| McKinsey Classics | April 2020 |
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| Stores and offices are mostly closed. Telecommuting is the norm. Consumers buy what they can online. When the crisis ends, will companies willingly spend large sums of money on big offices? Will employees accept the daily commute and consumers shop in physical stores? Will the economy return to business as usual?
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| This isn’t the first time challenging questions about rapid structural shifts have loomed for strategists. As business professor Richard Rumelt noted in a 2008 McKinsey Quarterly article, the Long Depression of 1893–97 marked the start of the transition to a consumer economy, and the Great Depression of the 1930s intensified it. These exemplify what Rumelt calls “structural breaks.” Only time will tell if we are experiencing one now. Certainly, the main trends—e-commerce, telecommuting, and the digital economy as a whole—were under way before the pandemic, much as the consumer economy began before the ’30s. As Rumelt says of structural breaks in general, they tend to emerge when the “old pattern has already been pushed to its limits.” As you reflect on how different the road ahead will (or won’t) be, gain context by reading “Strategy in a ‘structural break.’”
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| Did You Miss Our Previous McKinsey Classics? |
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| Even if executives can’t identify outcomes, they can identify the variables determining how markets will evolve and know how those variables must change to justify investments. Read our 2000 classic “Strategy under uncertainty.” |
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