9 Posts found for Author: Elizabeth Mygatt

As we get into the [organizational] imperatives, you’ll see most of them are about people: who we are, how we show up, how we see ourselves as part of a larger organization, how we collaborate. How we make decisions, how we show up as talent, and how we use the talent we have.

Content: Quotation | Author: Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Striking the right balance between decentralized functions and centralized control starts with addressing the needs of business units.

Content: Article | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Caitlin Hewes, Elizabeth Mygatt, Kirk Rieckhoff | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

As the business environment has become more complex and interconnected in recent years, many companies have mirrored these changes in their organizational structures, creating an ever-more convoluted matrix. Unwittingly, they are betting on organizational complexity to solve market complexity.

This is a losing bet. Future-ready organizations, by contrast, structure themselves in ways that make them fitter, flatter, faster, and far better at unlocking considerable value. Their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Leaders hoping to create a robust performance culture need to start by cooking up their organization’s own unique “secret sauce.” The main ingredient: specific, observable behaviors that employees at all levels of the company adhere to.

Broad themes won’t cut it. Instead, behaviors must be made an integral part of core business activities and specific work tasks, especially for the moments that matter.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

While all companies have a strategy for how they create value, few can show precisely how the organization will achieve it. Future-ready companies, by contrast, avoid this dilemma by creating a value agenda—a map that disaggregates a company’s ambitions and targets into tangible organizational elements such as business units, regions, product lines, and even key capabilities. Armed with such a depiction, these companies can articulate … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

Ronald Coase argued that corporations exist to avoid the transaction costs of the free market. Yet with transaction costs plummeting (spurred by rising connectivity) this rationale no longer holds up. Why, then, do companies exist?

The answer is identity. People long to belong, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Companies that fixate only on profits will lose ground to organizations that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: General, History

Ask executives about their company and you can expect to be shown an organization chart. No wonder. The management concepts that the org chart visualizes—coordination, hierarchy, a matrixed organization—are the ones leaders grew up with and know best, as did generations before them. The original org chart hails from 1854, and was introduced to help run the New York and Erie Railroad during the age of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

From project-based work to a lack of hierarchy, the way people work is changing fast. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Chris Gagnon and Elizabeth Mygatt talk about what it takes for companies to be “future ready”

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Gagnon, Diane Brady, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Companies should embrace nine imperatives that collectively explain “who we are” as an organization, “how we operate,” and “how we grow.”

Content: Article | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Chris Gagnon, Elizabeth Mygatt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Management