Inside the Strategy Room

In the upcoming book, CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best CEOs from the Rest, three McKinsey senior partners offer leadership lessons from 67 CEOs of some of the world’s most successful companies. In this second episode, we discuss culture, managing stakeholders, and how the pandemic has impacted the CEO role. Carolyn Dewar and Scott Keller, who co-lead McKinsey’...

In the upcoming book, CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best CEOs from the Rest, three McKinsey senior partners offer leadership lessons from 67 CEOs of some of the world’s most successful companies. In this episode, the first of two, we will discuss some of the insights from their book, including some great stories from their interviews.  We also discuss how excepti...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 28:15) >   We hear from Brendan Whitworth, Chief Executive Officer of Anheuser-Busch and Zone President North America of global brewing giant AB InBev. He was appointed to his role in July 2021 after leading sales in the US. Brendan shares his vision for the brewer’s next phase of growth. He spoke with Ed Little, a senior partn...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 25:01) >   Two experts discuss programmatic M&A, an approach to mergers and acquisitions that over many years has proven to be the most successful at delivering results—provided you execute it right. Robert Uhlaner, who co-led McKinsey’s Strategy and Corporate Finance practice until his retirement this summer, and Liz Wol, the...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 31:31) >   While environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues increasingly dominate the executive agenda, not all three elements get equal attention. This episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast—one of three exploring the various challenges around ESG—delves into the element that is most often overlooked, but has...

“Stakeholder capitalism” is the buzzword du jour for business practices that strive to achieve more than profits and a high stock price. But what does benefitting all stakeholders really entail? What trade-offs do companies have to make? And how do business leaders put the aspiration into practice? In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast—the second in a series on...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 33:46) >   Purpose and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues represent critical challenges for both boards and executive teams. They have become particularly salient since the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced corporations to scrutinize their responsibilities and role in society. In this episode—one of thre...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 24:41) >   Frank D’Amelio has been the CFO of Pfizer for 14 years, but the past 18 months have been like unlike any other. In this episode, he relates how the company addressed the most urgent and massive challenge in its history: developing a vaccine for COVID-19. Working in partnership with BioNTech, Pfizer accomplished that...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 32:41) >   When Kevin Hostetler took the reins of Rotork, a UK-based company that makes industrial flow-control equipment, he immediately launched a multi-year transformation to help the company benefit from trends transforming the industries it serves. In this episode he talks with Anna Koivuniemi, co-leader of McKinsey’s work...

As organizations increasingly grapple with digital transformations, large technology investments, and shifts to the cloud, these issues regularly appear on board agendas. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, Steve Van Kuiken, global leader of the McKinsey Technology practice and co-author of a recent article about ways boards can shape the cloud agenda, speaks with two experien...

In this episode, we explore how digital analytics is revolutionizing strategy. Nicholas Northcote, who for years led McKinsey’s research on strategic decision making, is joined by Sagie Davidovich, the co-founder and CEO of SparkBeyond, a McKinsey partner company that operates an AI-driven analytics platform, and Sasha Vesuvala, who leads much of McKinsey’s work in applying advanced an...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 50:13) >   Companies looking to bring breakthrough innovations to life need the right organizational structures and incentives in place. In his book Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries (St. Martin’s Press, March 2019), Safi Bahcall, a former biotech CEO who now helps...

What responsibilities does business have to society and what benefits do companies deliver to stakeholders and society at large? In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, two authors of a new McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report share recent research on how the value companies bring to economies, societies, and households has changed over the past quarter century. Michael Birshan...

In business, breaking up is hard to do. While divesting businesses in a timely manner is an essential aspect of effective portfolio management, companies tend to struggle with separation decisions. In this episode, three experts discuss how to determine which businesses to strengthen and which to divest and explain how to make your M&A strategy nimble enough to keep up with increasingly dynami...

As companies prepare for the recovery from the pandemic, many leaders hope innovation will set them up for the next phase of growth. In this episode, Laura Furstenthal, whose client work focuses on healthcare organizations and innovation transformations, and Erik Roth, leader of McKinsey’s global innovation practice, explain how to establish a sustainable innovation process . Support the sho...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:14) >   The combination of Dow Chemical and DuPont in 2017, followed by a split into three separate companies, was a huge and highly complex transaction that transformed the chemical industry landscape. In this episode, Howard Ungerleider, president and CFO of Dow, explains how the management teams of the two global giants a...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 36:36) >   Board members are increasingly challenging management to ensure the organization’s talent pipeline can meet the needs of the strategy. In this episode, we continue our series on board perspectives by looking at the board’s role in helping organizations develop the right talent and culture. To explore this topic, Frit...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 32:01) >   The COVID-19 pandemic forced the National Basketball Association (NBA) to develop new ways to engage with fans. Amy Brooks is the NBA’s first chief innovation officer. She oversees innovation initiatives across four leagues—the NBA, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), the NBA G League (minor league),...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 29:48) >   As chairman and CEO of State Street Corporation, Ron O’Hanley oversees one of the largest and oldest American financial institutions, with $38 trillion in assets under custody and administration, and $3.5 trillion in assets under management. In this episode he tells Celia Huber, who leads McKinsey’s board services wo...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 33:26) >   For Michelle Gass, the CEO of US retail chain Kohl’s, the pandemic delivered an education in the importance of decisive and inclusive leadership. But preparing the company for growth in the recovery, starting with a major partnership with cosmetics brand Sephora, is where her true passion lies. In this episode, she s...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 34:47) >   As the global leader of GS Accelerate, Goldman Sachs’ internal incubator that identifies, invests in, and develops new businesses, Tanya Baker has been instrumental in helping the financial services giant establish sustainable innovation capabilities. In this episode of the Committed Innovator series, Baker shares he...

Airbnb navigated a major crisis in 2020–the online marketplace went from having its long-term survival questioned to staging a successful IPO several months later. In this episode, James Manyika, a senior partner based in San Francisco who co chairs the McKinsey Global Institute, talks with Brian Chesky about his experience leading Airnbnb through the crisis. Their discussion is based upon an arti...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 28:59) >   The process of joining a public company’s board tends to be complex and confusing, especially for first-time directors. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, Celia Huber, who leads McKinsey’s board services work in North America, speaks with experts on board membership and governance from the execu...

Crises tend to give rise to remarkable innovations and insights. Today is just such a moment, raising challenges to many long-held beliefs about how companies should operate. In this episode, McKinsey’s global leader Kevin Sneader talks with senior partner Celia Huber about the eight trends that will shape the post-COVID-19 economy, which he writes about in his recent article, ‘The next norm...

Read more >    Listen to the podcast (duration: 32:40) >   As the former CEO of BBA Aviation and a senior executive at GKN, Simon Pryce has led organizations that grew rapidly through acquisitions. Now, as the CEO of Ultra Electronics, a British company that develops technology for defense and security industries, he is overseeing a corporate transformation that aims to posi...