1160 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

Rotman School of Management professor Ajay Agrawal explains how AI changes the cost of prediction and what this means for business.

Content: Article | Author: Ajay Agrawal | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, IT / Technology / E-Business

It is nearly impossible to make the big moves that successful strategies require if resources are thinly spread across all businesses and operations. Our data show that you are far more likely to achieve a major performance improvement when one or two businesses break out than when every business improves in lockstep. You have to identify those breakout opportunities as early as possible and feed … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Strategy

Messy, fast-changing strategic uncertainties abound in today’s business environment. The yearly planning cycle and the linear world of three- to five-year plans are a poor fit with these dynamic realities. Instead, you need a rolling plan that you can update as needed.

In our experience, the best way to create such a plan is to hold regular strategy conversations with your top team, perhaps as a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

People who find meaning at work are happier, more productive, and more engaged. Four practical interventions can help make the search more likely to succeed.

Content: Article | Authors: Dan Cable, Freek Vermeulen | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

We always look at leadership through the lens of leading teams, leading others, leading businesses, and leading change. But the most daunting task, for the most junior and the most senior among us, is leading ourselves. It’s a duty we have, first, toward ourselves, and then toward our business and toward our people, to support them in their leadership journey and development.

Content: Quotation | Author: Alain Bejjani | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Personal Development

Companies pursuing revenue synergies can’t take them for granted. Leaders need a clear grasp of where those synergies lie—and the persistence to capture them.

Content: Article | Authors: Alex Liu, John Chartier, Nikolaus Raberger, Rui Silva | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

It’s essential to track assumptions over time. A few short weeks after the plan is developed, the detailed assumptions go into a fog of memory. The variance to budget gets tracked very carefully, but the underlying assumptions—such as uptake rates, market growth, or inflation rates—are not assessed as carefully. Rather, decide what you can today, with the information you have, and build explicit trigger points … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

We found that your industry’s performance is responsible for almost half of your position on the [economic profit] power curve. Industry impact is so substantial, in fact, that you would be better off as an average company in a great industry than a great company in an average industry. But here is the kicker: mobility on the curve is possible—but rare. The odds of a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

At some level, it is easy for the CEO to deal with uncertainty by playing the portfolio game of spreading investment like peanut butter around numerous businesses, knowing that not every bet has to pay off for the total plan to work. The problem is that a portfolio game on the corporate level becomes a matter of all-in commitment for an individual-business-unit leader. We have … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Strategy

Uncertainty is not only everywhere in and around strategy—it is the very reason we need strategy. Without uncertainty, we would just need a plan to go from A to B.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Is the way you measure product-development performance harming your company’s health? New research suggests that it might be.

Content: Article | Authors: Marek Kowski, Mike Gordon, Sander Smits | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Products & Services

As recent McKinsey Global Institute research indicates, there’s a yawning divide between leaders and laggards in the application of AI both across and within sectors. Executives hoping to narrow the gap must be able to address AI in an informed way. In other words, they need to understand not just where AI can boost innovation, insight, and decision making; lead to revenue growth; and capture … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: James Manyika, Mehdi Miremadi, Michael Chui | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

Developing a great strategy starts with changing the dynamics in your strategy room. Here’s how.

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

The role of the board is often underplayed in discussions around talent. That’s because so many boards focus on strategy and compliance first, and limit talent discussions to the question of CEO succession and executive compensation. But CEOs running a talent-first organization must help the board see that talent is the value creator and therefore belongs at the top of its agenda. The talent-driven CEO … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Dennis Carey, Dominic Barton, Ram Charan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Human Resources

Business strategy, at its heart, is about beating the market; that is, defying the power of “perfect” markets to push economic surplus to zero. Economic profit—the total profit after the cost of capital is subtracted—measures the success of that defiance by showing what is left after the forces of competition have played out.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smit | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Strategy

To most leaders, the speed and flexibility that drive innovation lie at the opposite end of the spectrum from standardization and centralization, which promote efficiency and control risk. Not so. Rita Gunther McGrath’s research sheds light on agile organizations. Large companies that raise their income disproportionately, she found, have two main characteristics: they are innovative and experimental and can move quickly but also have consistent … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Mary Meaney, Scott Keller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Change Management, Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

What we know—and what everyone needs to know—about the quest for equality.

Content: Article | Authors: Lareina Yee, Sandrine Devillard, Vivian Hunt | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Women in Business

To speed innovation and fend off disruption, R&D organizations at incumbent companies can borrow the tools and techniques that digital natives use to get ahead.

Content: Article | Authors: Dominik Hepp, Hannes Erntell, Mickael Brossard | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Innovation

What a lot of people who need to carry out decisions want to know are two things in addition to the decision. Why? Because why gives them context. It gives them more clarity on how this connects to other things and what the full set of expectations are about what the decision is supposed to produce and why we made it and what the tradeoffs … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

Who manages in an agile organization? And what exactly do they do?

Content: Article | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior