BARTHES & CO ™ | BUSINESS CONSULTING IN ANDORRA |
The Power of Communication, Business Intelligence
& Data Analytics

Macbeth, the Forest, and the Digital Economy

Macbeth, the Forest, and the Digital Economy

The CEO’s fear, or when the trees don’t let see the forest

After ignorance, fear is probably the most destabilizing element in a CEO, since it does not allow him to make the right decisions, and what makes him a bad manager.

There is no doubt that Humanism is once again in vogue, thanks to the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (in reality, the Humanities should never have gone out of style).

Of all Shakespeare’s works, Macbeth is probably one of the most closely related to uncertainty, prophecies (what we would now call trends), visions, and the interpretation of the future.

There is a passage where the regicide threatens to hang a messenger when he assured him that he had literally seen the forest move…

For Macbeth’s troubled mind, the fact that the forest was moving was not a sign; in fact, he didn’t know how to interpret it. Instead, it represented a challenge to his thinking—desperate, fearful, and unable to grasp and understand an overwhelming amount of information (similar to that of many CEOs).

This is not a random scene, as the forest holds a high presence and symbolism in Shakespeare’s theater. In Spanish, there’s the well-known saying, «The tree doesn’t let you see the forest,» which refers to a lack of perspective and the inability to see or analyze the «Whole,» prioritizing the sum of the parts.

Steering clear of Macbeth’s ghosts and using comprehensive data analytics, business consulting plays an essential role in providing certainty and a future vision to companies participating in the digital economy.

If, on one hand, we can say that digitalization transforms and aids in the expansion of a business, primarily in accessing a global market (what we could call «the Forest»), this possibility also leads to an increase in the quantity of data (the Trees) generated by all channels in a business activity (design, supply, production, logistics, sales, among others). There comes a point where one can completely lose perspective and direction for a company (when «the forest moves,» as the messenger would say to Macbeth).


Business Consulting Service as a Solution

It’s in that situation, when a CEO is unable to encompass and control all the internal processes of a company, where an external business consulting service is in a better strategic position. It not only looks at the company as an individual entity and addresses its specific needs, but it identifies the whole, the company as a «Whole», and attempts to show it the paths the industry is following and predict the associated general consumer trends. with a particular industry.

Holistic thinking isn’t an ideal, pseudoscience, or chimera, but an analytical technique that involves analyzing internal, relevant, and specific company information, identifying data that genuinely adds value. At the same time, it can look beyond and make medium and long-term bets with the minimum possible risks on changes or alternatives that enable the company’s growth and benefit. Not with fear, like Macbeth, or as a sum of problems we don’t know how to confront, but as an actor capable of efficient development in a specific market.