Performance through people: Transforming human capital into competitive advantage
A dual focus on developing people and managing them well gives a select group of companies a long-term performance edge.
Content: Article | Authors: Anu Madgavkar, Bill Schaninger, Dana Maor, Hamid Samandari, Jonathan Woetzel, Kanmani Chockalingam, Olivia White, Sven Smit | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Best Practices, Human Resources, Training & Development
Ready, set, go, and keep going: Why speed is key to a successful transformation
In today’s business environment, companies seeking to transform all or part of their businesses need to create value quickly.
Content: Article | Authors: Louisa Greco, Zachary Silverman | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Change Management
Stop Losing Sales to Customer Indecision
For decades, salespeople have been taught that there is only one possible reason for lost sales: that salespeople have failed to defeat the customer’s status quo. Perhaps the customer doesn’t fully appreciate the problem that their solution is designed to solve. Or maybe they don’t yet see enough daylight between their company’s solution and that of the competition. So, salespeople break out their arsenal of … [ Read more ]
Content: Article | Authors: Matthew Dixon, Ted McKenna | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Marketing / Sales
Post-close excellence in large-deal M&A
The most successful large-deal transactions follow four key practices during integration execution.
Content: Article | Authors: Alex Liu, Brian Dinneen, Christine Johnson | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions
Author Talks: Turn your work enemies into allies
Whether you’re being interrupted in meetings or challenged at every turn, Amy Gallo shares tactics for getting value out of difficult work relationships.
Content: Article | Authors: Amy Gallo, Roberta Fusaro | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior
Michael Birshan
We live in the era of ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance issues] and we talk a lot about the “E,” but the “S” will also be crucial. This research shines a spotlight on some of the fundamental forces driving the phenomena we see today. One suggestion to business leaders is, know your numbers. What does your company’s value look like by pathway? What does … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Michael Birshan | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)
Michael Birshan
Value flows from corporations to households through eight different pathways. If you take a dollar of revenue that the average corporation generates, 25 cents of that flows through as labor income: wages, salaries, and other benefits to employees. Seven cents of that dollar goes to capital income, meaning dividends, share buybacks, and interest payments to debtholders. Six cents goes to investment—earnings that are retained to … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Michael Birshan | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Economics
How effective boards approach technology governance
As technology’s strategic importance to the business expands, management needs stronger board guidance. Four engagement models have proven useful.
Content: Article | Authors: Isabelle Tamburro, Sidney Li, Steve Van Kuiken, William Forrest | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Corporate Governance, IT / Technology / E-Business
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
So what happens when we automate our most impactful and superior cognitive capacity—thinking—and we don’t think for ourselves? I think we end up not acting in very smart ways, and then the algorithms are trained by behaviors that have very little to do with intelligence. Most of the stuff we spend doing on a habitual basis is quite predictable and monotonous and has very little … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Organizational Behavior
Aaron De Smet
What we found is teams with psychological safety and a supportive work environment actually benefit from being edgy and pushing to do better. But you put that same edge, that same kind of push, on a team that doesn’t have psychological safety or an open and supportive work environment, and it has the opposite effect. It actually makes the team go into a sort of … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Teamwork
Bill Schaninger
When people claim they have survey fatigue, they’re not tired of you asking them. They’re upset about you not doing anything with it.
Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Schaninger | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Motivation, Organizational Behavior
Bill Schaninger
Through most of the last three and a half, four decades, we’ve changed our approach to developmental experiences throughout childhood. In large part, it was to reward kids for their participation in order to avoid the disappointment of perceived failure. My point is we’ve raised two generations of folks who believe that participation and the collective is the end result. I think we’re seeing things … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Bill Schaninger | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Organizational Behavior
Aaron De Smet
If you want a test-and-learn environment, you have to make it OK to share failure, so that not only can I learn from failure but others can learn from my failure, and they don’t have to make the same mistakes I made.
Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure
Aaron De Smet
Sometimes we hear this thing about “embrace failure. Failure is good.” Actually, it’s not that failure is good. I, at least, don’t like failure. I like working with people who don’t like failure. But there’s a difference between not liking failure and having failure be taboo and not discussed or shared or learned from. If you never fail, you probably aren’t being bold enough.
Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Success / Failure
Aaron De Smet
Transaction costs are now low enough that you can have a gig economy. We can create technology-enabled platforms that allow us to have collaboration at scale through nonemployees or quasi employees.
Now there were some economists who said that when transaction costs fall enough, the large employed workforces will go away. That was the prediction. I never agreed with it, because another reason why people work … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Aaron De Smet | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Economics, Organizational Behavior
Author Talks: Rules of power from Jeffrey Pfeffer to help you get your way
Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer shares advice for gaining power through resources, reputation, and relationships.
Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Jeffrey Pfeffer, Simon London | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Power / Authority
Joe McCollum
In a traditional hierarchical organization, it is not unusual to see seven, eight, or even nine layers of management. In agile, that effectively goes down to three. It is a radical shift, as middle managers don’t exist in the agile model, but the middle-management function remains, albeit in a different form. The role of middle management absolutely continues to be done, just not any longer … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Joe McCollum | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior
Michiel Kruyt
Are you in a situation where the challenge you’re facing requires you to be adaptable, or can you solve it with things that have worked for you before? That distinction is a very important distinction, and it’s very helpful for people to determine if they can solve this situation with old answers or if they need to develop and be open for new things to … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Michiel Kruyt | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development
Why bad strategy is a ‘social contagion’
Author and academic Richard Rumelt explains how to develop strategies that aim to solve problems rather than simply state ambitions.
Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Richard Rumelt, Yuval Atsmon | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subject: Strategy
Marc Andreessen
I’ve learned that there are two kinds of mistakes in venture capital. There’s the mistake of commission, in which you invest in or go work for a company that fails. And then there’s the mistake of omission, in which you don’t invest in Google or don’t go to work at Facebook in 2005.
The longer you’re in this industry, the more you learn that the mistakes … [ Read more ]
Content: Quotation | Author: Marc Andreessen | Source: “McKinsey Quarterly” | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital