Tunheim

1. The Medicaid squeeze has become a community conversation The federal budget law enacted in 2025 cuts Medicaid by roughly $1T nationally, and Minnesota officials estimate the effect at around $500M a year in lost reimbursement for hospital and nursing home care. The pain falls first on rural and safety-net hospitals already running on the thinnest margins, and the new federal rural fund will cover only a fraction of the loss.

Ag and food companies have always managed risk. Weather, markets, regulation, the moods of shoppers. You have tackled uncontrollable challenges for generations. The last two years changed the risk equation: immigration enforcement, inflation, on-again off-again tariffs, global flashpoints snarling transportation, and the MAHA movement reshaping both policy and what people expect on a label. Risk as a challenge is not new.

If you’re in a growth position, at some point over the past few months, someone has asked you what your plan is for GEO. Most likely, the person who asked you doesn’t actually know what GEO is. Let’s say it’s a senior board member, so we’re all visualizing the same person, hearing the same intonation.

When a crisis strikes, global companies often discover just how local their reputations really are. The same issue can play out very differently in Mexico City, Mumbai, or Minneapolis — shaped by cultural norms, political climates, media dynamics, and public expectations. That’s why global brands need more than a playbook.

Are you familiar with EOS? EOS is Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is a business management framework captured in the book Traction by Gino Wickman. EOS helps organizations gain traction, align around priorities, and achieve growth through a set of practical tools and systems. If the internal leadership team and the organization are running on EOS, it makes sense to extend it to their critical partners, too. When an organization commits to EOS, it changes how decisions are made.

Across industries, we’re watching organizations arrive at what we now call The Breaking Point, a period when the economics of an organization change faster than the relationships that have historically sustained it. We believe The Breaking Point is becoming one of the defining leadership challenges of this decade. Organizations aren’t struggling because they’re making poor decisions.

Imagine a nonprofit rolling out a bold new mission at an upcoming press conference. The CEO’s speech is polished, her hair looks great, the deck sparkles, reporters tweet sound bites about innovation and the potential impact. Meanwhile, back in the office, a project manager sends a Slack message to their marketing colleague: “Did anyone know we were doing this?” Silence. A few confused GIFs ensue. Same brand, two stories.

It’s the one thing nobody wants to think about: Recession. In October 2025, Moody’s Analytics reported that 22 U.S. states are either in or near recession. Consumer pessimism is climbing. Inflation is lingering. Major sectors are cutting jobs. The federal shutdown continues. And yet, many companies are budgeting for business-as-usual. That’s a mistake. Recessions are disruptive, but they’re also clarifying.

Walk through a college campus or concert venue, and you might spot a flip phone snapped shut or a Walkman clipped to a belt. For a generation raised online, Gen Z is taking a surprising analog turn as some return to landline phones or – gasp! – even talking on the phone. But before you shrug this off as yet another fad, think seriously about the implications for brands. This isn’t simply about quirky aesthetics or fleeting nostalgia.

There’s a certain myth around the “breakthrough idea” — the kind of concept that reinvents a product, captures the imagination of a market, or creates something entirely new. We treat it like lightning: random, rare, and impossible to harness. But the truth is, real breakthroughs — the kind that move companies forward and shift customer expectations — don’t come from luck. They come from process. The cost of sameness is getting higher.