Inside the Strategy Room

By McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance

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What's Inside the Strategy Room about?

We talk with McKinsey partners and corporate executives on the challenges they face creating lasting strategies in a fast-changing world. We also examine the different ways these executives approach these challenges and the new and innovative ways they think of creating a vision for their enterprises.

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Committing to Innovation: A...

01.30.2020

Beth Comstock, former vice chair of GE, and McKinsey senior partner Erik Roth discuss how a tolerance for risk, patience, and thinking small (where funding is concerned) can lead to innovation breakthroughs. Beth is an innovation leader who spent almost ...

Inside the Strategy Room episodes:

01.30.2020 Committing to Innovation: A discussion with Beth Comstock Beth Comstock, former vice chair of GE, and McKinsey senior partner Erik Roth discuss how a tolerance for risk, patience, and thinking small (where funding is concerned) can lead to innovation breakthroughs. Beth is an innovation leader who spent almost ...
01.30.2020 Innovation at scale: A conversation with Beth Comstock Beth Comstock, former vice chair of GE, and McKinsey senior partner Erik Roth discuss how a tolerance for risk, patience, and thinking small (where funding is concerned) can lead to innovation breakthroughs. Beth is an innovation leader who spent almost ...
01.27.2020 A winning formula for deal synergies Senior partner Andy West and partner Jeff Rudnicki, two of McKinsey’s most seasoned M&A experts, discuss what they have learned from their recent work with clients of the Synergy Lab, a new initiative aimed at understanding how to most effectively ...
01.13.2020 How new CEOs can manage for the future Today we’re talking with two McKinsey senior partners about a dilemma that many new CEOs face: should they focus on showing quick results or invest in the company’s long-term future, even at the expense of short-term returns? Carolyn Dewar and ...
12.30.2019 Digital disruption and the role of M&A With digital technologies unleashing ever more change in industry structures and company business models, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures are an important way for companies to reposition their organizations to compete in the digital age. In today’s podcast, Cam MacKellar, a ...
12.20.2019 Corporate diversity: if you don’t measure it, it won’t get done At our CFO Forum in London, senior partners Celia Huber and Vivian Hunt led a discussion on corporate diversity, sharing insights from McKinsey’s ongoing research and answering questions from attendees. This episode is an edited recording of the session. Celia ...
12.02.2019 Strategy at the speed of digital In this episode you’ll hear from the co-authors of a recent McKinsey Quarterly article, “The drumbeat of digital: How winning teams play.” Tanguy Catlin, a senior partner in our Boston office, and Laura LaBerge, a member of our digital strategy ...
11.19.2019 Partners in profit: Creating successful business alliances In this episode Ruth De Backer and Eileen Kelly Rinaudo take us through a detailed masterclass on ways to manage business partnerships successfully. In their conversation with Strategy & Corporate Finance communications director Sean Brown, they discuss the four key ...
11.04.2019 Stronger for longer: How top performers thrive through downturns We talk with two of our experts about their new research on corporate resilience and what differentiates companies that emerge from economic downturns stronger than they were going in. We'll share insights on preparing your organization for macroeconomic crises and ...
10.28.2019 Jumpstart a better way to do strategy We continue our discussion on the factors that most affect a strategy’s odds of success. In our two previous podcasts we discussed how social dynamics and biases can undermine strategy development and explained the Power Curve of economic profit, which ...
10.21.2019 How to make the bold moves that matter We continue our discussion with three senior partners about their research on the factors that most affect a strategy’s odds of success and the moves companies need to make to boost corporate performance. In our last podcast, we discussed the ...
10.14.2019 Measuring your strategy’s odds of success In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, McKinsey senior partners Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit speak with communications director Sean Brown about their book, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick. In this first of three podcasts, ...
10.02.2019 Reinventing the CFO for the digital age The demands on CFOs are rising, along with the scale and influence of the role. Today’s podcast was recorded at our 2019 CFO Forum, where thetheme was “Reinventing the CFO.” The Forum was hosted by Kapil Chandra, a senior partner ...
09.30.2019 Framing reinvention: What disruptive change means for business, society, and you In this episodewe share McKinsey global managing partner Kevin Sneader’s recent address to a gathering of CFOs in London. The conference’s theme was around reinventing the role of the CFO and how digital and analytics are helping drive this reinvention. ...
09.20.2019 How CFOs should drive digital transformations Senior partners Tanguy Catlin and Kate Smaje discuss their recent work on digital reinventions at established companies and the role CFOs should play to help them succeed. In their conversation with communications director Sean Brown, they share their insights from ...
08.13.2019 Resilience and value: A CFO toolkit for withstanding shocks While economic downturns are impossible to predict, it is never too early to start thinking about how to weather the next downturn—whenever it comes. Two of our senior partners, Cindy Levy and Martin Hirt, recently talked about how executives can ...
07.15.2019 The diversity opportunity for new CEOs When we talk about organizations we often think in terms of their performance and their overall health. Gender diversity tends to be a subject that many relate to the health part of that equation. But new research has uncovered a ...
07.10.2019 Want better strategies? Become a bulletproof problem solver As the pace of social, economic, and technological change accelerates, organizations everywhere must make increasingly complex decisions in the face of an uncertain future. This is why the value of creative and strategic thinkers capable of solving complex problems has ...
06.25.2019 Creating high-performance innovation teams at scale Most CEOs understand that innovation is a team sport. The challenge leaders face is identifying and nurturing the right combination of people within an organization who are capable of developing winning products and taking them to market. Erik Roth and ...
06.04.2019 Active portfolio management: An interview with Andy West Andy West on recent trends in mergers and acquisitions and the importance of aligning your transaction strategy with your overall strategy. How do you know when it's the right time to divest? What strategies do top M & A performers ...
05.29.2019 The evolution of the CFO CFOs are playing an increasingly pivotal role driving change in their companies. How should they balance their traditional responsibilities with the new CFO mandate?
04.30.2019 The pros and cons of activist investors Management teams who engage positively with attackers may find activist campaigns bring ideas that create value and improve shareholder performance. We investigate the levers activists pull to improve the performance of target companies, activist investor trends globally, and how companies ...
03.07.2019 How to move fast: Innovation at speed and scale Innovation is critical to driving growth. Today we are talking about how large companies can take innovation plays from startups' play books to make them more competitive. We will hear from entrepreneurs and McKinsey experts about the techniques they use ...
02.27.2019 Bias busters: How to resist the allure of ‘glamour’ projects Shiny new initiatives can distract you from paying attention to other good but mundane projects and investments. In this episode McKinsey partner Tim Koller, professor of business strategy at the University of Sydney Dan Lovallo, and Sean Brown, discuss why ...
02.20.2019 Bias busters: How to avoid losses and prune projects proactively It’s common for companies to hang on too long to a number of projects or parts of the business that are underperforming but just won’t die. These projects and business units linger because of emotional or legacy attachments that executives ...
02.13.2019 Bias busters: How to be objective about budgets Anchoring bias can hold back the budgeting process and influence your targets despite your best efforts. Address it and refocus difficult conversations. In this episode McKinsey partner Tim Koller, professor of business strategy at the University of Sydney Dan Lovallo, ...
02.05.2019 Bias busters: How to make better decisions with the ‘outside view’ Despite their best intentions, executives fall prey to cognitive and organizational biases that get in the way of good decision making. In our new Bias Busters series, McKinsey partner Tim Koller and Dan Lovallo, an alumnus of McKinsey’s San Francisco ...
12.19.2018 Why long-term value is a winning bet Companies that focus on the long-term outperform their shorter-term peers on a range of economic and financial metrics including revenue and earnings, market capitalization, and job creation. In this episode, Sean Brown is joined by Bruce Simpson, a senior partner ...
12.12.2018 Digital transformation: The CFO's role Michael Bender is the global co-leader of McKinsey Digital and Analytics. He spoke with Sean Brown in London about the role CFOs can play in driving digital transformations, the nature of digital transformations more generally, how digital and analytics go ...
11.28.2018 Make working capital work harder for you Working capital is often an under-appreciated source of cash and value creation. Associate partner Matt Stone speaks with Sean Brown in London about how leading companies are unlocking value by implementing effective working capital strategies and world-class advanced analytics and ...
10.11.2018 How leading CEOs manage their middle tenure There is a wealth of research into how new CEOs should successfully transition into the leading role. Less frequently studied is how top CEOs outperform competitors during the second act of their tenures. Sean Brown talks with senior partner Rodney ...
09.24.2018 How to take the measure of innovation Two simple R & D conversion metrics can help executives measure the value of innovation efforts. Senior partner Erik Roth, and associate partners Guttorm Aase and Sri Swaminathan speak with Sean Brown about how companies can gain valuable insights into ...
09.04.2018 Demystifying AI and machine learning for executives Senior partner Tamim Saleh cuts through the hype around AI in this interview and offers clear guidance for executives looking to make precise strategic decisions about where and how to employ AI in their business. Tamim shares insights on the ...
08.27.2018 Building gender diversity on boards Celia Huber, Senior Partner in our Silicon Valley office, on how companies can build and benefit from gender diversity on boards.
08.20.2018 How to avoid digital strategy pitfalls Most digital strategies don’t reflect how digital is changing economic fundamentals, industry dynamics, or what it means to compete.
08.02.2018 Inside the strategy room: One CEO’s approach Deanna Mulligan, president and CEO of Guardian Life Insurance, reflects on how she approaches strategy planning in an industry with strong headwinds.