1159 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

Build self-awareness to build mutual awareness. If you don’t understand yourself—your work style preferences, your motivators, your strengths, your blind spots—you’re going to have trouble being an effective manager and a leader.

Content: Quotation | Author: Claire Hughes Johnson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Personal Development

We always talk about scaling companies, but companies are just collections of people. If you’re not really thoughtful about them and what they need to succeed, it’s going to be hard to succeed as a company.

Content: Quotation | Author: Claire Hughes Johnson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management, Organizational Behavior

There should be two tracks for promotions. Some people are promoted for their expertise, and others are promoted for their people management skills. So keeping those separate is key.

Content: Quotation | Author: Bryan Hancock | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Human Resources

Net present value is the bedrock of ROI estimates, but adding other factors to the analyses can help business leaders see how projects can advance corporate priorities beyond financial returns.

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Griggs, Kate Siegel, Mary Helen Matthews, Matt Banholzer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance

When appropriate, pay the best middle managers even more than your senior leaders to show how much you value them. If you hear complaints from the executives, make up the difference in equity. Compensation should be commensurate with the value a role creates.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock, Emily Field | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Compensation, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

What makes a high-performing innovation team is a diversity of perspectives and experiences, but in a psychologically safe space so that team members can actually share openly, come up with a common vocabulary, and look at the problem through very different lenses.

Content: Quotation | Author: Erik Roth | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

Team triumphs individuals. This is key. You want to have a unicorn culture eventually, but the team is more important. This implies that probably we need to redefine high-performing individuals.

What is a high-performing individual? This is what the unicorn idea does. A high-performing individual is not just the one who achieves business results. Unfortunately, too many times that’s the key criteria, the ability to perform … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mauro Porcini | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

We apply the three field tests of design thinking to every function of the company. The first is desirability, people, and human beings—what they want. The second is visibility: the technology of and applied to your product, plus process and manufacturing. Does it make sense for my company? Can I scale it up? The third lens is the business lens, the viability. Do I have … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mauro Porcini | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

This is one of the problems of focusing on the short term. You have many leaders that rotate every two, three years, so the idea that they’re going to invest part of their budget in something that’s going to generate value for the next manager, it’s not that attractive. So we need to rethink the way we reward these leaders and connect them to long-term … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mauro Porcini | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The second phase of my [new culture building] journey was the hidden rejection. People were rejecting me, but I was not aware of it. This is very typical when you try to change culture in any kind of organization. I learned something at that moment that changed the trajectory of my professional journey in these companies: every time I pitch an idea, I ask the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mauro Porcini | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Culture, Organizational Behavior

Leading companies are using transformation to achieve profitable growth—enabled by specific behaviors.

Content: Article | Authors: Drew Goldstein, Louisa Greco, Preeya Mody, Rebecca Doherty, Sandra Sancier-Sultan, Yolanda Zonno | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Management

When employers say the labor market’s tight, it’s that they can’t find people in the way they’re used to looking for people. And we have to ask them questions like, “Who are you considering? How are you getting applicants? What do you have in your ad?” Because we also see employers who will often advertise for more credentials than they need. And then we see … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Betsey Stevenson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

We see this correlation between well-being and higher earnings. What’s important is that whatever’s contributing to that ability to earn higher earnings, that ability for the country to be richer, is, in some way, contributing to higher well-being to the population.

And so people who say what they care about is higher well-being do have to be concerned with economic growth. Now, that said, it’s also … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Betsey Stevenson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Economics

This idea that all that mattered was your income relative to others was an idea known as the Easterlin paradox. So we did the simplest possible thing an economist could do, which is we gathered as much data as we could from all around the world. And we confirmed it’s absolutely true that within a country at a point in time, richer people are happier … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Justin Wolfers | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Economics

There are a large number of people who say the measure of a country is not its GDP—it’s the smiles, it’s the hugs, it’s the joy. It’s more than just that. It’s the meaning. And that’s true. But that doesn’t make economics irrelevant. It just says we should measure those things.

Content: Quotation | Author: Justin Wolfers | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Economics

Middle managers may have a reputation for being bureaucratic, but in reality they aren’t so much the cause of bureaucracy as a barometer for it.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Bryan Hancock, Emily Field, Stephanie Smallets | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Bureaucracy, Management, Organizational Behavior

Managers do not wake up and automatically know what great looks like, nor do they learn through osmosis. Instead, managers exhibit these [strong] behaviors when multiple factors are present: they have clear expectations, are given targeted training, understand why their actions matter, see inspiring leaders behaving similarly, and have support systems in place such as structure, role design, and rewards.

When any number of these factors … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Bryan Hancock, Emily Field, Stephanie Smallets | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

Effective leaders continually adapt their priorities, roles, time, and energy practices to stay ahead of new realities. Here’s why you need to do the same.

Content: Article | Authors: Arne Gast, Suchita Prasad | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Personal Development

A great innovator knows when something that’s being asserted is actually an assumption. Understanding the difference is important, because when you’re dealing with a certainty, you’re less likely to challenge it. It’s an assertion, and, therefore, you may follow it blindly and it may run you into a ditch. A great innovator will treat that same statement as an assumption, which lets them respond differently. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Erik Roth | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Innovation

The value of working together is intuitive to most leaders. Capturing the full value of operating as one firm, however, is elusive for most. Those who drive integration and standardization from the top down often stifle business-level innovation, entrepreneurship, and client responsiveness, which can further create talent attraction and retention issues. Those who emphasize local autonomy, however, often create massive inefficiencies, competing priorities, and inconsistent … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Blair Epstein, Caitlin Hewes, Scott Keller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior