Stacy Chick is a business leader and consultant with over 30 years’ experience in the healthcare industry. Having worked with leading executives in firms like Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi, Stacy Chick knows the importance of top-tier planning. She recently shared an article by McKinsey on the key mindsets and practices for powering growth in organizations.
What are the unique practices CEOs can apply to drive organizational excellence? To answer this question, McKinsey mined a quarter century’s worth of data from 7,800 CEOs of 3,500 public companies in 70 countries. It came up with a list of mindsets and practices successful CEOs apply while fulfilling their six core roles: corporate strategy, organizational alignment, board engagement, maintaining relations with external stakeholders, leading top teams, and managing time and energy.
With regard to corporate strategy, researchers found that successful CEOs achieved standout results by focusing on three things: vision, strategy, and resource allocation. On the first, high achieving CEOs reframe what winning means to the organization. Rather than simply focusing on opportunities in a limited scope such as within a region or sector, they go a step further to define broader, much larger goals and visions. Such reframing puts other companies in different industries in the picture, ensuring staff members see the market holistically, benchmarking the company against larger peers on a much bigger stage. This helps to eliminate individualistic biases that cause complacency.
On the part of strategy, great CEOs make bold moves early. McKinsey found that companies that shifted on average 30 percent before the industry median were more likely to reach the top quintile of their industry. This likelihood rose dramatically when several bold moves were made early on.
For resource allocation, McKinsey found that companies that reallocated more than half of their capital across business units over the course of a decade created 50 percent more value than those that allocated more slowly. Top CEOs were in fact more likely to reallocate capital dynamically, ensuring resources are directed where they will have the most impact.
