New Releases on StrategyTraining.com
New releases on StrategyTraining.com include a major update to the Strategy Control Room Advanced (Infrastructure Funding Strategy Study/126 SLIDES), alongside new powerful episodes on consulting growth, leadership, and long-term career design.
Each release is a structured system built for immediate application and long-term impact.
Here’s what’s now available for members:
For Strategy Control Room Advanced Members
Another major update: a new 126-slide full study was released.
Infrastructure Funding Strategy Study - A major release. 126 SLIDES.
This release explores the financial strategies and risk management approaches required to fund a national highway upgrade. It examines borrowing impact, financing requirements, and bond ratings, while analyzing scenarios ranging from best-case to worst-case economic conditions.
With insights into weighted average cost of capital (WACC), peer comparisons, and market appetite for bonds, this study highlights the critical importance of timing, risk mitigation, and debt issuance. It also examines the implications of government guarantees, potential rating changes, and the challenges posed by construction delays and inflation.
This study is a must-read for consultants seeking to navigate complex infrastructure financing.
For Insider Members
These new training episodes were released.
Why Am I Not Happy? How Can I Be Happy? Episode 14 of 14
Practical insights to help you recognize the patterns that are draining your energy and how to stop them.
Episode title: Must listen to at the end
The Real Reason You Are Not Being Promoted – Episode 18 of 18
This 18-part Insider program challenges the conventional wisdom of career growth, helping ambitious professionals rethink promotions, leadership roles, and long-term wealth creation.
Episode title: Action Next Step #11
The Bill Matassoni Show, Season 3 (Part 2 - Nicholas Gertler) – Episode 1 of 15
In the initial episodes of Part 2, Bill starts a conversation with Nicholas Gertler, a former colleague of Bill at McKinsey. The discussion centers around the concept of marketing as a pivotal tool for systems redesign, exploring its potential to effect meaningful change. The insights shared are intended to equip you to solve the kind of problems that none of your colleagues can or dare (or are motivated) to solve. The Bill Matassoni Show has quickly gained popularity worldwide, reaching audiences from China to India to England to Canada to Africa to Germany to Japan to the United States and beyond. Hosted by Bill Matassoni, a former senior partner at McKinsey & BCG, and former McKinsey worldwide head of marketing and McKinsey Quarterly, the series offers a fresh take on marketing, steering away from traditional sales and advertising tactics. Through storytelling and practical insights, Bill explores the core of marketing, prompting viewers to rethink their approach to work. The show encourages viewers to expand their perspectives and uncover new opportunities in the market space to create more value for all stakeholders involved. Shot at the iconic Philip Johnson Glass House, "The Bill Matassoni Show" offers exclusive insights available only on StrategyTraining.com.
Episode title: Systems Redesign
For Legacy Members
In addition to all Insider episodes, Legacy members receive these exclusive episodes:
(New) Segmenting Your Customers - Episode 4 of 5
What happens when the way you earn a living slowly pulls you away from who you really are? This program unpacks how inauthenticity creeps in, why it leads to burnout, and what it takes to rebuild both your brand and your sense of self.
Episode title: Three ways to focus your communication
(New) Resiliency and Scenario Planning - Episode 3 of 5
This is a very important new Legacy program. The real strength of your strategy is not only in getting it right, but in how quickly you can recover when you're wrong. This program challenges conventional planning models and shows why resilience, not perfection, may be the ultimate strategic advantage.
Episode title: Never, ever, make analyses the star
Writing an Article - Episode 2 of 4
Most people who want to write an article approach it with the wrong question: "How do I write something good?" That question is premature. This program starts earlier, at the point where real strategic thinking begins. It dissects what an article is, what it does, and why now may be the critical time for you to master this skill. Before a single word is put to paper, you are asked to examine your runway, your career trajectory, your intellectual property, and your broader life goals. Not in the abstract, but with the clarity and precision we’d demand when shaping a high-stakes market entry or regulatory response. If you’re at a career crossroads, or sensing that something in your positioning must evolve, this is the moment to pause, recalibrate, and chart a deliberate path forward.
Across the program, we open up frameworks that rewire how you think about visibility, trust, and influence, especially in environments where attention is scarce but expectations are high. We don’t begin with formats or templates. We begin with goals, blind spots, and strategy. This program will challenge you to think, not just about what you’re writing, but why the world needs to hear it from you, and why certain channels will amplify or dilute your message. You’ll likely want a pen nearby, because what unfolds is not generic guidance, as is the case with all our programs. It's a method to uncover and shape your message with surgical intent, so that when you do speak, people listen. And when you write, the right people respond.
Episode title: What is your style
Insiders can move to Legacy anytime and back to Insider without losing Insider status. Email us at team@firmsconsulting.com so we can manually restore your Insider status when you move back to Insider (provided there are no gaps in subscription).
Ask Us a Question — Get Tailored Feedback
Legacy members are invited to submit one personal or professional question twice per month. We’ll respond with a custom answer recorded by a partner.
Deadlines: Submit by the 15th and 30th of each month
Format: One paragraph emailed to
team@firmsconsulting.comInclude: Context and details so we can provide tailored guidance for your unique situation
Subject line: Legacy Question
Strategy Skills Podcast (top 5-10 for careers in many countries)
We’ve just released a new episode, now available on iTunes, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms.
Listen in and stay sharp.
Advisor to Microsoft, Google, and Hilton Executives Reveals How Leaders Create High-Performance Cultures Without Sacrificing Employee Joy - with Bree Groff
In this conversation with Bree Groff, author of "Today Was Fun" and who has advised executives at Microsoft, Google, Target, and Hilton through periods of organizational change, shares specific observations about leadership blind spots in large corporations and offers practical frameworks for creating workplace cultures that drive both performance and employee satisfaction.
Key Insights:
The Professional Conformity Trap: Large organizations often mistake formality for competence, creating environments where rigid presentation styles and corporate jargon become proxies for professionalism. This stifles the creativity and authenticity that both employees and customers actually seek. Organizations that are "unapologetically themselves" create magnetic appeal, as demonstrated by early Google's distinctive culture.
The Psychological Safety Framework: Effective leaders implement simple tools to humanize workplace interactions. The "check-in" method, where meeting participants rate their current state on a scale of one to five and briefly explain why, helps establish emotional safety that enables better performance.
The Micro-Change Strategy: Leaders create meaningful cultural shifts through "micro acts of mischief" and connection. These range from rearranging office furniture to facilitate collaboration, to sending brief acknowledgment messages to colleagues. Such small actions compound to create environments where creativity and engagement flourish.
The Joy-Performance Connection: Organizations that measure employee satisfaction with the same rigor they apply to productivity metrics discover that optimizing for workplace enjoyment simultaneously addresses communication gaps, decision-making delays, and other operational inefficiencies. As Groff explains, "to optimize for joy and fun means you're automatically optimizing for all of the other things that make a business successful."
Leadership Characteristics That Drive Culture Change: The most effective leaders demonstrate two key traits: they avoid taking themselves too seriously while thinking expansively about possibilities. Groff cites Melisa Goldie, former Chief Marketing Officer of Calvin Klein, who maintained perspective with phrases like "there's no such thing as a fashion emergency" while pursuing ambitious creative projects.
This discussion provides concrete tools for leaders seeking to create environments where high performance and genuine workplace satisfaction reinforce each other, drawn from real-world applications across major corporate environments.
Listen to the episode here (you can also watch or read the transcript).
Additionally, here are the recent releases on FIRMSconsulting / StrategyTraining.com / Kris Safarova YouTube Channels:
IT Strategy vs. Corporate Strategy: Microsoft - with Kris Safarova
Access here.
How to Build Consulting Storyboards in 3 Weeks (This is How McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte Do It) - with Kris Safarova
Access here.
How to Feel Comfortable on Camera - with Kris Safarova
Access here.
Management Consulting Storyboard | Storyboarding used by McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, PwC et al. - with Kris Safarova
Access here.
McKinsey’s Rise to Prominence Under Marvin Bower - with Kris Safarova
Access here.
The Systems Behind Sustained High Performance with ADHD - with Kris Safarova
Access here.