When Paul Laudicina arrived at Kearney, he already brought with him a lifetime of experience—as a strategic planner for Mobil Oil Corporation, research associate at the United Nations, Associate Fellow at an economic policy think tank, a Congressional legislative director for then-Senator Joseph Biden, and as a senior executive of SRI International (Stanford Research Institute), where he founded its policy division.

And as he began his Kearney career, Paul saw a world grappling with sweeping political liberalization and rapidly accelerating globalization. So in 1992, he founded the Global Business Policy Council, a specialized strategic advisory services unit within Kearney, to help senior leaders in business, government and civil society rise to the challenge of navigating in a transformed world. A quarter-century later, the Council is one of the world’s best known and most respected private-sector think tanks.

After establishing the Global Business Policy Council, Paul was elected as the firm’s first post MBO managing partner and chairman of the board from 2006 to 2012. He guided Kearney through an extraordinary period of renewal and growth, expanding its global footprint to include offices in nearly 40 countries.

Today, the Council that Paul founded and its culture of strategic foresight are every bit as important—although global conditions have changed dramatically.

“The need to understand and manage change in today’s tumultuous operational environment could not be more compelling,” Paul says.

Globalization is being challenged, geopolitical risk has returned with a vengeance, the state of technology is unrecognizable from only a few years ago, and institutions—governments, companies, and all social institutions—are being tested as never before. Beyond that, massive, revolutionary shifts in the fundamental nature of production and consumption are changing the rules of the game.

Throughout this extraordinary transformation, Paul has been consistently called upon for his leadership and vision—as founder and leader of the Council; as the firm’s managing partner; as an author, columnist, commentator, and speaker; and as a consultant and mentor to global leaders.

“The essence of leadership is changing rapidly,” Paul says. “All too often, as Peter Drucker warned us years ago, leaders fail because they don’t understand that the assumptions driving their organizations no longer fit the reality around them. At the Council, we are committed to exploring that new reality—and what it means to leaders and their stakeholders.”

Thought Leadership