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About this practice
Strategy is the integrated set of actions an organization takes to create competitive advantage. It is a complex journey of large and small decisions made in a rapidly evolving external business environment that must take into account a company’s operating rhythm and leadership dynamics. Today, strategic planning and execution are complicated by high levels of economic volatility across the globe. Our Strategy Practice has the tools, experience, expertise, and insights to support clients throughout their strategic journey in today’s constantly evolving global economy.
Who we are
Strategy is McKinsey’s largest functional practice. Since 2006, we have supported more than 2,100 clients on more than 10,000 strategy projects. Our consultants and experts have worked with more than 80 percent of the Fortune Global 100 companies and have served organizations in every part of the world, in nearly every industry.
McKinsey has over 450 consultants with deep strategy expertise, including more than 200 “strategy masters” who have over 10,000 hours of experience on strategy projects. Our leaders and experts engage in multiple knowledge-building efforts each year, developing cutting-edge tools and resources directly applicable to our clients’ needs.
What we do
Our Strategy Practice supports clients in several areas:
- Identifying high impact trends
We pay special attention to the powerful economic forces that are likely to affect the global business environment in the next five to ten years. Our Current Country Intelligence reports offer a monthly review of economic indicators across geographies; our Trend Maker helps clients scan the horizon to identify the forces that will make or break their strategies going forward; and our Global Growth Model allows clients to understand their strategy’s effectiveness under different macro scenarios.
- Identifying granular growth opportunities
Our Growth Decomposition Tool helps clients understand the sources of their current growth, and our Granular Growth Database benchmarks this growth against the portfolios of over 500 other companies. Our extensive Cityscope database enables clients to see the hot spots in emerging markets that they may be missing. We help clients take a fine-grained approach to finding growth opportunities hidden within overlooked regions and subsectors and then help them to allocate the right resources to those opportunities.
- Innovating at scale
We help clients develop the creative discipline to produce breakthrough ideas that are supported by economically viable business models and superior execution capabilities. Our Insights to Action approach combines hard data with creativity, helping our clients accelerate the innovation process and move from a big idea to a commercial offering—in the form of new products, services, processes, or even business models—quickly and cost-effectively while minimizing risk.
- Developing effective business unit strategies
We help clients design, test, refine, and implement their strategies, ensuring they will beat the market by vetting them against our Ten Timeless Tests of effective strategy. Our innovative client engagement models, including war gaming workshops, long-term coaching, and Strategy Academies, allow us to support our clients when needed, as needed.
- Refining corporate strategy and portfolio management
We help organizations improve their strategic planning processes and overcome the barriers preventing them from reallocating resources effectively using tools such as our Strategic Management Performance Index and our Resource Reallocation Diagnostic. We also apply our Decision Challenger and Decision Process Designer to ensure that our clients are not falling prey to the common biases that so often plague companies’ decision-making processes.
- Engaging with external stakeholders, government, and regulators
In a progressively more complex regulatory environment, we help clients craft clear and consistent messages and plan engagement with a broad range of stakeholders— regulators, consumers, shareholders, and the public—to create mutually valuable solutions. Tools such as our Value at Stake Decomposition Tool, Stakeholder Analysis and Mapping Tool, and Regulatory and External Affairs Capabilities diagnostic take the mystery out of external affairs, and help clients build a regulatory strategy that is based on quantitative analysis and detailed planning