Research shows that 9% of companies come out of a recession stronger than ever. Here’s how they lay the groundwork for success....

In the movie Forrest Gump, the protagonist becomes a very rich man due to a natural disaster and its unforeseen business consequences. When he first enters the shrimp boating business, Forrest catches no shrimp. His fortunes change when a hurricane strikes and his boat is the only one to survive the disaster. Facing no competition, he becomes a multimillionaire....

Companies deliver superior results when executives manage for long-term value creation and resist pressure from analysts and investors to focus excessively on meeting Wall Street’s quarterly earnings expectations. This has long seemed intuitively true to us. We’ve seen companies such as Unilever, AT&T, and Amazon succeed by sticking resolutely to a long-term view. And yet we have not had the comprehensive data needed to quantify the payoff from managing for the long term — until now....

Striving to increase workplace diversity is not an empty slogan — it is a good business decision. A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean....