Inside the Strategy Room

To succeed today, chief risk officers (CRO) and other risk leaders must exert more influence and build organizational resilience in an increasingly complex risk environment. Today’s guests share the key practices that set top risk leaders apart, as CROs shift from traditional risk managers to influential figures driving resilience and organizational success.

Ida Kristensen is the global co-leader of our Risk and Resilience Practice and senior partner in our New York office. She advises clients across sectors on a variety of topics spanning enterprise risk management, resilience, organization and talent, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and operational improvement. Ritesh Jain is a partner based in our New York office and a leader in our Risk and Resilience Practice. He advises financial institutions on their risk and resilience priorities with a focus on enterprise risk management, operational risk, and transforming the frontline risk and control environment. We are also joined by Naba Banerjee, currently Chief Product and Experience Officer at CLEAR and formerly a senior advisor to McKinsey and the Global Head of Trust and Safety at Airbnb, where she led a team responsible for industry-defining solutions that reduced fraud and safety incidents by over 50%.

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Helping boards manage geopolitical risk with Jon Huntsman Jr.

How ambidextrous leaders manage through volatile times

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McKinsey innovation leader Erik Roth speaks with Jelena Joffe Weil, the founder and worldwide leader of the Venture Innovation program at Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, about how AWS works to close the gap between innovation and go-to-market for start-ups and large enterprises. The global hyperscaler is known for helping businesses grow and scale rapidly, but it also helps start-ups and established enterprises find each other to engage in open, or collaborative, innovation.

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How to take the measure of innovation

Fielding high-performing innovation teams

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Business transformation has evolved markedly in recent years as technology and the pace of change reshape the landscape organizations face. Once a byword for cost-cutting, transformation now more readily incorporates bold, strategic goals. Today, we discuss the core elements of a successful transformation and how to confront some of the common challenges.

We are joined by three deeply experienced leaders from our Transformation Practice to discuss how transformation has evolved over the years. Kevin Carmody is a senior partner based in our Chicago office and works with management teams, boards of directors, and other stakeholders on complex performance transformations, strategy, change management programs, and corporate finance. Louisa Greco is a partner in our Toronto office and focuses on driving broad-scale transformations, commercial improvement, growth and innovation, and organizational effectiveness. Rob Montgomery is a partner in our San Francisco office and has designed and led comprehensive transformations across industries. All our guests have served in senior executive and chief transformation officer roles.

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Driving long-term business transformation

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McKinsey Transformation on LinkedIn

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This week we speak with the authors of our latest Annual M&A Report about trends in the deal landscape and what we might expect from 2025. Will the much-anticipated increase in transactions finally materialize? Or will players continue to hold onto their dry powder, waiting for the ongoing uncertainty that we’ve seen since the pandemic to settle down? McKinsey senior partners Mieke Van Oostende and Jake Henry co-lead our M&A practice, and in this episode, they share findings and observations from their latest report. 

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M&A Annual Report: Is the wave finally arriving?

Gen AI: Opportunities in M&A

How one approach to M&A is more likely to create value than all others

How lots of small M&A deals add up to big value

The seven habits of programmatic acquirers

How AI is transforming strategy development

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McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance on LinkedIn

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Despite persistent uncertainty in global markets, 2024 was the year that private equity began to emerge from a multi-year fog, with a rebound in dealmaking and distributions. Our Global Private Markets Report for 2025 revealed an industry that is more resilient, more innovative, and perhaps stronger than before. To discuss the nuances of that report we are joined by two of the report’s authors, Alex Edlich and Christopher Croke.

Alex is a senior partner in our New York office where he helps private equity and financial services clients achieve superior performance, by driving innovation with new technology. He is a senior leader in our Financial Services, Private Capital, and Digital Practices. Christopher Croke is a partner in our London office, where he is a leader in our Private Capital Practice. He advises private equity firms on their investments and strategy and helps the companies they own with their strategy and value creation.

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Global Private Markets Report 2025: Private equity emerging from the fog

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A key challenge to developing corporate strategy is moving quickly enough with the right insights to gain and maintain a competitive edge. Generative AI can help with this, as our guests this week describe.In this episode, we talk with three strategy experts about their research into using gen AI to help develop corporate strategy and the successes and challenges they encountered.

Bruce Delteil is the managing partner of our Vietnam office and leads our Strategy Practice in Asia. He serves clients on all aspects of strategy development, including scenario planning, visioning, war games, and the impact of gen AI. Antoine Montard is our Strategy Practice director of client capabilities based in Lisbon. He leads our Strategy, Research, and Insight Center and helps develop novel approaches for strategy, builds capabilities of teams and clients, and serves as a strategy expert on client projects. Andrea Tricoli is an associate partner in our Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice based in London. He leads our initiative to apply generative AI to our Strategy Method. He serves organizations on how to use analytics and AI to drive better decision-making, especially across the finance and strategy functions.

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The art of 21st-century leadership: From succession planning to building a leadership factory

Achieving growth: Putting leadership mindsets and behaviors into action

Six strategies for growth outperformance

McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance on LinkedIn

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Innovation and transformation become critical imperatives for many organizations, especially as they grow larger and mature. The complex merger and series of spin-offs that Dow Inc. underwent with E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company between 2017 and 2018 is among the more dramatic of such reinventions. The move to create a materials science company (Dow), an agricultural business (Corteva), and an industrial company (Dupont), remains a much-studied growth strategy case.

In this episode, Dow Inc. Chair and CEO Jim Fitterling talks with McKinsey Senior Partner and Global Energy and Materials Practice leader John Warner about why the “merge-spin” made sense then and now, and about leading a global company with compassion in a rapidly changing world. 

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How Dow reinvented itself

Getting fit for growth: The leadership mindsets and behaviors that matter

The Committed Innovator: A conversation with Neal Gutterson of Corteva

The making of a megadeal: Howard Ungerleider on the merger of Dow and DuPont

Top M&A trends in 2024: Blueprint for success in the next wave of deals

How one approach to M&A is more likely to create value than all others

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The best leaders are masterful communicators. They advance the aspirations of their companies with compelling, singular narratives that inspire a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. In this episode, we’re joined by three CEO and stakeholder relations experts who share their research into how CEOs can foster deeper dialogues and more meaningful connections with their wide range of stakeholders. Blair Epstein is a partner in our Bay Area office and a leader in our CEO Excellence Practice. Julia McClatchy is a partner in our Philadelphia office and a leader in our Growth, Marketing, and Sales Practice, and Eric Sherman is an expert based in our New York office who co-leads our CEO communications work.

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How the best CEOs build lasting stakeholder relationships

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The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead From the Inside Out

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Judy Marks is one of the few dozen women who lead Fortune 500 companies. She joined Connecticut-based Otis Elevator in 2017 as President, and was appointed CEO in 2019. After leading the company’s 2020 spinoff to become an independent publicly traded company, she was appointed Chair as well. Additionally, Judy serves on the board of Caterpillar.

In this episode McKinsey Senior Partner and North America Chair Eric Kutcher talks with Judy about how she thinks about geopolitical shifts, technological change, and leading 71,000 employees in more than 200 countries and territories around the globe.

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Opening doors for women leaders: An interview with Caroline Feeney

CEO Perspectives

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Corporate boards face increasing complexity as factors such as technological and geopolitical change challenge the organizations they serve. At the same time, boards are expected to do more, including to serve as catalysts of value creation. In this episode we talk with three experts on board effectiveness about their research: Senior partners Frithjof Lund and Celia Huber lead McKinsey’s Board Services Practice, together with senior expert Nina Spielmann. Their recently published analysis, “Better together: Three ways to boost board–CEO collaboration,” looks at the ways boards can do more to help advance the corporations they steward.

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The rising complexity of board directorship

Ready to board: Ascending new heights through CEO-board communication

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