A model for CEO excellence
mckinsey.com
mckinsey.com
For example:
> Furthermore, research using our CEO database found that the top decile of high performing CEOs are 35 percent more likely to dynamically reallocate capital than average performers.
Maybe they stumbled into an opportunity that the rest didn't. That's luck.
> To move “boldly” is to shift at least 30 percent more than the industry median. Making one or two bold moves more than doubles the likelihood of rising from the middle quintiles of economic profit to the top quintile, and making three or more bold moves makes such a rise six times more likely.
So if your random walk takes you upwards, you wind up having walked upwards. Brilliant.
> In the largest research effort of its kind, McKinsey found that CEOs who insist on rigorously measuring and managing all cultural elements that drive performance more than double the odds that their strategies will be executed.
Measured number rises, unmeasured number remains unmeasured. Scientists baffled.
Remember: these are the best and the brightest. They are taken extremely seriously.
Edit: they do give a source for their 45%-explained-by-CEO claim ... and it's a pop-business book written by the same authors. Oh well.
Though to be fair, it's not like people down the org chart are usually much better at it.
I think it’s a bit unfair to point the finger at “C-level management” in particular though. The same kind of thinking can be observed in government agencies, in the legal system, even in academia. Statistics is just hard, and a lot of people are simply not interested and cognitively capable enough to get it right, sadly.
This is how executives discredit engineers. Someone who believes themself to be intellectually superior to others and is socially inept enough to say so is an easy target to discredit. This is how you become a code monkey.
People love to set social norms that limit how much use others can make of their talents and abilities. But that’s usually not in the company’s best interest, and those norms seldom have the backing of senior management.
With that said, of course you should be tactful and show your coworkers respect. People deserve respect not because they are smart, but because they are people.
(1) Long periods of success lead to raises for the incumbent CEO and then the long period of success ends
(2) The company is failing and needs a turnaround. No external person is willing to take the job for normal CEO pay for the company’s size because they know they’ll likely fail and that makes getting another CEO job substantially harder.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who-car...
https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handb...
a) the company G move to Agile except that they didn't say how. So now every meeting/townhall/1:1 is filled with buzzwords. It is clear from the way she describes it, no one in the company understands what Agile means. Everybody talks about collaboration but they don't do any of the Agile rituals.
b) All of G's employees should move to an open office plan with non dedicated seats. You come in the morning and have to hunt around for a desk. If you have to go for a meeting in a conference room, you have to pack up all your stuff in your bag and go. When your meeting is over, it is time to start hunting again.
Morale amongst the rank-and-file is quite low.
Also McKinsey, Bain and I think BCG have actual system implementation or at least integration offerings now.
I've heard about this being discussed at one other large org. It sounds very concerning to me, is there any proven benefit to having non-dedicated seats?
This is why management consulting has such a bad reputation in the tech community. On the other hand, McKinsey does do a pretty decent job of research and case studies since they’re able to work with so many prominent companies.
In my experience, this stems from the shocking number of "Agile Coaches" lacking practical experience in any of the three main disciplines within a functioning product team (software engineering, product management, or design).
So while they can introduce the high-level rituals -- standups, retrospectives, and the like -- they are unable to teach battle magic: building code that can cope with changing user requirements, writing specifications that make sense to both stakeholders and engineers, and figuring out what problems we acutally need to solve to get people to buy and use the product.
Moreover, they undersell just how much an organization needs to adapt to actually leverage any of this.
The end result is exactly as you describe.
In my experience, companies that succeed with Agile practices are the ones that (a) constantly invest in their people; (b) delegate problems, not solutions; and (c) are ruthlessly rational, requiring that each new practice or idea pays its own rent.
What do executives think numbers are for? Why does the author find this metric meaningful? How does this number have any meaning at all? The fact that a CEO is important was not one that I questioned until I read this.
I am not sure if the statistics I heard had any basis whatsoever though.
What if some things can't be learned, packaged into a Powerpoint, and then taught and instantly absorbed?
It is like the economist who spends his whole life ensconced in his little office telling investors how to invest, or policy makers how to manage an economy...despite having no actual experience of those things himself.
I don't know how we got to this point.
And never, never hires McKinsey.
My point is not to reveal a gotcha that McKinsey is not the word of God. You will find nobody at the firm thinks this way.
Many people have strongly negative perceptions of consulting firms, and I’m sure some people have strong anecdotes to justify their beliefs. Yet I’m brought in to address certain problems and it’s very clear that help is needed. Sometimes the solution is something that could have come from someone inside, or is perhaps something that someone on the inside is already saying beforehand, but the consultant gets communicated better to leadership because they have more political capital and credibility on the issue. If this happens, then you’re already experiencing some of the problems highlighted in this article. Political and organizational friction is real. If that is the “only” thing preventing an organization from solving a problem, then they are still incapable of solving the problem on their own. I think a lot of people would benefit from seeing how things are from the consultants point of view.
This is very insightful analysis, using the method called "I made up all the numbers".
And somehow we're supposed to trust the rest of the article?!
A smart CEO or board understands where value can be destroyed. That’s always the existential threat facing an organization who gives a shit about McKinsey.
I agree this is pretty sloppy writing.
Most enterprise don't know how to write content people like to read for some reason