1/13/22, 9:37 PM Making the new normal work | McKinsey


From thinking about the next

normal to making it work: What to

stop, start, and accelerate

May 15, 2020 | Article

As businesses step into the post-coronavirus future, they need to find a

balance between what worked before and what needs to happen to
succeed in the next normal.

By Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal

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 Article (PDF-338KB)

W
hat’s next? That is the question everyone is asking. The future is not what we
thought it would be only a few short months ago.

In a previous article, we discussed seven broad ideas that we thought would shape the

global economy as it struggled to define the next normal . In this one, we set out seven

actions that have come up repeatedly in our discussions with business leaders around

the world. In each case, we discuss which attitudes or practices businesses should stop,

which they should start, and which they should accelerate.

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1. From ‘sleeping at the office’ to effective

remote working

Stop assuming that the old ways will

come back

In fact, this isn’t much of a problem. Most executives we have spoken to have been

pleased at how well the sudden increase in remote working has gone. At the same time,
there is some nostalgia for the “good old days,” circa January 2020, when it was easy to

bump into people at the coffee room. Those days are gone. There is also the risk,

however, that companies will rely too much on remote working. In the United States,
more than 70 percent of jobs can’t be done offsite. Remote work isn’t a panacea for

today’s workplace challenges, such as training, unemployment, and productivity loss.

Start thinking through how to organize

work for a distributed workforce

Remote working is about more than giving people a laptop. Some of the rhythms of office

life can’t be recreated. But the norms associated with traditional work—for example, that
once you left the office, the workday was basically done—are important. As one CEO told

us, “It’s not so much working from home; rather, it’s really sleeping at the office.”

For working from home to be sustainable, companies need to help their staff create those

boundaries: the kind of interaction that used to take place in the hallway can be taken
care of with a quick phone call, not a videoconference. It may also help to set “office

hours” for particular groups, share tips on how to track time, and announce that there is
no expectation that emails will be answered after a certain hour.

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Accelerate best practices around

collaboration, flexibility, inclusion, and
accountability

Collaboration, flexibility, inclusion, and accountability are things organizations have been
thinking about for years, with some progress. But the massive change associated with

the coronavirus could and should accelerate changes that foster these values.

Office life is well defined. The conference room is in use, or it isn’t. The boss sits here; the

tech people have a burrow down the hall. And there are also useful informal actions.
Networks can form spontaneously (albeit these can also comprise closed circuits,
keeping people out), and there is on-the-spot accountability when supervisors can keep

an eye from across the room. It’s worth trying to build similar informal interactions. TED
Conferences, the conference organizer and webcaster, has established virtual spaces so

that while people are separate, they aren’t alone. A software company, Zapier, sets up
random video pairings so that people who can’t bump into each other in the hallway

might nonetheless get to know each other.

There is some evidence that data-based, at-a-distance personnel assessments bear a

closer relation to employees’ contributions than do traditional ones, which tend to favor
visibility. Transitioning toward such systems could contribute to building a more diverse,
more capable, and happier workforce. Remote working, for example, means no

commuting, which can make work more accessible for people with disabilities; the
flexibility associated with the practice can be particularly helpful for single parents and

caregivers. Moreover, remote working means companies can draw on a much wider
talent pool.

Remote working means no commuting, which can make work more accessible for

people with disabilities; the flexibility can be particularly helpful for single parents

and caregivers.

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2. From lines and silos to networks and

teamwork

Stop relying on traditional organizational

structures

“We used to have all these meetings,” a CEO recently told us. “There would be people
from different functions, all defending their territory. We’d spend two hours together, and
nothing got decided. Now, all of those have been cancelled—and things didn’t fall apart.”
It was a revelation—and a common one. Instead, the company put together teams to deal
with COVID-19-related problems. Operating with a defined mission, a sense of urgency,

and only the necessary personnel at the table, people set aside the turf battles and
moved quickly to solve problems, relying on expertise rather than rank.

Start locking in practices that speed up

decision making and execution during
the crisis

The all-hands-on-deck ethos of a pandemic can’t last. But there are ways to
institutionalize what works—and the benefits can be substantial. During and after the
2008 financial crisis, companies that were in the top fifth in performance were about 20
percentage points ahead of their peers. Eight years later, their lead had grown to 150

percentage points. The lesson: those who move earlier, faster, and more decisively do
best .

Accelerate the transition to agility

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We define “agility” as the ability to reconfigure strategy, structure, processes, people, and
technology quickly toward value-creating and value-protecting opportunities. In a 2017
McKinsey survey, agile units performed significantly better than those who weren’t agile,
but only a minority of organizations were actually performing agile transformations. Many

more have been forced to do so because of the current crisis—and have seen positive
results.

Agile companies are more decentralized and depend less on top-down, command-and-
control decision making . They create agile teams, which are allowed to make most day-
to-day decisions; senior leaders still make the big-bet ones that can make or break a
company. Agile teams aren’t out-of-control teams: accountability, in the form of tracking
and measuring precisely stated outcomes, is as much a part of their responsibilities as

flexibility is. The overarching idea is for the right people to be in position to make and
execute decisions.

One principle is that the flatter decision-making structures many companies have
adopted in crisis mode are faster and more flexible than traditional ones. Many routine
decisions that used to go up the chain of command are being decided much lower in the
hierarchy, to good effect. For example, a financial information company saw that its
traditional sources were losing their value as COVID-19 deepened. It formed a small team

to define company priorities—on a single sheet of paper—and come up with new kinds of
data, which it shared more often with its clients. The story illustrates the new organization
paradigm: empowerment and speed, even—or especially—when information is patchy.

Another is to think of ecosystems (that is, how all the parts fit together) rather than
separate units. Companies with healthy ecosystems of suppliers, partners, vendors, and
committed customers can find ways to work together during and after times of crisis

because those are relationships built on trust, not only transactions.

Finally, agility is just a word if it isn’t grounded in the discipline of data. Companies need

to create or accelerate their analytics capabilities to provide the basis for answers—and,
perhaps as important, allow them to ask the right questions. This also requires reskilling

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employees to take advantage of those capabilities: an organization that is always learning

is always improving.

3. From just-in-time to just-in-time and

just-in-case supply chains

Stop optimizing supply chains based on

individual component cost and
depending on a single supply source for
critical materials

The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated the vulnerability of the old supply-chain model,
with companies finding their operations abruptly halted because a single factory had to

shut down. Companies learned the hard way that individual transaction costs don’t
matter nearly as much as end-to-end value optimization—an idea that includes resilience

and efficiency, as well as cost. The argument for more flexible and shorter supply chains

has been building for years. In 2004, an article in the McKinsey Quarterly noted that it
can be better to ship goods “500 feet in 24 hours [rather than] shipping them 5,000

miles across logistical and political boundaries in 25 days ... offshoring often isn’t the
right strategy for companies whose competitive advantage comes from speed and a

track record of reliability.”[ 1 ]

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The argument for more flexible and shorter supply chains has been building for

years.

Start redesigning supply chains to

optimize resilience and speed

Instead of asking whether to onshore or offshore production, the starting point should be
the question, “How can we forge a supply chain that creates the most value?” That will

often lead to an answer that involves neither offshoring nor onshoring but rather
“multishoring”—and with it, the reduction of risk by avoiding being dependent on any

single source of supply.

Speed still matters, particularly in areas in which consumer preferences change quickly.
Yet even in fashion, in which that is very much the case, the need for greater resilience is

clear. In a survey conducted in cooperation with Sourcing Journal subscribers , McKinsey

found that most fashion-sourcing executives reported that their suppliers wouldn’t be
able to deliver all their orders for the second quarter of 2020. To get faster means

adopting new digital-planning and supplier-risk-management tools to create greater

visibility and capacity, capability, inventory, demand, and risk across the value chain.

Doing so enables companies to react well to changes in supply or demand conditions.

One area of vulnerability the current crisis has revealed is that many companies didn’t

know the suppliers their own suppliers were using and thus were unable to manage
critical elements of their value chains. Companies should know where their most critical

components come from . On that basis, they can evaluate the level of risk and decide
what to do, using rigorous scenario planning and bottom-up estimates of inventory and

demand. Contractors should be required to show that they have risk plans (including

knowing the performance, financial, and compliance record of all their subcontractors, as
well as their capacity and inventories) in place.

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Accelerate ‘nextshoring’ and the use of

advanced technologies

In some critical areas, governments or customers may be willing to pay for excess
capacity and inventories, moving away from just-in-time production. In most cases,

however, we expect companies to concentrate on creating more flexible supply chains

that can also operate on a just-in-case approach. Think of it as “nextshoring” for the next
normal.

For example, the fashion industry expects to shift some sourcing from China to other

Asian countries, Central America, and Eastern Europe. Japanese carmakers and Korean
electronics companies were considering similar actions before the coronavirus outbreak.

The state-owned Development Bank of Japan is planning to subsidize companies’

relocation back to Japan, and some Western countries, including France, are looking to
build up domestic industries for critical products, such as pharmaceuticals. Localizing

supply chains and creating more collaborative relationships with critical suppliers—for
example, by helping them build their digital capabilities or share freight capacity—are

other ways to build long-term resilience and flexibility.

Nextshoring in manufacturing is about two things. The first is to define whether

production is best placed near customers to meet local needs and accommodate

variations in demand. The second is to define what needs to be done near innovative

supply bases to keep up with technological change. Nextshoring is about understanding

how manufacturing is changing (in the use of digitization and automation, in particular)

and building the trained workforce, external partnerships, and management muscle to

deliver on that potential. It is about accelerating the use of flexible robotics, additive
manufacturing, and other technologies to create capabilities that can shift output levels

and product mixes at reasonable cost. It isn’t about optimizing labor costs, which are
usually a much smaller factor—and sometimes all but irrelevant.

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4. From managing for the short term to

capitalism for the long term

Stop quarterly earnings estimates

Because of the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, the percentage of companies

providing earnings guidance has fallen sharply—and that’s a good thing. The arguments

against quarterly earnings guidance are well known, including that they create the wrong
incentives by rewarding companies for doing harmful things, such as deferring capital

investment and offering massive discounts that boost sales to make the revenue

numbers but hurt a company’s pricing strategy.

Taking such actions may stave off a quick hit to the stock price. But while short-term
investors account for the majority of trades—and often seem to dominate earnings calls

and internet chatrooms—in fact, seven of ten shares in US companies are owned by
long-term investors . By definition, this group, which we call “intrinsic investors”—look

well beyond any given quarter, and deeper than such quick fixes. Moreover, they have far

greater influence on a company’s share price over time than the short-term investors
who place such stock in earnings guidance.

Moreover, the conventional wisdom that missing an estimate means immediate

retribution is not always true. A McKinsey analysis found that in 40 percent of the cases,
the share prices of companies that missed their consensus earnings estimates actually

rose. Finally, an analysis of 615 US public companies from 2001 to 2015 found that those

characterized as “long-term oriented” outperformed their peers in earnings, revenue

growth, and market capitalization. Even as a way of protecting equity value, then,

earnings guidance is a flawed tool. And, of course, there can be no bad headlines about
missed estimates if there are no estimates to miss.

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Along the same lines, stop assuming that pursuing shareholder value is the only goal.
Yes, businesses have fundamental responsibilities to make money and to reward their

investors for the risks they take. But executives and workers are also citizens, parents,

and neighbors, and those parts of their lives don’t stop when they clock in. In 2009, in
the wake of the financial crisis, former McKinsey managing partner Dominic Barton

argued that there is no “inherent tension between creating value and serving the
interests of employees, suppliers, customers, creditors, communities, and the

environment. Indeed, thoughtful advocates of value maximization have always insisted

that it is long-term value that has to be maximized.” [ 2 ] We agree, and since then,
evidence has accumulated that businesses with clear values that work to be good

citizens create superior value for shareholders over the long run.

Start focusing on leadership and working

with partners to create a better future

McKinsey research defines the “long term” as five to seven years: the period it takes to

start and build a sustainable business. That period isn’t that long. As the current crisis
proves, huge changes can take place in much shorter time frames.

One implication is that boards, in particular, should start to think about just how fast, and

when, to replace their CEOs. The average tenure of a CEO at a large-cap company is now

about five years, down from ten years in 1995. A recent Harvard Business Review study
of the world’s top CEOs found that their average tenure was 15 years.[ 3 ] One critical

factor: close and constant communication with their boards allowed them to get through
a rough patch and go on to lead long-term success.

Like Adam Smith, we believe in the “invisible hand”—the idea that self-interest plus the

network of information (such as the price signal) that helps economies work efficiently

are essential to creating prosperity. But Adam Smith also considered the rule of law
essential and saw the goal of wealth creation as creating happiness: “What improves the

circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the

whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the

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members are poor and miserable.”[ 4 ] A more recent economist, Nobel laureate Amartya

Sen, updated the idea for the 21st century, stating that the invisible hand of the market
needs to be balanced by the visible hand of good governance.

Given the trillions of dollars and other kinds of support that governments are providing,

governments are going to be deeply embedded in the private sector. That isn’t an
argument for overregulation, protectionism, or general officiousness—things that both

Smith and Sen disdained. It is a statement of fact that business needs to work ever more
closely with governments on issues such as training, digitization, and sustainability.

Accelerate the reallocation of resources

and infrastructure investment

Business leaders love words like “flexible,” “agile,” and “innovative.” But a look at their
budgets shows that “inertia” should probably get more attention. Year to year, companies

only reallocate 2 to 3 percent of their budgets. But those that do more—on the order of 8

to 10 percent —create more value. In the coronavirus era, the case for change makes
itself. In other areas, companies can use this sense of urgency to change the way they

put together their budgets. Sales teams, for example, are used to getting new targets
based on the prior year’s results. A better approach is to define the possible , based on

metrics such as market size, current market share, sales-force size, and how competitive

the market is. On that basis, a company can estimate sales potential and budget
accordingly.

In previous economic transitions, infrastructure meant things such as roads and

pipelines. In democratic societies, governments generally drew up the plans and

established safety and other regulations, and the private sector did the actual building.

Something similar needs to happen now, in two areas. One is the irresistible rise of digital

technologies. Those without access to reliable broadband are being left out of a sizable
and surging segment of the economy; there is a clear case for creating a robust, universal

broadband infrastructure.

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The second has to do with the workforce. In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute

estimated that as much as a third of workplace activities could be automated by 2030.

To avoid social upheaval—more high-wage jobs but fewer middle-class ones—displaced

workers need to be retrained so that they can find and succeed in the new jobs that will
emerge. The needs, then, are for more midcareer job training and more effective on-the-

job training. For workers, as well as businesses, agility is going to be a core skill—one
that current systems, mostly designed for a different era, aren’t very good at.

5. From making trade-offs to embedding

sustainability

Stop thinking of environmental

management as a compliance issue

Environmental management is a core management and financial issue. Lloyds Bank, the
British insurer, estimated that sea-level rises in New York increased insured losses from
Hurricane Sandy in 2012 by 30 percent; a different study found that the number of

British properties at risk of significant flooding could double by 2035. Ignore these and
similar warnings—about cyclones or extreme heat, for example—and watch your
insurance bills rise, as they did in Canada after wildfires in 2016. Investors are noticing

too. In Larry Fink’s most recent letter to CEOS, the BlackRock CEO put it bluntly:
“Climate risk is investment risk.”[ 5 ] He noted that investors are asking how they should
modify their portfolios to incorporate climate risk and are reassessing risk and asset
values on that basis.

Start considering environmental strategy

as a source of resilience and competitive
advantage

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The COVID-19 pandemic froze supply chains around the world, including shutting down
much of the United States’ meat production. Rising climate hazards could lead to similar
shocks to global supply chains and food security. In some parts of Brazil, the usual two-
crop growing season may eventually only yield a single crop.

As companies reengineer their supply chains for resilience, they also need to consider

environmental factors—for example, is a region already prone to flooding likely to

become more so as temperatures rise? One of the insights of a McKinsey climate
analysis published in January is that climate risks are unevenly distributed, with some

areas already close to physical and biological tipping points. Where that is the case,
companies may need to think about how to mitigate the possible harm or perhaps going
elsewhere. The principle to remember is that it is less expensive to prepare than to repair

or retrofit. In January 2018, the National Institute for Building Sciences estimated
spending $1 to build resilient infrastructure saved $6 in future costs.[ 6 ] To cope with the
COVID-19 pandemic, companies have shortened their supply chains, switched to more
videoconferencing, and introduced new production processes. Consider how these and

other practices might be continued; they can help make companies more environmentally
sustainable, as well as more efficient.

Second, it makes sense to start thinking about the possible similarities between the
coronavirus crisis and long-term climate change . The pandemic has created

simultaneous shocks to supply chains, consumer demand, and the energy sector; it has
hit the poor harder; and it has created serious knock-on effects. The same is likely to be
true for climate change. Moreover, rising temperatures could also increase the toll of

contagious diseases. It could be argued, then, that mitigating climate change is as much
a global public-health issue as dealing with COVID-19 is.

The coronavirus crisis has been a sudden shock that essentially hit the world all at once
—what we call “contagion risk.” Climate change is on a different time frame; the dangers
are building (“accumulation risk”). In each case, however, resilience and collaboration are

essential.

Environmental management is a core management and financial issue.

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Accelerate investment in innovation,

partnerships, and reporting

As usual, information is the foundation for action. A data-driven approach can illuminate
the relative costs of maintaining an asset, adapting it—for example, by building perimeter

walls or adding a backup power supply—or investing in a new one. It is as true for the
environment as any part of the value chain that what gets measured gets managed. This
entails creating sound, sophisticated climate-risk assessments ; there is no generally

accepted standard at the moment, but there are several works in progress, such as the
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

The principle at work is to make climate management a core corporate capability , using
all the management tools, such as analytics and agile teams, that are applied to other

critical tasks. The benefits can be substantial. One study found that companies that
reduced their climate-change-related emissions delivered better returns on equity—not
because their emissions were lower, but because they became generally more efficient.
The correlation between going green and high-quality operations is strong, with

numerous examples of companies (including Hilton, PepsiCo, and Procter & Gamble),
setting targets to reduce use of natural resources and ending up saving significant sums
of money.

It’s true that, given the scale of the climate challenge, no single company is going to

make the difference. That is a reason for effort, not inaction. Partnerships directed at
cracking high-cost-energy alternatives, such as hydrogen and carbon capture, are one
example. Voluntary efforts to raise the corporate game as a whole, such as the Task

Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, are another.

6. From online commerce to a contact-

free economy

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Stop thinking of the contactless economy

as something that will happen down the
line

The switch to contactless operations can happen fast. Healthcare is the outstanding
example here. For as long as there has been modern healthcare, the norm has been for
patients to travel to an office to see a doctor or nurse. We recognize the value of having
personal relationships with healthcare professionals. But it is possible to have the best of

both worlds—staff with more time to deal with urgent needs and patients getting high-
quality care.

In Britain, less than 1 percent of initial medical consultations took place via video link in
2019; under lockdown, 100 percent are occurring remotely. In another example, a leading

US retailer in 2019 wanted to launch a curbside-delivery business; its plan envisioned

taking 18 months. During the lockdown, it went live in less than a week—allowing it to
serve its customers while maintaining the livelihoods of its workforce. Online banking

interactions have risen to 90 percent during the crisis, from 10 percent, with no drop-off
in quality and an increase in compliance while providing a customer experience that isn’t
just about online banking. In our own work, we have replaced on-site ethnographic field
study with digital diaries and video walk-throughs. This is also true for B2B applications—

and not just in tech. In construction, people can monitor automated earth-moving
equipment from miles away.

Start planning how to lock in and scale

the crisis-era changes

It is hard to believe that Britain would go back to its previous doctor–patient model. The

same is likely true for education. With even the world’s most elite universities turning to
remote learning, the previously common disdain for such practices has diminished
sharply. There will always be a place for the lecture hall and the tutorial, but there is a
huge opportunity here to evaluate what works, identify what doesn’t, and bring more

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high-quality education to more people more affordably and more easily. Manufacturers
also have had to institute new practices to keep their workers at work but apart —for
example, by organizing workers into self-contained pods, with shift handovers done

virtually; staggering production schedules to ensure that physically close lines run at
different times; and by training specialists to do quality-assurance work virtually. These
have all been emergency measures. Using digital-twin simulation—a virtual way to test

operations—can help define which should be continued, for safety and productivity
reasons, as the crisis lessens.

Accelerate the transition of digitization

and automation

“Digital transformation” was a buzz phrase prior to the coronavirus crisis. Since then, it
has become a reality in many cases—and a necessity for all. The consumer sector has, in

many cases, moved fast. When the coronavirus hit China, Starbucks shut down 80
percent of its stores. But it introduced the “ Contactless Starbucks Experience ” in those
that stayed open and is now rolling it out more widely. Car manufacturers in Asia have

developed virtual show rooms where consumers can browse the latest models; these are
now becoming part of what they see as a new beginning-to-end digital journey. Airlines
and car-rental companies are also developing contactless consumer journeys.

The bigger opportunity, however, may be in B2B applications, particularly in regard to

manufacturing, where physical distancing can be challenging. In the recent past, there

was some skepticism about applying the Internet of Things (IoT) to industry . Now, many
industrial companies have embraced IoT to devise safety strategies, improve
collaboration with suppliers, manage inventory, optimize procurement, and maintain

equipment. Such solutions, all of which can be done remotely, can help industrial
companies adjust to the next normal by reducing costs, enabling physical distancing, and
creating more flexible operations. The application of advanced analytics can help
companies get a sense of their customers’ needs without having to walk the factory floor;

it can also enable contactless delivery.

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7. From simply returning to returning

and reimagining

Stop seeing the return as a destination

The return after the pandemic will be a gradual process rather than one determined by

government publicizing a date and declaring “open for business.” The stages will vary,
depending on the sector, but only rarely will companies be able to flip a switch and
reopen. There are four areas to focus on : recovering revenue, rebuilding operations,
rethinking the organization, and accelerating the adoption of digital solutions. In each

case, speed will be important. Getting there means creating a step-by-step, deliberate
process.

There are four areas to focus on: recovering revenue, rebuilding operations,

rethinking the organization, and accelerating the adoption of digital solutions.

Start imagining the business as it should

be in the next normal

For retail and entertainment venues, physical distancing may become a fact of life,
requiring the redesign of space and new business models. For offices, the planning will

be about retaining the positives associated with remote working. For manufacturing, it
will be about reconfiguring production lines and processes. For many services, it will be
about reaching consumers unused to online interaction or unable to access it. For

transport, it will be about reassuring travelers that they won’t get sick getting from point
A to point B. In all cases, the once-routine person-to-person dynamics will change.

Accelerate digitization

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Call it “Industry 4.0” or the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Whatever the term, the fact is
that there is a new and fast-improving set of digital and analytic tools that can reduce the
costs of operations while fostering flexibility. Digitization was, of course, already

occurring before the COVID-19 crisis but not universally. A survey in October 2018 found
that 85 percent of respondents wanted their operations to be mostly or entirely digital
but only 18 percent actually were. Companies that accelerate these efforts fast and

intelligently, will see benefits in productivity, quality, and end-customer connectivity . And
the rewards could be huge—as much as $3.7 trillion in value worldwide by 2025.

McKinsey and the World Economic Forum have identified 44 digital leaders, or
“lighthouses,” in advanced manufacturing . These companies created whole new
operating systems around their digital capabilities. They developed new use cases for

these technologies, and they applied them across business processes and management
systems while reskilling their workforce through virtual reality, digital learning, and
games. The lighthouse companies are more apt to create partnerships with suppliers,

customers, and businesses in related industries. Their emphasis is on learning,

connectivity, and problem solving—capabilities that are always in demand and that have
far-reaching effects.

Not every company can be a lighthouse. But all companies can create a plan that

illuminates what needs to be done (and by whom) to reach a stated goal, guarantee the
resources to get there, train employees in digital tools and cybersecurity , and bring
leadership to bear. To get out of “ pilot purgatory ”—the common fate of most digital-
transformation efforts prior to the COVID-19 crisis—means not doing the same thing the

same way but instead focusing on outcomes (not favored technologies), learning through
experience, and building an ecosystem of tech providers.

Businesses around the world have rapidly adapted to the pandemic. There has been little
hand-wringing and much more leaning in to the task at hand. For those who think and

hope things will basically go back to the way they were: stop. They won’t. It is better to

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accept the reality that the future isn’t what it used to be and start to think about how to
make it work.

Hope and optimism can take a hammering when times are hard. To accelerate the road to
recovery, leaders need to instill a spirit both of purpose and of optimism and to make the

case that even an uncertain future can, with effort, be a better one.
1. Ronald C. Ritter and Robert A. Sternfels, “When offshore manufacturing doesn’t make sense,”
McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 Number 4.
2. Dominic Barton, “Capitalism for the long term,” Harvard Business Review, March 2011, hbr.org.
3. “The best-performing CEOs in the world, 2019,” Harvard Business Review, November–December
2019, hbr.org.
4. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London, UK: W.
Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776.
5. Larry Fink, “A fundamental reshaping of finance,” BlackRock, January 2020, blackrock.com.
6. “National Institute of Building Sciences issues new report on the value of mitigation,” National
Institute of Building Sciences, January 11, 2018, nibs.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Kevin Sneader , the global managing partner of McKinsey, is based in
McKinsey’s Hong Kong office; Shubham Singhal , the global leader of the
Healthcare Systems & Services Practice, is a senior partner in the Detroit
office.

Talk to us

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