1166 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs was both right and wrong at the same time. On the one hand, it recognized that people have many desires in addition to basic bodily needs such as water, food, and shelter. On the other hand, it assumed a fixed hierarchy where psychological needs—such as belonging and self-esteem—became relevant only after basic physical and safety needs were met. However, modern … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Tera Allas | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Revenue growth is good. Profitable growth is better. Profitable growth that advances ESG priorities is best. Here’s how outperformers who actively choose growth deliver the growth trifecta.

Content: Article | Authors: Anna Koivuniemi, Claudia Kampel, Lucy Pérez, Rebecca Doherty, Werner Rehm | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Adaptation doesn’t really exist as a quality on its own. Adaptation lies in having at the ready a repertoire of available responses… Adaptation means having a tool kit of backup preparedness: people, plans, responses, ideas, possibilities, attitudes, and equipment that allow you to construct solutions quickly.

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Adaptation requires a mindset that deals with uncertainty. That’s not a mindset so much of seeking ever-increasing profits and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: W. Brian Arthur | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

In a very stable world, where you know the probabilities and the risks, you can optimize. But even in that case, I would counsel against optimizing with a narrow criterion. I don’t think that is ever a good idea, because it brings brittleness to a system. This is because when a system is optimized, all its parts need to work properly, and some are going … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: W. Brian Arthur | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

In a world where we don’t trust the ground we stand on, what really counts is adaptation or resilience.

Content: Quotation | Author: W. Brian Arthur | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Organizations that successfully pull off a high-performing transformation don’t choose between either holistic performance or business reinvention. They pursue both.

Content: Article | Authors: Cesar Okajima, Fábio Stul, José Pimenta da Gama, Sara Pliego | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Change Management

A data-driven look at the link between the strategic moves of new CEOs and the performance of their companies highlights the importance of quick action and of adopting an outsider’s perspective.

Content: Article | Authors: Kurt Strovink, Michael Birshan, Tom Meakin | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Corporate Governance

New research shows that having more top-performing middle managers leads to much better financial outcomes. Here are five actions that can set managers and their organizations up for success.

Content: Article | Authors: Brooke Weddle, Bryan Hancock, Emily Field, Stephanie Smallets | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Organizational Behavior

When risks combine, the cumulative impact can have existential consequences. But leaders can prevent compounding risks from sneaking up on them by adapting risk processes to manage multiple threats.

Content: Article | Authors: Celia Huber, Ophelia Usher, Ram Charan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Risk Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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