Why CEOs Need A New Business Planning Playbook

Forbes

19-05-2025

One early winner from President Donald Trump's trip to the Middle East is undoubtedly Boeing, and new, record-breaking deals, could give it the runway to soar after a bad year. Up to 268 new Boeing aircraft were ordered by Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways and Saudi lessor AviLease. In a statement, Boeing said that these orders will support nearly 400,000 jobs in the U.S. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg traveled with Trump, and was on hand to personally receive the orders.
It could mark a turnaround for the aircraft manufacturer, which had a devastating 2024. A door plug on a 737 MAX 9 jet blew out mid-flight, grounding many airplanes; a two-month strike for more than 33,000 machinists; and planned prosecution for fraud charges in connection with two plane crashes in 2018 and 2019 that left 346 people dead. Boeing's stock saw an uptick last week as the deals were announced, and its current price is up nearly 4% compared to a week ago.
However, the success of the deals is contingent on Boeing actually being able to produce the planes. Last year's safety issues and strike both increased its backlog and forced production slowdowns. The company is ramping its deliveries back up, but according to Boeing's most recent earnings report, it has a backlog of more than 5,600 commercial airplanes. Aviation expert Mike Boyd told Bloomberg that these deals mean Boeing must deliver, and needs to clean up the problems that shaped its last year—as well as previous management issues in which analysts say the company became more focused on short-term profits and concentrated less on safety.
Boeing could be seeing another big deal with the federal government as well. The Wall Street Journal reports the federal government is planning to grant Boeing a nonprosecution agreement in the fraud case about the deadly plane crashes, which would allow the company to avoid a felony conviction. Under this agreement, which is not final, Boeing could pay $444 million to victims' families, as well as an additional $243 million fine, and be forced to hire an independent compliance consultant reporting to the Justice Department. An attorney for the victims' families told the Journal the agreement is a terrible deal that will protect Boeing from accountability. However, the legal deal would give Boeing as a company more ability to fulfill the Middle Eastern deals—and shows how the Trump Administration can help out big business, both on the deal and regulatory side.
The economic picture for all companies is shifting quickly, and it is difficult to plan for the future. I talked to Tom Strohl, president of business transformation firm Oliver Wight Americas, about how strategies such as integrated business planning can make it at least more manageable. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.
We'll be taking next Monday off for the Memorial Day holiday. The next edition of Forbes CEO will be published on Monday, June 2.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.While President Trump was in the Middle East forging business deals last week—many dealing with technology, AI and defense—the stock market saw a tech bump. But Wall Street's underlying issues didn't go away. On Friday, financial ratings firm Moody's downgraded the U.S. government's credit, citing rising government debt and interest payment ratios. Moody's was the last of the three ratings agencies to rank the U.S. as Aaa, and lowered it to Aa1. Stocks fell on Monday in response to the ratings cut, as did the dollar's value. Treasury yields also increased as more uncertainty was added.
Businesses are still wrestling with tariffs. Last week, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told investors that despite the company's attempts to hold the line, tariffs would result in higher prices in coming weeks, especially on items including bananas, avocados, coffee and roses that primarily come from other countries. Trump responded on Truth Social that Walmart should 'EAT THE TARIFFS,' especially because of Walmart's large profits. Sony also said last week that tariffs could drive the company to increase prices on its games and systems, and analysts say U.S. consumers may see higher prices soon.
The UnitedHealthcare building in Phoenix.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
Last week, UnitedHealth Group both unexpectedly announced a new CEO and suspended its financial outlook for the rest of the year due to rising healthcare costs in its Medicare Advantage business, writes Forbes senior contributor Bruce Japsen. The new CEO isn't all that new, though: It's Stephen J. Hemsley, who previously served as CEO from 2006 to 2017, and has been its board chair ever since. Japsen writes Hemsley's previous tenure was known for calm and steady financial performance—something that may be welcomed following a rare earnings miss in UnitedHealth's latest quarterly report. In a memo last week to employees, Hemsley started out with encouragement and optimism, writing that the company had 'the right strategy and structure for the era ahead, especially in the face of a health system that can be disconnected, inconsistent and inequitable.' Hemsley's predecessor, Andrew Witty, left the role for 'personal reasons.'
One day after Hemsley was named CEO, the Wall Street Journal reported UnitedHealth Group was being investigated by the Justice Department for potential Medicare fraud. The company told Forbes in an email that it was not notified of a potential Justice Department investigation. In the last week, the company's stock has dropped more than 10%.
Along with neon colors and metallic fabrics, there's another trend today straight out of the 1980s: shopping malls. Forbes senior contributor Pamela Danziger writes that even with widespread retail closures and heightened economic uncertainty among both consumers and businesses, visits to indoor malls were up 4% year-over-year last month. International Council of Shopping Centers Vice President of Research and Public Relations Stephanie Cegielski told Danziger that there appears to be more demand for brick-and-mortar retail spaces than supply, with retail vacancy dropping to a 20-year low of 5% last year. Statistics from L.E.K. Consulting found that 64% of Gen Z shoppers actually prefer in-store shopping, as do 59% of Millennials. However, the modern shopping mall mix is a bit different than the mall's first heyday, with more discount retailers and nontraditional experiential retailers including medispas and trampoline parks.
Oliver Wight Americas President Tom Strohl.
Oliver Wight Americas, Getty
In normal times, business planning can be challenging. The ups and downs of the last several months have made it much more challenging, though new theories such as integrated business planning can help it become more manageable. I talked to Tom Strohl, president at business transformation firm Oliver Wight Americas, about how to utilize integrated business planning to be able to make more accurate future forecasts in a volatile environment. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.
In a situation like this, is it possible to plan for the long term? How would you recommend doing it?
Strohl: When things are changing at the speed that they're changing right now, it's difficult. It's even difficult in a situation where you've got a plan in place. We would expect companies that are top tier performing companies to have a plan in place that represents a single version of truth for their business. And if they have that single version of truth—which is truth as they know it now—and things change, they can see very quickly the gaps created by that change and respond effectively, even to fast changes.
Where companies really run into trouble is when they're focused near term. They don't really have a plan. They don't have a single version of truth. They've got multiple versions of what they believe to be their plan. They've got one coming out of supply, one coming out of demand, one coming out of finance, one coming out of portfolio management. Things are just all over the place.
How does a business get this single version of truth?
That's what integrated business planning is all about. Integrated business planning is a senior management-led process that speaks to aligning the three key core business processes—which are portfolio management, demand management, supply management—but then align financials looking out into the future, minimally 24 months. Once you have that, now you can very quickly see when you've got a change—such as tariffs, regulatory or taxation changes, geopolitical issues, or even natural disasters. Now you have the ability to say, 'If that happens, then this is what we need to do.'
Ideally, companies that had a robust integrated business planning process would've already been using that even before November. But certainly, the new administration was telegraphing what they were going to be doing around tariffs, regulatory and taxation changes and all of that. Our position is, this isn't a question of whether it's good or bad. This is a question of it's happening, and what are you going to do? Back in November, if they were asking the questions, right now they'd be in a much better situation.
Some companies appear, in my view, to have been out in front on that because the minute the new administration came in, they were already making changes.
What kind of advice would you give to business leaders that are trying to shore up their planning process and be able to get a much better handle on everything?
First and foremost, educate yourself about what good looks like. Understand the capabilities that you have internally: the skill sets, the readiness level of your internal organization to be able to make these kinds of changes. And if you need help, get help.
If they're wanting to change, I fully support that, but make sure you know what you're doing. We have a phrase in our organization that says, 'Commitment without understanding is a liability.' And we see that a lot with clients. They're out trying to effect change, but they don't really understand the implications of the change, and it becomes a liability for them.
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