15 Posts found for Author: Lowell Bryan

Most measurements of performance are geared to the needs of 20th-century manufacturing companies. Times have changed. Metrics must change as well.

Content: Article | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

Companies can’t predict the future, but they can build organizations that will survive and flourish under just about any possible future.

Content: Article | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

The hallmark of financial performance in today’s digital age is an expanded ability to earn “rents” from intangibles. Profit per employee is one measure of these rents. ROIC is another. If a company boosts its profit per employee without increasing its capital intensity, management will increase its rents, just as raising ROIC above the cost of capital would. The difference is that viewing profit per … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance

Uncertainty and rising levels of risk make it impossible for companies to determine the future. But a portfolio-of-initiatives approach to strategy can help ensure that companies take full advantage of their best opportunities without taking unnecessary risks.

Content: Article | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

In this interactive presentation—one in a series of multimedia frameworks—Lowell Bryan, a director in McKinsey’s New York office, describes the strategic control map, a framework that tracks the dynamics of market capitalization within industries.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

In this interactive presentation, McKinsey director Lowell Bryan talks about the origins of the portfolio-of-initiatives framework. Developed to address the need for strategy in a more fluid, less predictable environment, this approach treats strategies as actions that require continual monitoring and evaluation.

Content: Article | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

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Formalizing a company’s ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value.

Content: Article | Authors: Eric Matson, Leigh M. Weiss, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

As globalization continues to play out over the next 30 years, geographic and regulatory barriers will fall, electronic distribution will start to parallel and even overtake physical distribution, installed capacity will become obsolete before it is depreciated, and focused competitors will attack like piranhas. Companies must restructure or die.

Editor’s Note: a bit topical in places (written in 1999) but still a good read

Content: Article | Authors: Jane Fraser, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: International, Management, Strategy

Most companies put too little energy into adapting core businesses to changing markets. Indeed, they often unintentionally harvest their core businesses by pushing for short-term performance while neglecting the investments needed to stay ahead of the game. Often, companies move only when competitors start investing aggressively. When these companies do act, they usually make insufficient small-bet investments in diagnosis and design and skip the medium-bet … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Big corporations must make sweeping organizational changes to get the best from their professionals.

Content: Article | Authors: Claudia Joyce, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Companies that understand the value of talented people in generating brands, reputations, and other intangibles often spend considerable time recruiting such workers but drop the ball in providing them with opportunities to develop and grow.

Content: Article | Authors: Claudia Joyce, Leigh M. Weiss, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources

Generating great performance requires a more dynamic approach to building and adapting a company’s capabilities than merely squeezing its operations.

Content: Article | Authors: Lowell Bryan, Ron Hulme | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

The proprietary knowledge that resides in the minds of a company’s top professionals is a source of competitive advantage. An effective, efficient, company-wide knowledge market can deliver this power in ways that past efforts at knowledge management have failed to do. By creating a market mechanism for knowledge and a culture that encourages employees to share valuable knowledge with peers, companies can aggregate internal supply … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Knowledge Management

In Race for the World, consultants with McKinsey & Co. look at the vast changes in the world’s economy that are altering the way almost everyone does business. The authors believe that geographic barriers to business will virtually disappear over the next 30 years and that the implications for companies could be devastating–or incredibly rewarding. “Over time, the only class that matters will be world … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Jane Fraser, Jeremy M. Oppenheim, Lowell Bryan, Wilhelm Rall | Subjects: Economics, International