New Releases on StrategyTraining.com
We’ve just released several powerful new episodes for Insider and Legacy members, plus a major Strategy Control Room Advanced update.
This release includes a 126-slide full study focused on Infrastructure Funding Strategy, a comprehensive system to navigate financing, risk, and economic scenarios for large-scale national projects. If you work with clients on complex capital decisions, this is essential.
Alongside it, new training episodes are now live, designed to help you take deliberate action, elevate your thinking, and solve the problems others can’t. These are battle-tested and highly effective approaches for 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 a Visionary - Episode 1 of 4
What if doing everything right still isn’t enough to move you forward? This program explores the hidden leap from trusted executor to visionary leader.
Episode title: Long-term member, trusted executor, unsure what leadership wanted
The MasterPlan Advanced – Episode 33 of 4
This program builds on the most transformative career strategy work we have done to date. Drawing on decades of working with senior executives, The MasterPlan Advanced explores what it takes to go from well-off to truly wealthy, across career, relationships, investing, health, and more. And wealth here is not only financial. It’s also about freedom, impact, and alignment.
Episode title: The identity shift
The Bill Matassoni Show, Season 3 (Part 2 - Nicholas Gertler) – Episode 2 of 15
In this part of Season 3, Bill Matassoni begins a thought-provoking conversation with Nicholas Gertler, a former colleague from McKinsey. Their discussion explores how strategic thinking can be used to redesign systems that create value for all stakeholders. Rather than focusing on traditional advertising or sales tactics, Bill explores how storytelling and influence can be used to reshape industries, organizations, and relationships. These insights are designed to help you solve complex problems that others cannot or will not address. Filmed at the iconic Philip Johnson Glass House, this episode challenges you to rethink how value is created and how your work can drive meaningful, long-term change. The series has reached leaders around the world, from China to Canada, offering practical tools to expand your perspective and uncover opportunities others overlook.
Episode title: Creating win-win systems
For Legacy Members
In addition to all Insider episodes, Legacy members receive these exclusive episodes:
(New) Segmenting Your Customers - Episode 5 of 5
What happens when the way you earn a living slowly pulls you away from who you really are? This episode unpacks how inauthenticity creeps into your work, why it leads to burnout, and how to rebuild both your external brand and internal sense of self. If you’ve ever sensed a growing gap between what your clients need and what you want to offer, this is the roadmap for closing that gap, on your terms.
Episode title: Three ways to engage clients
(New) Resiliency and Scenario Planning - Episode 4 of 5
There’s a problem all companies are facing, but few are truly addressing it. The strength of your strategy is not only in getting it right. It’s also in how quickly you can recover when reality doesn’t go your way. This episode challenges conventional planning models. If your company, or your career, depends too heavily on being “right,” this is your playbook for becoming prepared, adaptive, and hard to knock off course.
Episode title: The problem ALL companies are facing
(New) Writing an Article - Episode 3 of 4
Most people who want to write an article start with the wrong question: How do I write something good? That’s not the right place to begin. This program dissects what an article really is and how to shape a message that serves your broader life and professional goals. Before writing a word, you’ll examine your runway, IP, and trajectory the same way we’d approach a market entry or regulatory challenge. You’ll leave with a method to uncover the one idea the world needs to hear from you and a plan to ensure the right people are listening.
Episode title: There is only one goal in writing
Insiders can move to Legacy anytime and back to Insider without losing Insider status. To move to Legacy, click on a Legacy program while you are logged in, and the system will offer an opportunity to upgrade. When going back to Insider, email us at team@firmsconsulting.com so we can manually restore your Insider status (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 new episodes, now available on iTunes, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms.
Listen in and stay sharp.
Former Biotech CEO and Harvard Medical School Faculty Member Margaret Moore on the Science of Good Leadership - with Margaret Moore
Margaret Moore, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and former biotech CEO, brings decades of experience at the intersection of science, strategy, and human development. In this episode, she unpacks The Science of Leadership, the forthcoming book she co-authored after reviewing hundreds of meta-analyses and large-scale studies, ultimately synthesizing leadership science into a framework of nine essential capacities.
Moore emphasizes the role of conscious leadership, defined as the ability to “see things clearly” by quieting internal “ego noise”, impatience, and worry that cloud judgment. She highlights the emerging concept of the quiet ego, noting that “you’re still impactful... but with a way of being quiet about it that people can absorb more easily.”
Challenging conventional strength-based approaches, Moore advocates for psychological wholeness, encouraging leaders to access underused capacities such as empathy, creativity, and intuition to become more balanced and mature decision-makers.
She also discusses how intuition, often misunderstood as abstract, is a skill that can be developed through stillness, reflection, and experience: “Creativity is flow, and flow is when you let go of control… It’s the opposite of our main mode.”
The conversation underscores the importance of strategic adaptability. Drawing on research, Moore shares that while humility doesn't improve a leader’s own performance, “other people’s performance is improved if you’re humble. So you don’t do it for yourself, you do it for them.” But she also cautions: in crises, “humility is not what people want. They want strong leaders out in front, in charge.”
Finally, Moore distinguishes between empathy and compassionate leadership, where compassion is “respect and understanding… with action.”
Listen to the episode here (you can also watch or read the transcript).
Multi-Award-Winning Researcher Vanessa Druskat on Team Emotional Intelligence - with Vanessa Druskat
Vanessa Druskat, organizational psychologist and professor at the University of New Hampshire, discusses team emotional intelligence (EI) as a predictor of sustained performance. Building on her foundational work with Daniel Goleman, Druskat focuses not on individual EQ, but on the group-level norms and practices that distinguish effective teams, particularly in complex, high-stakes environments.
Druskat identifies three core team norms essential to cultivating group EI: mutual trust, constructive expression of emotions, and norms that support individual and group self-awareness.
Key takeaways include:
High-performing teams are not those without conflict, but those with processes for metabolizing conflict. Druskat emphasizes the role of emotional expression norms in allowing task-related disagreement while mitigating interpersonal friction.
Leaders significantly influence team EI by modeling openness and emotional competence, but sustained performance requires that these behaviors be embedded in team norms, not reliant on individual charisma or authority.
Team emotional intelligence predicts effectiveness beyond technical competence, especially when teams must adapt to ambiguity, pressure, or interdependence. Druskat cites multiple studies where team EI predicted performance outcomes more reliably than IQ or experience.
Psychological safety is necessary but not sufficient. Teams with high EI create an environment where members not only feel safe but are also expected to monitor and manage the group’s emotional climate.
Organizations often undermine team EI unintentionally, through forced competition, misaligned incentives, or ignoring the emotional fallout of change. Druskat suggests that senior leaders regularly audit not just team outcomes, but the emotional processes behind them.
This episode reframes emotional intelligence not as a personal trait but as an institutional capability with measurable consequences for execution, resilience, and organizational learning. The discussion is particularly relevant for senior professionals seeking to institutionalize performance through culture rather than control.
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.
How to Enroll in Insider, Legacy or Strategy Control Room Advanced:
You can enroll at any time. Enrollments are currently open. Simply visit StrategyTraining.com and select your membership tier.
If you are already an Insider and want to move to Legacy, click on any Legacy program while logged in, and the system will prompt you to upgrade.
Insiders can move back from Legacy to Insider without losing Insider status. When you are ready to switch back, email us at team@firmsconsulting.com, and we will handle the transition.
You can also enroll in Strategy Control Room Advanced (our huge reading library with full studies, proposals, centers of excellence, and books) here. If you prefer to start with a monthly SCR membership, you can request an upgrade to Advanced status by emailing team@firmsconsulting.com when your 7th month begins.
There is always another level of impact. We are here to help you reach it.