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Welcome to the latest edition of Only McKinsey Perspectives. We hope you find our insights useful. Let us know what you think at Alex_Panas@McKinsey.com and Axel_Karlsson@McKinsey.com.
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—Edited by Belinda Yu, editor, Atlanta
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by "Only McKinsey Perspectives" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 01:29 - 2 Dec 2024 -
The week in charts
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by "McKinsey Week in Charts" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 03:36 - 30 Nov 2024 -
Beyond Small Business Saturday
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New from McKinsey & Company
While Small Business Saturday is a US tradition, it underscores the vital contributions—and potential—of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to economies worldwide. How do MSMEs perform across sectors and subsectors? What is their economic contribution in terms of jobs and value added? McKinsey’s Marco Piccitto and coauthors address these questions and more, including how to narrow the productivity gap with larger companies. Discover key findings from the report and learn how supporting MSMEs can boost global economies. Then, explore additional insights for more on how best to raise MSME productivity and capture value.
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by "McKinsey & Company" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 11:52 - 30 Nov 2024 -
EP140: HTTP/1 -> HTTP/2 -> HTTP/3
EP140: HTTP/1 -> HTTP/2 -> HTTP/3
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This week’s system design refresher:
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Pessimistic vs Optimistic Locking
Explaining JSON Web Token (JWT) with simple terms.
HTTP/1 -> HTTP/2 -> HTTP/3
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Pessimistic vs Optimistic Locking
Locks are essential to maintain data consistency and integrity in multi-user environments. They prevent simultaneous modifications that can lead to data inconsistencies.
Pessimistic locking assumes conflicts will occur and locks the data before any changes are made. It prevents other users from accessing and updating the data until the lock is released.
Optimistic locking assumes conflicts are rare. It allows multiple users to access data simultaneously and checks for conflicts when changes are committed. If a conflict is detected, the operation is rolled back.
Some best practices to consider:Hold locks for the minimum possible time to reduce contention.
Apply locks at the most granular level such as rows rather than tables.
Implement retry logic for transactions that fail due to conflicts.
Pessimistic locking is better for data integrity but can impact performance.
Optimistic locking is better for efficiency and performance.
Over to you: Which locking mechanism have you used?
Explaining JSON Web Token (JWT) with simple terms
Imagine you have a special box called a JWT. Inside this box, there are three parts: a header, a payload, and a signature.
The header is like the label on the outside of the box. It tells us what type of box it is and how it's secured. It's usually written in a format called JSON, which is just a way to organize information using curly braces { } and colons : .
The payload is like the actual message or information you want to send. It could be your name, age, or any other data you want to share. It's also written in JSON format, so it's easy to understand and work with.
Now, the signature is what makes the JWT secure. It's like a special seal that only the sender knows how to create. The signature is created using a secret code, kind of like a password. This signature ensures that nobody can tamper with the contents of the JWT without the sender knowing about it.
When you want to send the JWT to a server, you put the header, payload, and signature inside the box. Then you send it over to the server. The server can easily read the header and payload to understand who you are and what you want to do.
Over to you: When should we use JWT for authentication? What are some other authentication methods?HTTP/1 -> HTTP/2 -> HTTP/3
HTTP 1 started in 1996 followed by HTTP 1.1 the very next year. In 2015, HTTP 2 came about and in 2019 we got HTTP 3.
With each iteration, the protocol has evolved in new and interesting ways.HTTP 1 (and its sub-versions) introduced features like persistent connections, pipelining, and the concept of headers. The protocol was built on top of TCP and provided a reliable way of communication over the World Wide Web. It is still used despite being over 25 years old.
HTTP 2 brought new features such as multiplexing, stream prioritization, server push, and HPACK compression. However, it still used TCP as the underlying protocol.
HTTP 3 uses Google’s QUIC, which is built on top of UDP. In other words, HTTP 3 has moved away from TCP.
Over to you: What would you add to understand the evolution of HTTP over the years?
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by "ByteByteGo" <bytebytego@substack.com> - 11:37 - 30 Nov 2024 -
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by "ByteByteGo" <bytebytego@substack.com> - 11:34 - 29 Nov 2024 -
How to surf the geopolitical waves
The Shortlist
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Curated by Alex Panas, global leader of industries, & Axel Karlsson, global leader of functional practices and growth platforms
Welcome to the latest edition of the CEO Shortlist, a biweekly newsletter of our best ideas for the C-suite. This week, we feature our latest thinking on how to successfully navigate geopolitical instability. We appreciate the opportunity to connect and hope you find our perspectives novel and insightful. Please let us know what you think! You can reach us at Alex_Panas@mckinsey.com and Axel_Karlsson@mckinsey.com. Thank you.
—Alex and Axel
You may not care about geopolitics—but geopolitics cares about you. So said Western intelligence agencies in a recent briefing to CEOs. Generational shifts in the global order are well under way. And, according to the latest McKinsey Global Survey on economic conditions, business leaders today view geopolitical tensions as the biggest risk to growth. Political differences have already complicated economic relationships: trade interventions worldwide have surged 12-fold since 2010.
The savviest business leaders approach uncertainty with caution—and a healthy dash of curiosity. Today’s geopolitical shifts present not only risks to mitigate but opportunities to seize, argue Cindy Levy, Shubham Singhal, and Matt Watters in a new article. They highlight ten value drivers leaders can explore amid geopolitical shifts and explain how a proactive approach to geopolitics can help organizations safeguard operations and capture emerging opportunities.
We hope you find these ideas inspiring and helpful. See you next time with more McKinsey ideas for the CEO and others in the C-suite.Share these insights
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by "McKinsey CEO Shortlist" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 05:01 - 29 Nov 2024 -
Stateless Architecture: The Key to Building Scalable and Resilient Systems
Stateless Architecture: The Key to Building Scalable and Resilient Systems
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In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, developers face the constant challenge of building applications that are not only robust and secure but also infinitely scalable.
At the heart of this challenge lies a fundamental architectural decision: how to handle the application state. The state is your application's memory—every user session, shopping cart, and authentication token that makes personalized digital experiences possible.
The journey from stateful to stateless architectures represents one of the most important shifts in modern system design.
Traditional stateful applications dominated the early 2000s and directly maintained user sessions and data on application servers. While this approach of keeping everything in one place seemed logical initially, it created significant challenges as applications scaled to serve millions of users worldwide.
Consider an e-commerce platform handling Black Friday sales. In a stateful architecture, each server will need to maintain session information for thousands of users, leading to complex load-balancing requirements and potential session loss if a server fails. Modern stateless architectures, however, externalize this state, allowing any server to handle any request, dramatically simplifying scaling and improving reliability.
Several converging factors have led to the industry’s embrace of stateless architecture:
The rise of cloud computing has made horizontal scaling not just possible but economically advantageous.
The shift from SOAP-based services to REST and GraphQL APIs, which are inherently stateless.
Microservices architectures, which break down monolithic applications into smaller, independent services, have become the norm rather than the exception. These services must be stateless to maintain independence and scalability.
In this article, we’ll explore the principles, implementation strategies, and best practices of stateless architecture.
What is Stateless Architecture...
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by "ByteByteGo" <bytebytego@substack.com> - 11:37 - 28 Nov 2024 -
Don’t miss our webinar on building a composable API platform!
Don’t miss our webinar on building a composable API platform!
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Hi Md Abul,
Would you like to know how to build a composable API platform that harnesses the power of OAS, OAuth and OTel? Then join our webinar on December 5th!
Tyk’s Developer Advocate, Buddha Bhattacharya, and Sedky Haider, our Director, Solution Architecture, will be providing a live demo of how you can build an API platform using Tyk, Grafana and Keycloak.Join us to learn about:
- Building a composable API platform using open standards and open source tools
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No matter which sector you operate in, you can take this knowledge back to your business and get ready to design an API platform that helps fuel your success.
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Developer Advocate
Sedky Haider
Director, Solution ArchitectureOur webinar will take place via Zoom at 10 am EDT/3 pm GMT on December 5th, so make sure you register to join us. Click here for full details.
See you in a week,
Budha and team
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by "Budhaditya Bhattacharya" <budha@tyk.io> - 06:00 - 28 Nov 2024 -
Say goodbye to Global Benefits hassles: join our webinar
Say goodbye to Global Benefits hassles: join our webinar
Hi MD,
Managing benefits across multiple countries can be complex. Join our webinar to learn how Remote, in partnership with Kota, makes global benefits easier to manage while ensuring compliance and efficiency.
Streamline global benefits management with Remote
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What you’ll gain from this webinar:
Insights into common challenges of managing global benefits
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Speakers:
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What are you waiting for?
This session is designed to give you actionable takeaways for managing benefits efficiently across borders.
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Enhance your website's search engine rankings
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by "Matt Budd" <matt@infoserve.uk> - 03:07 - 28 Nov 2024 -
✨ Discover New Tools: Remote Equity, Global Benefits and more!
✨ Discover New Tools: Remote Equity, Global Benefits and more!
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by "Remote" <hello@remote-comms.com> - 08:29 - 27 Nov 2024 -
A new operations strategy for a world with fewer workers
Re:think
FRESH TAKES ON BIG IDEAS
ON FRONTLINE TALENT SCARCITY Turning worker scarcity into opportunityOver the past couple of years, businesses have faced frontline talent scarcity at a level that leaders may never have seen before. What amplified the challenge was that companies’ typical solution stopped working: just offering another dollar or two per hour hasn't moved the needle.
That’s partly because employees are looking for more from their jobs. But scarcity has also become a more complex problem because it affects multiple industries at once: manufacturing, retail, warehousing, and truck driving. In manufacturing alone in the United States, the most recent data show almost 500,000 unfilled jobs—a figure that the National Association of Manufacturers projects could well rise to almost two million by 2034. Frontline workers can move between sectors more easily than ever, so any one company has more competitors for talent.
Plus, jobs are changing. At today’s fast-food restaurants, customers start at a kiosk or in an app, placing their orders themselves. These companies don’t need workers to take orders, but they do need them to interact with customers, make the food, and ensure quality. It’s similar in manufacturing, where the level of automation keeps rising. Instead of performing manual tasks, people spend more time solving complex problems and interacting with computers, robotics, and AI.
Frontline talent is a global issue. Although it was exacerbated in the United States by specific macroeconomic conditions, the employee skill and capability transition is pretty universal. Even in places where there are enough frontline workers, there often aren’t enough with the right capabilities to do what frontline employees need to do these days.
Talent scarcity is resetting the narrative about automation. People used to see automation almost as a four-letter word—presuming that it would take away jobs. But companies have learned that automation often takes away the tasks that employees like the least, such as heavy lifting in a factory or warehouse. For a finance person in a back office, it’s taking away the most trivial and boring aspects of the job. “Real transformations have happened when leaders listened to what frontline employees wanted to be automated: the parts of their jobs that they liked the least.”
When leaders think about frontline talent strategy, they need to be more transformational than in the past. They need to confront basic, hard questions, such as “How do we want to organize our business?” and “What capabilities do we need?”
To figure out how to do this systemically, rather than executing the short-term fixes seen over the past few years, leaders can take four steps. The first is to understand that frontline talent can’t be just an HR issue. It’s about reframing frontline talent as an investment—not just a cost. Frontline talent is crucial to the next generations of productivity and operational excellence. It determines where and how companies can automate and enhance with technology and what type of capability building people need.
The second step is to put real performance improvement at the core of the talent strategy, backed by clear operational and financial metrics. Applying the right data analytics to tracking and performance management data can reveal that more rigorous capability building and career pathways aren’t just a “nice thing to do.” They’re critical to business performance.
The third is to focus more on middle managers. They’re the early-warning detectors who make sure that the organization has the right facts about where the problems are, so the right people can help design solutions. They also lead capability building for frontline workers. It’s the middle manager who provides the on-the-job reinforcement and coaching that are essential for people to learn new skills and try new things.
The final point is to lean into the technology. It’s become clear that companies can’t just focus on automating the areas that senior executives prioritize to save money. We’ve observed real transformation when leaders listened to what frontline employees wanted to be automated: the parts of their jobs that they liked the least. If automation (and related technologies) can make their lives better, employees will be more engaged and an even bigger part of the solution.
It's exciting to hear a leader commit to a special talent initiative, as it shows the right momentum and investment support. But it’s even better when talent is no longer a special initiative because being concerned with talent is just part of how the company does things. That’s the goal: for a talent focus to be embedded in how things are done.Share Dan Swan’s insights
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Dan Swan is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Connecticut office.
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Arun Arora on e-commerce
Not all e-commerce approaches are created equal. The most successful companies bring their technology talent and capabilities in-house to give them the speed and flexibility to adapt quickly to market opportunities.
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by "McKinsey Quarterly" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 02:32 - 27 Nov 2024 -
What do many executives overlook about challenging geopolitical conditions?
Only McKinsey Perspectives
Brought to you by Alex Panas, global leader of industries, & Axel Karlsson, global leader of functional practices and growth platforms
Welcome to the latest edition of Only McKinsey Perspectives. We hope you find our insights useful. Let us know what you think at Alex_Panas@McKinsey.com and Axel_Karlsson@McKinsey.com.
—Alex and Axel
•
Risks and opportunities. No company has been immune to the effects of geopolitics, but for decades, these concerns have tended to take a back seat to others. Today, however, CEOs and boards understand that the global order is shifting and will be for the foreseeable future. According to McKinsey’s Cindy Levy, Shubham Singhal, and Matt Watters, what many leaders have not yet contended with are the business opportunities that geopolitical shifts present, concentrating instead only on the risks these issues pose.
—Edited by Belinda Yu, editor, Atlanta
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by "Only McKinsey Perspectives" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 01:23 - 27 Nov 2024 -
A Crash Course on Using AI to Save Time and Focus on What Matters
A Crash Course on Using AI to Save Time and Focus on What Matters
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for moreA Crash Course on Using AI to Save Time and Focus on What Matters
7 steps to level up your AI prompts and 8 of my favorite AI use cases for work
∙Guest post
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This is a guest post from my friend Peter Yang. Peter uses AI extensively to balance his full-time job, newsletter, and two kids, so I think you’ll love his practical tips:
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I've spent hundreds of hours experimenting with AI to save time at work. So today, I want to share an extremely practical guide with:
7 steps to craft a great AI prompt
8 of my favorite AI use cases at work
If you find this valuable, get my personal AI prompt library to help you save hours every week by copying what’s already working for me. Get 20% off the annual plan of my newsletter (until Black Friday) to unlock it and all my other AI guides.
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7 steps to craft a great AI prompt
Here’s how I usually adopt AI at work:
I start working on a super annoying and repetitive task.
I try to use 1-line prompts to get AI to do the work for me.
After struggling with lazy prompting, I finally decide to write a great prompt.
So, what makes a great AI prompt? Well, it usually includes these 7 steps:
Give AI a specific role and task: e.g., “You’re an expert editor…your task is to…”
Give specific instructions: e.g., “Follow these steps carefully…”
Include examples: e.g., “Analyze the <examples> to understand my style…”
Use XML tags for structure: e.g., “<data></data> and <prompt></prompt>.” Putting data before the instructions can improve AI’s response quality by 30%.
Give AI space to think (chain of thought): e.g., “In <thinking> tags, describe the key aspects of the edits you will make.”
Ask for variations: e.g., “Give me three variations.”
Add constraints: e.g., “Limit to 500 words.”
For example, here’s a prompt that I use to create PRDs from notes and discussions:
<reference> Paste in my PRD template here </reference> <instructions> You are a senior product leader and a clear written communicator. Your task is to help transform my rough notes into a great PRD. Please follow these steps carefully: 1. Analyze the <reference> to understand my desired style and format. In <thinking> tags, summarize the key characteristics of my PRD template. 2. Ask me to share my notes next. 3. Structure the PRD as follows: a) Problem: Clearly describe: Who is the customer? What is the customer's problem? How do we know that this is a problem? b) Goals: Include 1 goal metric and 2-3 input metrics. c) Solution: Clearly describe the solution and milestones. For each milestone, write concise user stories in first person view ("I see...", "I can...") with nested bullet points describing how the feature works. 4. Limit the PRD to 2-3 pages max 5. Present your response using: <draft_prd> tags for the structured document <follow_up> tags for follow-up items Ask me for more information if you need it. Be as clear, concise, and specific as possible. </instructions>If you only remember one thing from this section, make it this:
The most important step in writing a great AI prompt is to include examples.
Anyone can write a prompt to “make a viral social post” or “edit a newsletter.” But the magic happens when you show AI exactly what “viral” and “good” means.
That’s why I included my best examples in my personal AI prompt library:
Whenever I write a new AI prompt these days, I subconsciously include examples (along with XML tags, chain of thought, etc) to make it great. So keep these seven tips in mind as we explore my favorite AI use cases for work below.
8 favorite AI use cases for work
Since you’re reading ByteByteGo, I’m sure you’ve tried using AI coding tools like Cursor to ship faster. So today, I want to instead talk about how AI can solve some of the more annoying problems that we all run into at work:
1. Catch up on Slack threads
Nothing gives me a bigger headache than getting tagged on a 70+ message Slack thread with zero context. So, instead of reading the full thread, I use AI to summarize the takeaways, action items, and next steps:
<data> [Slack thread] </data> <instructions> You're a senior product leader who excels at synthesis. Your goal is to extract the key points from this Slack thread: - Takeaways - Action items and owners - Open questions Use quotes where relevant. Keep it under 250 words. </instructions>2. Summarize user feedback
I believe in building with customers, but manually parsing raw user feedback (e.g., Discord channels, forums, surveys) can take hours. Here’s a prompt that I use to get the insights in minutes instead:
<data> [Customer interviews/surveys/community posts] </data> <instructions> You're an experienced user researcher. Extract the following from this feedback: - Key pain points (with supporting quotes) - Prioritized list of feature requests Use nested bullets with clear headlines. </instructions>3. Learn new topics fast
My favorite way to learn a new topic is from a YouTube explainer video. But I’m too lazy to watch hour-long videos, so I use AI instead to get the takeaways instead:
Click “Show transcript” under a YouTube video
Copy and paste the transcript into AI with the following prompt:
<data> [Video transcript] </data> <instructions> You're amazing at extracting insights from long video transcripts. Transform the <data> transcript into a learning guide with: - Clear section headers - 20+ nested bullets - Include direct quotes where relevant Be extremely detailed and thorough. </instructions>P.S. This is also a great way to consume hour-long podcasts in 5 minutes.
4. Turn voice notes into documents
The more context you give AI, the better its output becomes. One of the best ways to give a lot of context quickly is to record a voice note and then get AI to summarize it:
Record a voice note with Superwhisper, ChatGPT Voice, or another tool.
Copy the full transcript and email it to yourself.
Paste it into AI with this prompt to clean it up:
<data> [Voice transcript] </data> <instructions> You're a talented writer who maintains voice while adding structure. Transform these thoughts into: - Clear main points - Logical flow - Supporting examples Give me three variations. Keep paragraphs short (2-3 sentences). </instructions>5. Make writing crystal clear
Many engineers struggle with written communication. I’ve seen otherwise smart engineers paste a wall of text into Slack that nobody wants to read.
So instead, paste your wall of text into AI first to make it more concise. The prompt below helps me edit everything from Slack messages to docs:
<data> [Text to make more concise] </data> <instructions> You're an expert editor focused on clarity. Make this more clear and concise: - Use simple language - Break into short paragraphs - Remove redundancy Give me three variations. </instructions>6. Write better documentation
Documentation often takes a long time to write. AI is great at writing a first draft that you can then edit later:
<data> [Code/API/Feature details] </data> <instructions> You're a senior engineer who writes exceptional docs. Create documentation that: - Starts with a clear overview - Includes practical examples - Covers error scenarios Include code samples. Keep it under two pages. Focus on what developers need to know. </instructions>7. Make a quick prototype
AI prototyping has come a long way. Here’s how I use it to make prototypes for my product ideas that I can then show to stakeholders and customers:
<instructions> You're an expert at building rapid UX prototypes. Please make a working prototype of the attached image. Here are the requirements: [Share high-level requirements or user stories in a list of bullets] </instructions>Keep iterating if AI doesn’t create what you want in one go. Here’s the website v0 made for me from a wireframe that I found online:
8. Solve problems
Let’s close with perhaps the most important tip of them all:
Think of AI as a coworker who is patient, knowledgeable, and available 24/7. Give it context and talk to it throughout the day.
I talk to it about everything from product strategy to navigating tough decisions to more (of course, you should only use company-approved AI if you’re sharing confidential information). You’ll be surprised at how helpful it can be!
Wrap up
Here are all 7 steps and 8 use cases again on a single screen:
I hope you’ll use this AI guide to save time with all the busy work so that you can focus more on the work that matters — talking to customers and shipping. If you’d like to explore more, consider getting 20% off my annual subscription to unlock my personal AI prompt library and all my AI guides.
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