Forward Edge: The Hard Lessons Businesses Learn Too Late

Every business eventually meets the same set of lessons. Some arrive early and cost little. Others arrive late, after the damage is done. Forward Edge: The Hard Lessons Businesses Learn Too Late is a forthcoming book about those lessons, and about how leaders can learn them sooner.

Where the book comes from

The book is written by Rachel Marano, founder of Forward Edge Advisory. It draws on her more than 25 years of experience building, leading, and advising businesses through growth, transactions, and change, including co-founding Pivot Point Consulting in 2011 and leading it through capital raises, mergers, a divestiture, and two sales to private equity.

Over that time, the same patterns appeared again and again: in growing companies and established ones, in good markets and difficult ones. The book captures those patterns and what they teach.

What the book covers

Forward Edge is about seeing the realities, patterns, and risks that drive a business, and acting before they become expensive. It explores themes such as:

• Why growth tends to expose weaknesses rather than solve them.
• How small issues and delayed decisions accumulate.
• The difference between revenue and the underlying health of a business.
• Why people decisions are often the most consequential, and the most delayed.
• How leaders can recognize patterns in their own business sooner.

The firm behind the book

Forward Edge Advisory takes its name and its point of view from this work. The lessons in the book inform The 40 Hard Lessons™ Playbook, our EDGE Method, and the way our advisors approach every engagement across AI Solutions, Business Strategy & Advisory, and Executive & Talent Services.

Coming soon

Forward Edge: The Hard Lessons Businesses Learn Too Late is coming soon. Subscribe to Forward Edge Insights to hear when it is available.