1160 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

… the matrix organization […] gained favor in the 1970s as a solution for large organizations struggling to coordinate decision making and activities that cut across functional and business-unit lines. The theory was strong, but when Tom Peters appraised the scene, in the late 1970s, “the matrix ‘solution’ had brought with it problems at least as knotty as those it was supposed to cure.”

The quest … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Aaron De Smet, Suzanne Heywood, Wouter Aghina | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Resources come in two forms—assets and capabilities—and it’s important not to confuse them. Understanding assets is not that hard. […] People-based skills and capabilities can be even larger sources of value, but they are much harder to assess. […]

Capabilities are relative, so an external lens is critical. Formal benchmarking is one obvious method. Another is to get honest input on strengths and liabilities from people … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dan Simpson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Capabilities are […] the conduit between strategy and execution, and a failure to assess capabilities objectively is often at the root of execution problems. What, in retrospect, is ascribed to poor execution instead has its roots in an unexpectedly large gap between a company’s capabilities and the ones needed to deliver the strategy successfully. This gap exists, in part, because of another mismatch: between the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dan Simpson | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Execution, Management, Strategy

Throughout history, economic growth has been fueled by two factors: the expanding pool of workers and their rising productivity. From the perspective of rising prosperity, however, it is productivity that makes all the difference. Disparities in GDP per capita among countries—or between the past and the present in the same country—primarily reflect differences in labor productivity. That in turn is the result of production and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jaana K. Remes, James Manyika, Jonathan R. Woetzel | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Economics

Digitization affects almost everything in today’s organizations, which makes capturing its benefits uniquely complex. Here are the most important aspects that winning companies consider.

Content: Article | Authors: Driek Desmet, Ewan Duncan, Jay Scanlan, Marc Singer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

Think back to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), which identified three primary business inputs: labor, capital, and land (defined broadly as any resource that can be produced or mined from land or disposed of as waste on it). The two industrial revolutions the world has thus far seen focused primarily on labor and capital. The first gave us factories and limited-liability corporations to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Matt Rogers, Stefan Heck | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Economics

Instead of dealing with talent shortage, many oil and gas companies are now juggling a surplus of labor. Rapid performance management systems can help address near-term workforce needs as well as build stronger organizations.

Editor’s Note: although ostensibly focused on the oil and gas industry, the four-step framework provided is relevant to any large organization.

Content: Article | Authors: Christopher Handscomb, Laura Borland, Mark Dominik | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

The venerable technique has vaulted back into the consciousness of corporate leaders—for good reason. But getting it right is not easy and depends on five key elements.

Content: Article | Authors: Kyle Hawke, Matt Fitzpatrick | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

Research tells us that most change efforts fail. Yet change methodologies are stuck in a predigital era. It’s high time to start catching up.

Content: Article | Authors: Ashvin Sologar, Boris Ewenstein, Wesley Smith | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Change Management

While every CEO talks about managing for the long term, the reality is that the crush of immediate concerns and the uncertainty of the future lead them to focus on the short term. This tension between long-term intention and short-term action is one of the great challenges of modern management.

Content: Quotation | Author: Nitin Nohria | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

CEO Adrian Gore describes how the South African company has been shaking up its industry through business-model innovation and explains what helps to catalyze new ideas.

Content: Case Study | Author: Adrian Gore | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy | Company: Discovery

Struggling to keep up with rapidly evolving consumer behavior? Digital marketing operations can bridge the divide between what customers expect and what they get.

Content: Article | Authors: David Edelman, Jason Heller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales

Our research shows that even if short-term investors cause day-to-day fluctuations in a company’s share price and dominate quarterly earnings calls, longer-term investors are the ones who align market prices with intrinsic value.

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Wessels, Marc H. Goedhart, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Market/Investment

As an illustration of how executives get caught up in a short-term EPS focus, consider our experience with companies analyzing a prospective acquisition. The most frequent question managers ask is whether the transaction will dilute EPS over the first year or two. Given the popularity of EPS as a yardstick for company decisions, you might think that a predicted improvement in EPS would be an … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Wessels, Marc H. Goedhart, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Mergers & Acquisitions, Strategy

Creating shareholder value is not the same as maximizing short-term profits—and companies that confuse the two often put both shareholder value and stakeholder interests at risk. Indeed, a system focused on creating shareholder value from business isn’t the problem; short-termism is.

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Wessels, Marc H. Goedhart, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Business Rules, Management, Strategy

The guiding principle of business value creation is a refreshingly simple construct: companies that grow and earn a return on capital that exceeds their cost of capital create value.

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Wessels, Marc H. Goedhart, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Business Model, Business Rules, Management, Strategy

Scenario planning can broaden the mind but can fall prey to the mind’s inner workings. Here’s how to get more out of planning efforts.

Content: Article | Authors: Bernardo Sichel, Drew Erdmann, Luk Yeung | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Mind-sets, as we define them, have three elements that largely govern human behavior: thoughts and feelings, values and beliefs, and personal emotional needs (both met and unmet).

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jonathan Davidson, Marc Beaujean, Stacey Madge | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Personality / Behavior

[Marketing] has become a more challenging game, but I would say that some of the basics are still the same. You need an attitude, a story. You have but two buttons to push—emotion and intelligence, heart and mind.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ola Källenius | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Marketing / Sales

[New] dynamics are undermining the traditional sales approach of pushing products to customers along a linear funnel comprising lead generation, lead qualification, proposal, negotiation, and close. In that world, funnel metrics kept track of what the sales force was up to and tallied daily win rates. The problem is that many of today’s customers no longer buy this way. Nor does the tracking approach shed … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Candace Lun Plotkin, Jennifer Stanley, Oskar Lingqvist | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales