Featuring Boston Consulting Group’s Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz. Carlsson-Szlezak is BCG’s Global Chief Economist and a managing director and partner in the firm’s New York office. Swartz is Senior Economist and executive director. They coauthored How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk, in the July-August issue of HBR.
Complimentary HBR Webinar
Tuesday, July 16, 12:00 pm ET
Over the past five years, executives and investors have had to digest a rapid succession of macroeconomic shocks, crises, and false alarms. Leaders have had to pay more attention to macroeconomic risks and actively manage these risks.
However, unreliable forecasting, pervasive doomsaying, and whipsawing data severely hamper the task of decoding the macroeconomic landscape. How can leaders avoid these macro traps to make better tactical and strategic decisions?
On July 16, in a live, interactive, HBR webinar, Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak and Paul Swartz of BCG led a discussion about how to assess true economic risks, and why economic forecasts are no substitute for judgement.
This webinar focused on:
- The limits of various macroeconomic models
- Three principles for navigating the rising number of economic risks: 1) Don’t rely on one model; 2) Ignore doomsayers; and 3) Cultivate judgment through “economic eclecticism” that draws on multiple sources
- The importance of rational optimism
Carlsson-Szlezak and Swartz stressed the importance of judgment that involves identifying the critical drivers of a potential risk, building a narrative, and pressure-testing it from multiple perspectives.
Perfect foresight is impossible but executives are well-suited to develop the judgment necessary to anticipate and respond to macroeconomic risks.