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Leadership & Organization Blog

Your organization’s health: the ultimate competitive edge
– Through 15 years of research, we have learned that working on organizational health yields real business results. Learn more about our Organizational Health Index (OHI).

Change management: lessons from Japan
– Our experience supporting change efforts suggests we find success when more attention is paid to culturally attuned principles.... For consensus-oriented organizations, here are four practical ways to drive change.

Create value from your merger in five steps
– To master how to manage a merger, look no further than the global chemical industry. The $5 trillion-plus category has long used... M&A to grow, shift strategic direction and consolidate segments.

Embrace the uncertainty of AI
– One thing is certain on the path toward grasping and applying artificial intelligence: uncertainty.

Changing mindsets and behavior, one “nudge” at a time
– Our understanding of the unconscious mind has come a long way since Sigmund Freud, grounded in decades of research into what drives... ordinary, everyday human behavior.

From pyramids to pipelines: the importance of soft leadership skills
– Any large project’s outcome depends mainly on how well a team works together. Our research identified four distinct mindsets... that help determine an ultra-large project’s outcome.

Leaders: It’s OK to not know everything
– More and more, leaders tell us they feel out of their usual comfort zone and on unstable grounds. What’s the solution? We... think it’s about building your inner agility.

10 ways to become flatter, faster, smarter in banking
– A top-down organizational design defines many banks’ DNA. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Integration agility: what playbooks don’t tell you
– Of 638 merger management professionals recently surveyed by McKinsey, only 25 percent reported consistently achieving both their... cost and revenue synergy goals.

Decision-making: how leaders can get out of the way
– Organizations that do it right push intelligent decision-making to the front line.

8 ways to build a future-proof organization
– Here is today’s reality: The average large firm reorganizes every 2-3 years and it takes over 18 months. With technology... advances changing everything, wait and see isn’t an option.

How to make your team R.O.C.K.
– What rock bands can teach us about collaboration and teamwork.

How to win at M&A
– The biggest mistake that executives make, when going through a merger or acquisition, is looking only at the surface of the acquired... company’s mission statement and assuming it jells well with theirs and, therefore, cultures are fairly aligned.

Decision-making: avoiding turf wars
– In unlocking great decision-making, cross-cutting decisions rank among the hardest to get right in most organizations.

Org redesign: start with a blank page
– In today’s workplace, companies are in a nearly constant state of organization change—whether it’s a large-scale... makeover or a shakeup of departments or geographies—McKinsey research finds.

Decision-making: how to get the big bets right
– In our experience, organizations that consistently make decisions well use three ingredients.

The drawbacks of agility
– Agility gets hailed as the new order for organizations striving to unlock value, but what about its drawbacks?

Agility: mindset makeovers are critical
– In today’s dynamic markets, leaders need very different mindsets—three primary mindset shifts are critical to leading... agile organizations.

Unlocking leadership potential in turbulent times
– In turbulent times like these, developing leaders truly matters – yet more than half of executives we talk to say their... leadership development initiatives fail. What does it take to unlock an organization’s leadership potential?

Keys to unlocking great decision-making
– Any organization can improve the speed and quality of its decisions by paying more attention to what it’s deciding. We’ve... identified three common myths that contribute to difficulties in decision-making.

Avoid pilot purgatory in 7 steps
– Pilot purgatory sounds like a hectic aviator schedule, but with the Internet of Things, it signals pilot programs traveling at... a snail’s pace – if at all.

6 elements to create a high-performing culture
– What often separates the highest-performing organizations from the rest is culture.

The 2 Cs of management excellence 
– What is good management? For years at McKinsey, we have applied science and measurement to that question.

Time for an EX intervention?
– Mark our words: Employee experience is the new evolution from employee engagement for defining how companies... should interact with their people.

The path to agility: a staged approach
– The essential questions to ask during each stage of your agile journey.

Culture: 4 keys to why it matters
– What separates the highest performing organizations from the rest? Clever strategy? Superior products? Better people?

Slowing down to speed up
– The world has always been one of change. But as technology evolves and speeds up our lives, something about the changes we face... is different.

Employee experience: essential to compete
– A growing number of organizations suddenly are into employee experience. They’re discarding the stiff, outdated term human... resources and many have even replaced chief human resources officer with chief employee experience officer.

Amazon’s Alexa – your next Chief Talent Officer?
– Digital recruitment – think Monster and LinkedIn – is routine today. But what if a voice-powered AI assistant like... Amazon’s Alexa could find the best candidate for a critical role just by asking it?

TalentTech: enabling talent in the digital age 
– The 1999 sci fi action classic “The Matrix” telescoped the future of tech in talent when Keanu Reeves’... character Neo exclaims, “I know kung fu,” shortly after a computer in his skull uploads the martial art into his intellect.

Paradigm shift for leaders
– Organizational agility presents an existential crisis for middle management.

Culture can make or break agility
– While many companies are striving to become agile, only four percent of survey respondents have completed an organization-wide... transformation, the latest McKinsey research finds. The No 1. problem they cite is culture.

Scaling up organizational agility
– Once you have succeeded with several pilot projects for becoming agile and have a strong foundation in place it’s time to... scale agility across the enterprise.

Get agile faster through pilot programs
– While a strong foundation is essential to become a nimble organization, establishing a well-designed pilot program can serve to... initiate agility.

Building the critical foundation of an agile organization
– Creating an agile organization that stands the test of time depends on its foundation.

Getting agile right in your organization
– Across industries and regions, the concept of organizational agility is catching fire as companies scurry to deal with rapid change... and complexity. Yet, achieving the ability to reshape themselves quickly is proving elusive for most.

Activate agility: the five avenues to success
– In a time of rapid change and unprecedented complexity, only the nimble survive! In 1935, the life expectancy of an S&P 500 company... was 90 years.

Human resources in the age of automation
– McKinsey’s vision for the future of employee-related activities – focuses singularly on driving value from talent.

The critical importance of the HR business partner
– Nearly a decade ago, CEOs surveyed by McKinsey stressed the importance of talent strategy to their organizations. But they also... voiced misgivings about HR’s ability to manage the talent process strategically and deliver maximum value to the business.

Focus on the five percent
– Recruitment is one of the most difficult things a company does, but doing it well can pay off.

Be rational about irrationality
– Savvy leaders can use irrationality to accelerate vs. derail their change efforts.

How effective goal-setting motivates employees
– Nobody likes annual performance reviews. But what if you could find a way to flip it.

4 strategies for linking talent to value
– In many ways, organizing a successful business isn’t much different than hosting a family barbecue.

How to nudge your way to better performance
– Build a nudge unit to leverage behavioral insights.

Crucial steps to shape your future performance management
– Think about your last performance review or development discussion. Turns out everyone really does hate performance management.

Driving value in talent processes using analytics
– Imagine abandoning traditional resumes and campus interviews in favor of online games, videos, and algorithms land fresh recruits... to your company.

It really isn’t about 100 days
– Congratulations on your new leadership role. Now, get moving fast.

Welcome to the ‘Insights on Leadership & Organization’ Blog
– Welcome to our one-stop shop, where leaders can find impactful, fact-based pragmatic advice—in 600 words or less.

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