In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Barr Seitz speaks with McKinsey Senior Partners Kate Smaje and Robert Levin, and Eric Lamarre, McKinsey alumnus and emeritus adviser, about the second edition of Rewired (Rewired: How Leading Companies Win with Technology and AI, Wiley, April 2026). They discuss what has changed over the past few years, what it means to build organizational speed, and why the most important transformations are ultimately about people. An edited version of the conversation follows. Stay tuned for additional interviews with Rewired coauthors and McKinsey Senior Partners Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky on leadership’s critical role in AI transformations.
Is a tech and AI transformation worth it?
Kate Smaje: A tech and AI transformation is a big lift. We shouldn’t shy away from that. But when you choreograph these transformations in the right way, you’re able to release value pretty quickly. Many of these transformations are self-funding in a relatively short period of time.
However, it does take time to get it right and to build the organizational muscle for working differently. But that’s not the same as having to wait years to release value.
Eric Lamarre: One of the core questions CEOs have is: “Is this worth it? How long is it going to take?”
We analyzed 20 of what I would call the best of the best companies that have executed tech and AI transformations very well. Three numbers stood out.
First, they achieve about a 20 percent EBITDA uplift on average from their AI-focused efforts. And that value typically comes from two or three areas at most. There’s an extreme focus on the economic leverage points.
Second, one to two years to pay back. In some instances, like Freeport,1 it was well below a year. On average, though, it takes one to two years before you’re in the green and then you can continue to innovate.
It does take longer to reach a full steady state where you’re creating massive value—probably another one to two years beyond that. Frankly, that’s reassuring. If something took two months and suddenly you were creating massive value, something wouldn’t be right, because competition would be right behind you.
And third, for every dollar invested, they got about three dollars of EBITDA. You don’t often see returns like that.
Why do they get those returns? Because they focus on the economic leverage points, places in the business model where even a small improvement through AI drives massive value.
Robert Levin: When you think about AI and generative AI in particular, there’s a very natural tendency to look at it as a technology that is all about automating work as an OpEx [operating expense] productivity opportunity.
But when we step back and look at the companies that we analyzed that have created really outsize value—yes, some of it comes from productivity, but it’s actually much more top-line value.
What does a great rewired company look like?
Eric Lamarre: A great rewired company feels like Amazon. It has an ability to innovate day in and day out for the benefit of the customer. It looks like a top-quartile or top-decile performer where the core aspects of operations are improving faster than the competition.
When you lift the hood, you find talent that can deal with technology in the way they run the business. It’s not going to IT. Business leaders own it. It’s platforms that drive velocity. It’s data that’s easy to consume.
That’s the construct that allows them to perform the trick repeatedly and eventually become very difficult to catch up with.
A rewired organization is one that has graduated to truly impactful, distributed innovation across the organization.
Kate Smaje: A great rewired organization is not just outcompeting; it’s raising the bar on what top quartile looks like. They build a muscle that allows them not just to do one or two things but to do it again and again and again. It becomes the culture. It feels normal.
They operate at a different metabolic rate. Where others reallocate annually, they’re doing it monthly. Where others move quarterly, they’re doing it weekly.
Robert Levin: A rewired organization is one that has graduated to truly impactful, distributed innovation across the organization. Each manager understands their role, has the right mindset, and is able to innovate with technology and improve their portion of the business.
What is the biggest takeaway from the second edition of Rewired?
Kate Smaje: The most important takeaway is that every AI transformation is, at its heart, a people transformation. We often overfocus on the technology and miss the fact that people have to use it. People have to work differently. Workflows need to change. Processes need to change. In many cases, the whole business model shifts.
Robert Levin: Another core message is that there is a very clear set of enabling capabilities—people capabilities, technology capabilities—that any organization can build. It’s a common set of capabilities across industries and business models. If you build them, you will be able to quickly, predictably, and consistently deliver value with technology.
The most important takeaway is that every AI transformation is, at its heart, a people transformation. We often overfocus on the technology and miss the fact that people have to use it.
Eric Lamarre: The most important message is that it’s the job of the top team to figure out how they’re going to get their company to leverage technology for the benefit of customers and shareholders.
It’s not just a job for IT or for those people of lower status in the organization. The job of those at the very top is to architect the company to achieve that.
What have you learned in the last three years since writing the first edition?
Kate Smaje: I’ve learned so much in the last few years, and probably learned, unlearned, and relearned again as well.
If I single out one thing, it is how important the capabilities really are. We talk about how rewired is not something you do and then you’re finished. Rewired is a muscle that you’re constantly honing and constantly building.
It’s really hard to do. In many ways what we’ve seen is that while the framework and the elements of what it takes to outcompete are the same, the bar has risen. The way in which you’ve got to develop those capabilities—what A++ looks like—is getting harder, not easier.
Eric Lamarre: The one thing that struck me the most—and maybe it’s a simple idea, but I find it to be so critical right now—is the importance of that senior business leader at the N-2 or N-3 level in the organization who owns an end-to-end process or a piece of the business.
With AI, it has become quite important for that leader to figure out, “Where am I going to embed technology in my business to actually drive performance?” That has become almost the “aha moment” for me. That is where the gear belt will click in to unlock lots of value.
Robert Levin: I’ve learned over the past few years that as technology has radically shifted, I’m reminded that these are, first and foremost, culture transformations. It’s about how the top team works together, makes decisions, and prioritizes. It’s about so much more than technology.
What is the most important thing to get right for an organization to move at speed?
Eric Lamarre: The simple but really fundamental question is: Who’s in charge of architecting the modern organization for speed? It’s the CEO and the top team.
This is a harder transition than what many have been trained on in the past, which is, “Let’s do a reorg.” We’re not talking about a reorg here. We’re talking about rewiring the organization for speed. That is probably even more important now than it was in the first book.
The most important message is that it’s the job of the top team to figure out how they’re going to get their company to leverage technology for the benefit of customers and shareholders.
Kate Smaje: There’s a real key point on speed because many folks feel frenetic right now. You think about the cacophony of things coming at you, from geopolitics of the technology through to supply chain dislocations through to agentic. It feels frenetic.
This isn’t speed for speed’s sake. It’s speed with direction. What we’ve seen is the level of focus that you need to put in. That’s why we encourage focusing on those end-to-end domains. Concentrate your effort on the points of economic leverage. That speed with direction makes you completely unstoppable.
Robert Levin: There is something core about this technology that speaks to speed. At the core of it, we now have code writing code writing code. Some would call it a new Moore’s Law, with agentic capabilities doubling in capability every seven months.
Speed has never been more important. Over time, companies in your industry will likely get to this level of capability.
How can companies build foundations for speed?
Eric Lamarre: The foundation for speed starts with having a senior business executive who owns both the run aspect of the business and the change aspect of the business—bringing those more closely under one leader so that you can drive a faster pace of innovation that translates into business improvements.
Number two is platforms. Platforms are becoming the construct of speed in organizations. That’s how you drive reuse—platforms around data, platforms around AI development, platforms that make it easy to access capabilities in the organization through a simple API call.
Kate Smaje: It’s a misnomer that everything has to be perfect before you’re ready to move. I see a lot of clients struggle with that: “I want to create this wonderful data lake, and once all my data is perfect, we’ll be done.”
I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a chief data officer who says the data is perfect. It just doesn’t exist. So, one of the things we try to do in the book is say: “How do you get started?” Don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough. Think about the specific data products you need to build out for the domain change you’re completing and go after those.
Eric Lamarre: I’ll tell you a story that really impressed me. In the book, we have an entire chapter on Freeport-McMoRan, the mining company. They were in the first edition because they had already done something extraordinary in the way they were running their copper concentrator with AI, sensors, new data, and new operating procedures.
Three years later, the story was even better. They have gone into an entirely new space in the world of mining called “leaching,” and they’ve really maximized the value of low-grade ore bodies through technology again. They did this in half the time compared with the first book. They compressed the timeline for something they would say was even more difficult and less well-defined. Why were they able to do this?
They had mastered how to deal with data the first time around. They had business leaders who now had a muscle for how to leverage technology and develop models to drive improvement, and they leveraged that again. They also had an operating model: how to work in agile, develop solutions quickly, and bring the right contributors to the table.
That’s what it looks like when capabilities work. Things you’ve built that now allow you to drive a faster drumbeat of innovation.
While the framework and the elements of what it takes to outcompete are the same, the bar has risen.
Why has learning become such a crucial trait for companies?
Robert Levin: Continuous learning is incredibly important. Many people won’t have gone through a formal computer science upbringing, but as they work with these tools, they learn how to use them. That continuous learning mindset is critical in this moment.
Eric Lamarre: I’ll double down on the learning aspect. The companies that are going to win are going to be the fastest learners. If your people today are not fast learners, that’s a red flag. We should be overindexing on promoting and bringing up people who learn quickly.
Think about the last couple of years. Everything is new. No one knew anything about it. We’re all learning it. Those who are learning faster are getting more value.
Kate Smaje: We’ve talked for many years about hiring for IQ and EQ. I think we’re increasingly seeing hiring for LQ—learning quotient.
What’s your cognitive capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn in order to move the ball forward? That refers to not just learning for yourself but learning for the collective—being able to inspire others and bring the organization along.
What is your favorite quote from the book?
Kate Smaje: I like the quote from The Princess Bride: “You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.” I like it because it’s unexpected, but also because it’s a really good point. We talk a lot about speed, but there are times where you have to go slow to go fast, especially when you’re building the foundations.
Eric Lamarre: One of my favorites is Winston Churchill: “We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.” For me, the imagery is platforms. We shape the platforms, and then they shape our velocity and our ability to have impact.
Robert Levin: Another one I like is the Tina Fey quote about hiring great people and then getting out of their way. It’s about hiring great people, but also removing everything that gets in their way so they can do what they need to do.
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