, from talent selection, training, target searches, due diligence, M&A, value creation and exit engineering.

HubSpot-style insight on AI leadership: Embrace your inner founder to achieve operational clarity, dynamic direction, and reimagined teams that leverage AI.

HubSpot CPO Helen Russell argues that leaders need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and master three key skills to thrive in an AI-driven world​.

Senior leaders rarely get their most important work done by issuing orders. A CTO cannot compel a partner firm, a dean cannot order a faculty to embrace a curriculum, a ministry cannot be forced to share data. On the questions that matter, outcomes depend on people with agendas and loyalties of their own. This note details a two-part discipline for understanding and influencing stakeholders. The diagnostic section asks who can affect the outcome, where their influence comes from and how things look from their side. It challenges common intuitions: coalitions beat individuals, intensity beats headcount, friendships are not alliances, and the fiercest resistance defends identity and legacy, so no concession will buy it off. Tools include the influence-alignment matrix, network mapping, listening tours, decision archaeology and force-field analysis. The strategic section converts diagnosis into movement, i.e. how to: frame each ask in the currency the audience values, sequence conversations so support accumulates before the decisive meeting, secure small commitments and avoid reactive coalition building, where a leader's own defensiveness unites opponents who agree on nothing else. Written for leaders in business, universities, government and non-profits, the note compares stakeholder management challenges across sectors and closes with a transparency test separating influence from manipulation. A companion exercise (IMD-2789-E) turns the frameworks into a plan for a live challenge.

Learn how small, everyday acts build courage at work, helping people speak up, take action, and create meaningful organizational change

Sunrise demonstrates how HR metrics map to business goals, boosting loyalty and performance through clear ownership and cross‑functional collaboration.

Part 2: Team doubts - learn diagnostics to pinpoint sources, build trust, and enlist supporters for stronger, shared leadership.

Founded in 1920 as a modest trading house in the Arabian Gulf, Zamil Group has grown into one of the Middle East's most diversified business groups, with activities spanning manufacturing, petrochemicals, real estate and investments. As the portfolio expanded and some operating companies were listed or divested, the family gradually shifted from a family‑managed operating conglomerate toward a financial holding model. This strategic transition fundamentally reshaped the family's role – from hands‑on operators to long‑term owners and stewards of a diversified portfolio. At the heart of the case is the question of how enterprising families define success. Rather than equating success solely with financial performance or the preservation of specific legacy assets, the AlZamil family articulates a broader, multi‑dimensional conception of success that includes long‑term continuity, professionalization, societal contribution and the preparation of future generations. The case explores how this definition of success informs key governance choices, such as stricter family employment policies, the increasing reliance on non‑family executives, and the creation of a family office dedicated to wealth management and next generation development. The case also surfaces an important tension faced by many long‑lived family firms: whether selling a founding or symbolic business should be viewed as a failure or a responsible act of stewardship. By presenting the sale of the AlZamils' legacy business, the case invites participants to contrast a heritage‑preservation logic with a stewardship‑and‑portfolio logic and to reflect on how different families reconcile emotional attachment with long‑term adaptability. The case is based on interviews with four family members holding leading roles in the AlZamil family enterprise system.