What does it take to achieve and sustain growth?

McKinsey research has found that while many leaders believe they’ve adopted and implemented productive mindsets for growth, those attitudes and ambitions don’t always translate into the behaviors and actions necessary to achieve their growth objectives. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Editorial Director Roberta Fusaro speaks with McKinsey Senior Partners Greg Kelly and Jill Zucker about how leading organizations translate growth intent into sustained performance. In part, it involves making clear bets, allocating resources deliberately, and staying committed through uncertainty.

The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Cultivating a growth mindset

Roberta Fusaro: We’re here today to talk about growth. It’s the holy grail for every company. McKinsey recently did research on this topic suggesting that many executives believe they’ve created a growth mindset in their organizations. But very few have been able to translate that into consistent growth behaviors. What do you think is causing this gap?

Jill Zucker: Several years ago, we set out to study what drives companies that grow consistently over time—by which we mean profitable growth and shareholder returns in excess of peers, including private companies that perform similarly. What we found is that a major driver of sustained growth is CEO mindset. Leaders have to actively choose to grow and make deliberate choices in support of that goal.

As economic conditions have become more unsettled, we’ve also seen that leaders need courage to continue making that choice in difficult moments. In our most recent work, we examined how companies translate a growth mindset—the desire to grow and the courage to grow—into real action.

The gap is striking. Seventy-two percent of leaders say they wake up wanting to run a growth company. But when those same executives are asked whether they have the right team in place or have allocated resources to support growth investments, only 22 percent say yes. That disconnect helps explain why only one in eight—or one in ten, depending on how you measure it—companies are able to grow profitably on a sustained basis over time.

The execution gap

Roberta Fusaro: Jill, the research points to five mindsets that matter most for growth: prioritizing growth, acting boldly, maintaining customer centricity, attracting and nurturing talent, and executing with rigor. Which of these is hardest for executives and organizations to act on—and why?

Jill Zucker: I think execution, in many ways, is the hardest. Most companies listen to their customers, right? We have surveys. We have customer-satisfaction scores. And yet, we often don’t have a good feedback loop to translate that insight into new initiatives and growth.

Execution requires data. It requires rigorous tracking, some of which is hard to access. But I like to say that cost initiatives—which this certainly is not—are often run with very rigorous systems. There’s a commitment to the work and a commitment to the organization.

There’s also enormous pressure to deliver, so companies put systems in place: What’s happening every week, every month, every quarter to meet those goals? Most companies do not do the same for growth. They should, and they could.

Now, why is that? It’s not always clear where growth is going to come from. You can have a set of initiatives, but it’s harder to say, “This one is going to deliver ten, this one 15, and this one only two.”

Instead, you believe a basket of initiatives will deliver in aggregate. The data is often more forward looking. If you think about client sales: Have we had conversations with clients? Have we moved things into contracting? Where is it in the pipeline?

Not every company has data at all those steps in the funnel. We launch new products in beta. Some work, some don’t. That requires a willingness to fail—and courage. So, execution—and putting real systems around it with the same rigor you bring to costs—is an important piece of the puzzle.

Greg Kelly: What we find is that only 22 percent of executives we work with actually spend significant time on long-term growth initiatives. That shows the gap you’re describing in practice, and much of it comes from the lack of a systematic approach you mentioned.

One CEO we worked with had great discipline on costs and wondered whether that same muscle could extend to growth. She worked to apply the same approach across different types of growth—core growth, growth in adjacencies, and growth in new breakout businesses.

What she found was that the same kind of discipline used on the cost side could be applied to growth. You need a few more initiatives than you do for costs—the cost ones tend to be more predictable—but you need more on the growth side to ensure the expected growth comes through. That same discipline does apply. Unfortunately, not many companies have it in place today.

Jill Zucker: You have to make a series of bets—bets that are hard to turn back on.

They take real courage and commitment. Of course, you could stop them, but they’re not subtle in how companies pursue them. And exactly as you described, Greg, they span multiple pathways: Things you do in your core business, in adjacent businesses, one lane over from your current value stream, and then true breakout opportunities—things that feel distant but that, five years from now, could deliver significant value to the bottom line.

A portfolio approach to growth

Roberta Fusaro: What I’m hoping this podcast will achieve is awareness—so people understand that they need to build discipline into their growth plans. We hear a lot about the need for executives to act boldly and make big bets, and to continue pursuing growth even during downturns. I imagine that’s incredibly hard. Greg, could you talk about why it’s so hard to stay courageous during a downturn?

Greg Kelly: It’s very easy to let the urgent overwhelm the important. We see that often. In our recent research, only 30 percent of leaders actually increase resources for growth initiatives during uncertain times.

If you think about some of the challenging periods we’ve had recently—COVID, or more recent tariff difficulties—it’s easy for those issues to consume management time and attention, rather than focusing on the growth drivers that will make the biggest difference over the long run.

There are, though, some exciting examples of companies that have bucked that trend. Corning is one. The CEO set a bold target to deliver more than $3 billion in new annualized sales by accelerating innovation, including gen AI. They’ve achieved strong results—for example, an 8 percent increase in revenue. It shows how conviction and accountability can reignite growth.

Using data and AI to guide decisions

Roberta Fusaro: I want to turn to another mindset from the research: customer centricity. We hear a lot about it, and we know that prioritizing the customer leads to faster growth and higher returns. Based on the latest research, what other data do we have on customer centricity—and where are companies falling short?

Jill Zucker: Almost every company collects some form of customer feedback. You see it in your inbox—after a purchase, you get a survey asking, “Did you like the experience?” In a B2B context, there’s also a constant feedback loop through the sales team.

CEOs also pride themselves on being in the field, talking to customers and clients. And in our research, we found that 63 percent of companies collect customer data. So this is an area where data clearly exists.

And yet, only 15 percent of the same executives who say, “Yes, I’m out in the field, I’m talking to customers, we’re collecting data,” also say they use that data to make growth decisions. That, to me, was really surprising.

We always say, “Listen to your customers. Create the products they need. Meet them where they are.” And yet, despite the fact that this data exists—and that we’re constantly finding new ways to collect and analyze it—we don’t consistently use it to deliver something meaningful.

With gen AI and new listening and analytics capabilities, we know even more about how customers interact with companies, especially in digital channels. But insight alone isn’t enough. You have to act on it.

Companies that do both—generate insight and take action—see rewards in terms of growth and outperformance. Real engagement translates into performance. And by “real,” I mean both the insight and the action. That should be an easy win for companies—to connect those dots.

Roberta Fusaro: Thinking about how companies can do a better job here, is there a role for gen AI or other new technologies? What advice would you give to companies that want to get a better handle on their data and actually use it more effectively?

Greg Kelly: We’re seeing a huge acceleration. If you look at just the past year, the progress clients have made using AI and gen AI is remarkable. What was once a promise is now an emerging reality.

One company that’s been at this for quite a while is Sephora. I’ve been impressed by how they’ve integrated their consumer experience across both physical and digital formats. They’ve developed a number of AI tools over several years to support their Beauty Insider loyalty program.

Whether it’s Color IQ, Skin IQ, or Smart Skin Scan match, these capabilities really help consumers. Beauty is deeply personal, and having solutions tailored to the individual makes a real difference. Sephora has been able to personalize experiences in-store and at home through an integrated loyalty ecosystem. It’s a strong example of a company staying at the forefront of technology and using AI and gen AI to deliver better outcomes—and growth.

Roberta Fusaro: That’s a great example. And I can vouch for it as a Sephora devotee.

Greg Kelly: I have daughters, Roberta.

Jill Zucker The other thing I would add is that I spend a lot of my time in wealth management, and I really care about the promise of a better future—for Americans, but also for global citizens—to have financial security in retirement.

What we’ve found through the use of digital agents and agentic AI is the ability for financial advisers to call with much more appropriate advice, and at a much more frequent cadence. There will always be digital-only customers, but I’m also talking about people who work with an adviser.

The adviser no longer has to spend time changing an address or doing some of the basic blocking and tackling. As a result, they can spend much more of their time giving real advice, listening to needs, and offering more holistic guidance around how to support clients and their families.

They’re also getting much more insight from their peers. Many of these wealth-management firms have thousands of advisers, and sharing insight across clients and what’s working has been hard. Now it’s much easier to do, and I see many of these firms at the leading edge of this.

Making long-term performance stick

Roberta Fusaro: Shifting gears a little bit, we know that growth requires teamwork. But in our research, almost 70 percent of executives admit they’ve got substantial gaps in talent in their organizations. What does it take to build and keep a team that’s genuinely wired for growth? What are some of the components executives need to think about?

Greg Kelly: A lot of it is stretch and challenge. You’re usually talking about opportunities that are pretty nascent when they’re identified. And so having the courage to take a high-performing leader out of a current, bigger area that maybe doesn’t have as much growth, and then have that leader go into a new area that has the promise of growth—that takes real courage to do.

It takes real entrepreneurship from that leader. And it does stretch and challenge them in a new way. And we find that companies that do this historically end up doing it more and more over time as they get good results—because it really does take putting those high performers onto these new opportunities to make them successful.

Unfortunately, the laggards, if you will, usually don’t have a history of doing that. And it then becomes a bit of a vicious cycle—of not getting the growth, not being confident about the growth, and then not outperforming. But those that are doing it successfully really do have that virtuous cycle in place, where high performers go to one of these new areas, make that successful, and then go into an even bigger line opportunity.

Jill Zucker: I would love to add on, Roberta and Greg, and pick up on the idea of the team, because what happens is you need to win and lose, if you will, or course correct, as a team.

And if you’re an organization that does the stretch and challenges Greg described, but then when it doesn’t work—and sometimes growth initiatives don’t work—you toss the executive out with the initiative, no high-performing executive is ever going to be willing to take that chance.

And so you really need to think about this as a team. How do you work together and protect an individual who did all the right things, but the initiative or the idea just wasn’t fit for purpose, or just didn’t end up being the right thing in the right moment for a company?

And so moving people around is terrific and definitely required, and you want your best talent on the best new opportunity. But you also need to protect them on the downside, or else there’s no reason that your best performer would ever be willing to take that chance.

Roberta Fusaro: Jill, thinking about that very tactically, are there things you’re seeing among our clients where they’re building teams that aren’t afraid to innovate and try new things?

Jill Zucker: I think this is a real example of the tone set from the top and the CEO. If you’re an organization where it’s okay to give a warning light when things aren’t going well, and to ask for advice from colleagues and others on the management team, you can solve things together.

If you’re an organization—and we’ve all seen them—where everything is green and green and green, and then suddenly it’s red and burning red, you have a real problem. But there are always indicators that things are in need of a course correction. And if raising those is a disciplinary action, you have a problem.

If instead it’s seen as, “Let’s solve this collectively as a team. Let’s figure out if we need more dollars, more talent, or a change in direction,” then you get to a better outcome. But that’s a tone set by the CEO—being open-minded and willing to have that conversation openly with the executive team, as opposed to a punitive conversation when someone raises a concern.

Greg Kelly: I would add that there is a balance between focus and renewal. What do I mean by that? There’s usually an inspiring growth agenda that outperformers set as an overarching vision and purpose.

There’s then a good set of initiatives to drive that, and focus for a number of years. Times do change, though, and needs do change. And so there usually is renewal in those outperformers—not resting on the laurels of that successful initial growth program.

Typically, three, four, or five years after a successful growth agenda, we see leaders renewing it: coming up with a refreshed vision, a refreshed purpose, and a refreshed growth agenda—and then bringing in fresh new talent to drive those new exciting growth initiatives.

Roberta Fusaro: I love that idea. Jill, you mentioned that the tone comes from the CEO. When I think about the CEO or senior leadership, growth requires commitment because it doesn’t happen all at once—it takes a long time. How can leaders keep up their own energy for the long haul? What do leaders do personally to help facilitate growth?

Jill Zucker: One is really a cadence—or a rhythm—of time to reflect and renew. What are the moments in the calendar that are predetermined where you’re going to take a step back and make sure you’re on the right path? What is the learning journey you’re going to take yourself and your executive team on?

How are you going to continue to immerse yourself in the latest thinking? What is the visit to the latest tech innovators that you’re going to learn from? What are you going to do geographically to understand what’s happening around the world that you can bring back to your own organization?

Setting a real cadence is important. Don’t let it happen by accident—that you got invited to a conference or met someone over a meal—but instead set it intentionally in your executive calendar.

I see many growth organizations say, “February is our growth month. At the start of the year, we make sure we’re really learning externally about growth, and we use the board’s February strategy meeting to do that.”

It can be any time of year. But one company I’m thinking about does this consistently. They always bring in really cutting-edge thinking and ideas for the executive team in preparation for—and ultimately for discussion with—the board.

The other thing I would add is that growth, like most things, requires re-underwriting. Given the volatility in the world, an idea that looks good and takes three years to materialize might, in year two and a half, be only 80 percent right.

At that point, you need to re-underwrite the conditions and understand what’s going to work and what’s not. A failure mode I’ve seen is, “Well, we agreed on this big tech build three years ago, so we’re marching forward,” with blinders on to what’s happened externally.

When you suggest re-underwriting, people sometimes say, “Why would we re-underwrite? This is what we agreed to.” But we know new things 36 months later, and it’s important to have a feedback mechanism to account for that.

Roberta Fusaro: This has been incredibly helpful, and I know the research is ongoing. As we enter 2026, how should executives be thinking about their growth strategies?

Jill Zucker: I think companies in 2026 need to stay on the leading edge of capabilities. They need to rewire their organizations to be prepared to take advantage of all the innovation that’s out there.

AI is certainly a piece of that. Leveraging digital capabilities and leveraging agents is certainly an important one. But having the organization ready—and bringing together the capabilities to absorb all of this change—will be an important part of the journey in ’26 and beyond.

Greg Kelly: One of the challenges we’ve given our own leaders is to be agents for growth in this new year. It’s a double meaning. We need to be agents for growth from a human perspective, but we also need to help our clients create agents to drive growth more systematically, using the power of AI and gen AI.

This is the year when we’re really going to see agentic capabilities come to life at scale. We’ve seen enough promise across all the growth levers—organic growth in the core business, growth in adjacencies, and growth in new businesses—to know there’s huge potential to drive incremental growth.

In specific areas, we’re already seeing meaningful lifts—whether that’s lead generation, churn reduction, or helping humans tailor messages, remember key points, and address customer concerns. The improved coaching from AI and gen AI is really helping our clients drive better growth. So this is a year when we expect companies to take full advantage of AI and gen AI to drive disproportionate growth.