Change

Engaging the head and the heart of your people to change behavior at scale

The one constant in our world is change. As employee and customer needs evolve, the demand for faster innovation and time to market keeps accelerating, making resilience and adaptability ever more critical. To be successful, leaders may also need to adjust how they approach organizational change.

McKinsey helps leaders across industries and geographies enact behavior change at scale, both systemically and on a personal level. We help your organization set the right bold aspirations based on our deep industry knowledge and experience, and the latest behavioral science. We mobilize your leadership team as role models and upskill your workforce. We help you align your roles, processes, structures, and norms with your new vision and strategy.

Simultaneously, we focus on your people, engaging, empowering, and inspiring your workforce around a distinctive employee value proposition. We help you prioritize and sequence transformation activities. This human-centric approach to change strengthens your organization’s health and improves its performance.

Our Approach

Impact-oriented

We take an outcome-oriented approach and apply our deep industry knowledge to set bold aspirations that help prioritize and sequence change at scale to increase value quickly.

Evidence-led

We share proven recipes for success, research and analytics, and pragmatic tools to shift behaviors—including culture, mindsets, capabilities, and team and group dynamics—to make change personal and systemic.

People-first

We engage, elevate, and empower all employees—from the C-suite to the frontline of every organization—to make lasting changes.

Capability-driven

We build the skills of your people and the capabilities and culture of your organization to improve organizational health and performance.

How we do it

Benchmark organizational health

We determine the baseline of an organization's health and culture and use the results to identify the right path forward, reinforcing strengths, pinpointing critical behavior and mindset shifts, and activating the top team to be leaders for change.

Find the points of leverage

We identify individuals who exhibit successful behaviors and tap into their knowledge to motivate and drive change within critical stakeholder groups.

Make it personal for leaders

We help leaders shift their behavior, build adaptability and learning agility, and stay calm through change.

Prototype the new system

We adapt the change experience around your people, embed behavior change themes into your critical business initiatives, and establish a structure for governance and continued learning.

Scale with rigor

We enable change across the organization by implementing capability-building programs, embedding key change themes into initiatives, adapting interventions and reallocating resources as necessary, all while communicating and tracking processes.

2x

total return to shareholders

for companies with a performance and people transformation approach

4.1x

more likely

to achieve successful transformation when leaders adopt the change

Examples of our work

Empowering employees to improve customer satisfaction

The Warehouse Group (TWG) wanted to improve performance by transforming how it operates and simplifying its business. We partnered with TWG to launch 250 new initiatives, aiming to simplify everything from pricing and store operations to supplier negotiations. The initial transformation helped TWG achieve its highest annual profit in a decade, doubled its stock price, lifted its Organizational Health Index score to the second quartile, and built new capabilities for approximately 1,500 employees—all over the course of a few months.

Rebuilding for a healthy organization

A global auto manufacturer was experiencing lagging performance and job losses while adjusting to new ownership. We helped design and drive a five-year change program that moved organizational health scores into the top quartile and allowed the company to hire more than 10,000 new employees.

Cascading strategy and capabilities to capture value

After a health services company completed a challenging merger, we shaped a comprehensive three-year strategy that included building new capabilities across the organization and an operating model redesign. Within eight months, organizational health scores increased by 20 points and stock value rebounded.

Featured Experts

Carolyn Dewar
Senior Partner, Bay Area
Delivers large-scale performance-improvement programs that foster culture change and counsels senior executives making leadership...
Ben Fletcher
Senior Partner, Sydney
Brings deep expertise in people topics, particularly in designing and driving large scale culture and change, capability-building,...
Arne Gast
Senior Partner, Amsterdam
Offers extensive global expertise in leadership development, organizational design, talent management, and transformational change
Rebecca Kaetzler
Partner, Frankfurt
Brings deep expertise in merger management and performance transformation to help executives manage culture, change, and organizational...
Rajesh Krishnan
Partner, New York
Leads enterprise-wide transformations efforts that focus on performance and health, helping organizations deliver lasting improvements...
Amadeo Di Lodovico
Senior Partner, Dubai
Serves leading companies in energy, industrial, conglomerates, and governments on strategic topics, operational and organizational...
John C. W. Parsons
Senior Partner, Calgary
Transforms large industrial sites and organizations by implementing the latest performance-based approaches and leveraging the...
Bill Schaninger
Senior Partner, Philadelphia
Designs and manages large-scale organizational transformations, strengthening business performance through enhanced culture, values,...
Rob Theunissen
Partner, Amsterdam
Helps companies succeed in transformational change by defining new strategies, improving organizational health, promoting culture...
Brooke Weddle
Partner, Washington DC
Drives lasting change at scale for global organizations through digital transformation, operating-model redesign, enterprise agility,...

Featured insights

Report - McKinsey Global Institute

Performance through people: Transforming human capital into competitive advantage

– A dual focus on developing people and managing them well gives a select group of companies a long-term performance edge.
Podcast

Social capital: Build back better relationships at work

– Companies are reporting a dearth of social capital since the start of the pandemic. How can they reestablish meaningful connections among teams and individuals in today’s changed work environments?
Article

Network effects: How to rebuild social capital and improve corporate performance

– People’s professional networks have shrunk since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, while companies’ attrition and hiring challenges are growing. To help reverse these trends, people and organizations will need to manage workplace interactions more intentionally. Here’s how.
Blog Post

Returning to the office can be a choice, not a challenge

– By applying behavioral science and choice architecture to the post-pandemic workplace, organizations can “nudge” employees to embrace flexible work, avoiding mandates altogether.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

Meet the psychological needs of your people—all your people

– Too many employers pay too little heed to the needs of the lower earners in their company. Here’s why—and how—they should shift gears.
Article

A single approach to culture transformation may not fit all

– It can be hard for organizations with many independent business units to achieve cohesion among them and transform their culture. Remember: it’s better to bend than break.
Blog Post

The science behind transformations: Maximizing value during implementation

– Our latest transformation research shows that the largest share of value loss happens during implementation. What can leaders do to prevent it?
Blog Post

The science behind transformations: Protecting value from day one

– Many transformations lose significant value in the target setting and planning phases. Leaders can take three actions to prevent value leakage from day one.

Featured Publication

Book - Featured Insights

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Connect with our People & Organizational Performance Practice