Go for bold: A leader’s guide to transformative change

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Leading Off

Brought to you by Liz Hilton Segel, chief client officer and managing partner, global industry practices, & Homayoun Hatami, managing partner, global client capabilities

An image linking to the web page “How bold is your business transformation? A new way to measure progress” on McKinsey.com.

Even if your organization’s transformation has been successful, has it been transformative? Probably not. Transformations that reach this level represent just 5 percent of all transformations but deliver 4.5 times the value, according to research led by McKinsey senior partners José Pimenta da Gama and Fábio Stul and colleagues. Exemplary transformations generally have five characteristics in common, but transformative ones add three crucial actions: reinventing the core business, developing or acquiring new businesses, and revamping the operating model to focus on speed and innovation. To check where your project falls on the transformative scale, you may want to examine ten important areas focused on holistic impact and business reinvention, asking questions such as these: How is the company delivering compared with its full potential? Is it being thoughtful about where to compete? Is it innovating fast enough?

An image linking to the web page “Author Talks: Create your ‘reinvention road map’ in four easy steps” on McKinsey.com.

Whether you reinvent yourself or your organization, the process is largely the same, observes journalist and author Joanne Lipman in a conversation with McKinsey. Dispelling the idea that “transformation is abrupt and instant,” Lipman points to several examples of people who reinvented their careers or lives without having specific goals or time frames in mind. “But they do need to be open to exploring what the future might hold, allowing it to seep in a little bit,” she says. For example, “dormant ties”—connections that may have been untapped for a while—could prove unexpectedly helpful. In one case, “researchers asked executives to specify a business problem they were trying to solve,” says Lipman. “Then they were asked to reach a dormant tie, someone they hadn’t spoken to in [at least] five years, and to ask their advice. The advice they got from their dormant tie was so much better than the advice they got from their inner circle.”

An image linking to the web page “Organizing for change” on McKinsey.com.

Lead transformationally.

— Edited by Rama Ramaswami, senior editor, New York

Leading Off will take an end-of-summer break, but we’ll be back on September 11. Take care, and thanks for reading.

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by "McKinsey Leading Off" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 02:05 - 28 Aug 2023