Here’s a startling fact: In the first half of this year, I personally delivered 99 unique business acumen and leadership workshops, each centered around business simulations, focused on improving decision-making, strategic thinking, and driving results through clear strategic goals and objectives.

And yet, in those 99 sessions, not a single team—0.0%—completed their goals and objectives forms correctly in either their pre-simulation planning or their final board of directors’ presentations.

Let that sink in for a moment. More than 2,800 participants engaged in an exercise to set and execute a strategy in a simulated business environment, and not a single one came up with acceptable goals and objectives.

Over the past week, I’ve had the privilege of facilitating two unique business acumensimulation workshops for pharmaceutical marketers, each centered around building and applying omnichannel marketing skills.

These simulations brought together marketers at various levels, from new hires to experienced franchise leaders, all aiming to better understand how to orchestrate meaningful and measurable engagement across an increasingly complex channel mix.

One of the most striking observations from these sessions was how the term 'omnichannel' can mean different things to different people. Even within the same organization, and sometimes even within the same brand team, definitions and execution approaches can vary widely. That’s why, for the purposes of this blog, we define omnichannel marketing skillsas:

The ability to design and execute integrated, personalized customer engagement strategies across multiple channels, aligned to business objectives and measured by customer behavior change and commercial impact.

With that working definition in mind, here are five critical things every omnichannel marketer must know in 2025 and beyond, based on what we’ve learned in our simulations.

You don’t have to be the most intelligent person in the world to realize that people are distracted and can easily lose focus in times of turmoil. The headlines scream something new and unexpected every day, ranging from tariffs, wars, regulatory shifts, and political upheaval, while everyone is still expected to wake up, go to work, and cope with it all.

And yet, in the past six months of global turmoil, when many businesses have been reeling from the daily barrage of uncertainty, several companies, like Procter & Gamble (P&G), have actually thrived.

The P&G Example: Clarity Amid Chaos
While many consumer goods companies cut marketing, paused innovation, or pulled back from volatile markets, P&G took the opposite approach. They doubled down on brand strength, employee engagement, and operational discipline. Despite inflationary pressures and regional disruptions, P&G posted solid growth across key categories and markets.

It hit me a few days ago, when I was in our den, buried in some work. I overheard my wife in another room, speaking oddly, considering we were the only people in the house, and I knew she wasn’t on the phone, in an unusually structured tone for a Saturday.

Her voice was soft and deliberate,  almost deferential. I asked who she was talking to. “ChatGPT,” she said, and after a beat or two, we burst out laughing. It was the first time I’d heard her speak aloud to a non-human natural-language model, and because I do it too.

Some quick, informal research suggested that many of us do this as well. As our laughter gave way to a more serious discussion, we realized we needed a name for the phenomenon. My wife went back to ChatGPT to create one: "botcourting.”

The need for business leaders at all levels to have business acumen skills is growing and has never been more needed than today. At the same time, these same business leaders, who are struggling with their business acumen, are embracing the power of Artificial Intelligence and the support it can provide in making critical business decisions that execute strategy and deliver value to customers and shareholders.

These two things are not mutually exclusive; you can’t simply use AI to make business decisions without possessing the necessary business acumen skills to understand the situation, challenges, and opportunities.

I recently had a discussion with one of our clients who was wondering how we can integrate more AI into our simulation workshops in a way that helps participants learn about the AI tools they can use to increase their efficiency and make better decisions.