Peter Killing

Peter J. Killing is Emeritus Professor of Strategy at IMD.

Peter J. Killing's teaching, research, and consulting activities focus on leaders, at many levels in the organization, who are working with their teams to create the right strategy for their business and build the team needed to deliver that strategy. There are two main questions he addresses: What should we do, and how should we get it done, i.e. do we have the right team, and are we managing it well?

A powerful technique for creating strategic focus and building team energy is captured in the book Must-Win Battles (written with Professor Tom Malnight and Tracey Keys). The strong reception this book has received has resulted in Peter J. Killing running must-win battle workshops, usually lasting from three days to a week, for company teams in North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe over the past ten years.

In addition to working with top teams, Peter J. Killing has run programs for high-potential and senior employees, in a variety of companies, including large and small, domestic and global, family owned and publically listed companies. Prominent programs that he has taught on include a high-potential program for BMW (a three-day program run six times over five years), a three-module senior management program for Vestas, the world-leading Danish wind power company, change programs for many divisions of Nestlé, the world's largest food company, and a five-day change program for Sika, a global technology company focused on chemicals for the construction industry. Occasionally, as in the case of Sika and Tate and Lyle, the UK-based sweetener company, case studies are written specifically for the program in question. The T&L case study, for example, focuses on the creation of a joint venture with DuPont.

Many of the concepts that are reflected in Peter J. Killing's teaching are captured in Must-Win Battles (which has been translated into Korean, Chinese, and Danish) and Strategic Analysis and Action, a textbook currently in its eighth edition. The change leadership model in Strategic Analysis and Action has influenced the activities of many individual managers and companies, including, to name a few of the larger ones, Exxon Mobil, Nestlé, and Scottish and Newcastle. Peter J. Killing has also written a book and articles on the design and management of joint ventures, and for Grupo Modelo in Mexico City, he designed and ran three programs focused on the design and management of alliances.

Peter J. Killing's teaching style is very engaging, interactive and participant-focused. For each of the 15 years he was based in Switzerland, he was ranked one of the top teachers at IMD. He is currently living near Vancouver, and as an emeritus professor, he enjoys working on especially interesting projects.