Scott Keller
With experience comes pattern recognition and resilience, the ability to separate yourself from individual setbacks enough to see that the far side of failure is success if you reflect on the lessons.
Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Keller | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Management, Personal Development, Success / Failure
Scott Keller
The best CEOs don’t just tell people, “This is where we’re going,” and expect them to follow. They understand the underlying psychology at play. For example, researchers have done experiments where they give lottery tickets to a group and half get a ticket with an assigned number and the other half gets a blank piece of paper where they write their own number. Then, before … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Scott Keller | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Leadership, Management
A practical guide to new-business building for incumbents
Five lessons for incumbents on how to build and scale new digital ventures—and increase their odds of success.
Content: Article | Authors: Nimal Manuel, Ralf Dreischmeier, Tomas Beerthuis, Tomas Laboutka | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Management
Cracking the growth code: The ten rules of growth explained
Experts behind the rules of value-creating growth discuss how leaders can apply these insights to their growth strategies.
Content: Article | Authors: Chris Bradley, Rebecca Doherty | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Strategy
Deb Roy
When we talk about the format of storytelling, there’s the specific format of the medium—motion and sound, resolution, and aspect ratio—that create a channel within which you have to fit the story. And then there are the diffusion properties that affect where a story can go, how long it’s going to live on, and how it’s going to morph as it passes through the hands … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Deb Roy | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Storytelling
Jony Ive
The difference between an idea and a product is that you’ve solved the problems. When someone says to me, “Well, you can’t do this for these reasons,” all it means is that there are problems to be solved. If they can be solved, the idea transitions into becoming a thing. If they can’t, it remains an idea.
Content: Quotation | Author: Jony Ive | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation
Jony Ive
A lot of mistakes are made when you frame a problem, because you could already be dismissing 60 percent, 70 percent of the potential ideas.
Content: Quotation | Author: Jony Ive | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Management
Fear factor: Overcoming human barriers to innovation
Worries about failure, criticism, and career impact hold back many people from embracing innovation. Here’s how to create a culture that accounts for the human side of innovation.
Content: Article | Authors: Alex Morris, Erik Roth, Laura Furstenthal | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation, Organizational Behavior
What makes a successful CEO?
McKinsey leaders have interviewed hundreds of CEOs and studied performance data on thousands more. We’ve published a number of leading articles, reports, and podcasts on the subject—as well as the 2023 bestselling book CEO Excellence. In this Explainer, we lay out the fundamentals of what it takes to succeed in the top job.
Content: Article | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Corporate Governance
Growth rules: Which matter most?
Ten rules should guide how companies select pathways to profitable growth, but each rule’s impact on performance varies considerably.
Content: Article | Authors: Chris Bradley, Jill Zucker, Rebecca Doherty, Tido Röder | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy
Sheena Iyengar
So often, we tell people to do out-of-the-box thinking. Then we stick them in the room and tell them to brainstorm. Well, brainstorming is a great way to share the knowledge that’s in the room. But it’s not out-of-the-box thinking. Out-of-the-box thinking requires you to search far and wide for how different industries and different people at different points in time have solved for analogous … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Sheena Iyengar | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Innovation
Chris Bradley, Rebecca Doherty
If you can achieve consistent growth, that’s the surest ticket to outperformance, but only 10 percent of companies manage to do that over a decade. Those that can’t should consider a strategy we call “shrink to grow.” This is like pruning back and then growing from there. Over a ten-year period, you may have one or two major dips in your growth that represent large … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Rebecca Doherty | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Management, Strategy
Rebecca Doherty
Programmatic M&A is making a series of acquisitions to support a single business theme or strategy. You might do one or two larger anchor acquisitions, then you would follow up with smaller ones to build out the business. The idea is that you develop capabilities to both identify acquisition targets and integrate them, so M&A is a capability in the same way that sales and … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Rebecca Doherty | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions
Chris Bradley
Oftentimes, companies think that growth is sacrificial—you have to endure long periods of low profit to generate growth. That is not true. The order is not growth followed by profit; it’s high returns followed by growth. In fact, companies that begin with returns on capital higher than the cost of capital go on to grow at double the rate of those that don’t start out … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Management, Strategy
Author Talks: Peter Fader and Michael Ross share their playbook for customer centricity
When is the last time you took stock of your customer base? Two marketing and data experts say it’s due for a systematic review.
Content: Article | Authors: Anita Balchandani, Michael Ross, Peter Fader | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales
Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint
Driving sustainable, inclusive growth requires the right mindset, strategy, and capabilities. Here are some steps that could help foster successful growth.
Content: Article | Authors: Andre Gaeta, Biljana Cvetanovski, Erik Roth, Greg Kelly, Ishaan Seth, Jill Zucker, Michael Birshan, Rebecca Doherty, Tjark Freundt | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Strategy
Global flows: The ties that bind in an interconnected world
Economic and political turbulence have prompted speculation that the world is already deglobalizing. But the evidence suggests that global integration is here to stay, albeit with nuance.
Content: Article | Authors: Hamid Samandari, Jeongmin Seong, Jonathan Woetzel, Michael Birshan, Olivia White, Sven Smit, Tiago Devesa | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Economics, International, Trade
A better way to drive your business
Integrated business planning is a well-known process, particularly among supply chain leaders. But in most companies, P&L owners are missing out.
Content: Article | Authors: Ali Sankur, Elena Dumitrescu, Ketan Shah, Matt Jochim | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Management, Operations
Deidre Paknad
Where there’s a culture of compliance, where everybody gets paid for coming in on 100 percent of their numbers, there you have a deeply ingrained mindset that aims for safety, not for great. In this case it’s optimizing for personal income, as opposed to optimizing for the acceleration of the organization. There’s real work to overcome the mindset of everybody optimizing for their paycheck, instead … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Deidre Paknad | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Deidre Paknad
In transformation, every organization looks like a start-up, learning each quarter as it drives a new business model in new sectors, and operates in new ways. The conditions in large enterprise look very much like the conditions have always looked in a young company trying to create a segment or a category or launch a new product.
Content: Quotation | Author: Deidre Paknad | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Change Management