McKinsey

February 8, 2019

Our best ideas, quick and curated

This week, how a smart talent strategy can propel companies through the coming era of reskilling. Plus, why your communications team is crucial in a merger, and three questions for Scott Blackburn, a partner and veteran of the war in Afghanistan.

Talent has always been at the core of any successful organization. But now, with the acceleration of digitization, automation, and artificial intelligence, it’s time to get serious about how talent is deployed. Job displacement is coming, and probably on a massive scale: millions of people will have to learn new skills, and maybe change job categories entirely, by 2030. That’s not so far away anymore.

This is causing anxiety among workers and executives alike. Sixty percent of global executives in a recent McKinsey survey expect that up to half of their organization’s workforce will need retraining or replacing within five years. More than a third said their organizations are unprepared to address the skill gaps they anticipate. So they need to take a smart view of talent to help their bottom line in the short term and position themselves for longer-term disruption.

The reality is simple: organizations that expect to benefit from a digital transformation or a cool new strategy won’t get very far if they lack the people to bring those plans to life. To do that, they need to take a more dynamic view of their talent supply, focusing on underlying skills rather than titles and roles. When companies lay out the skills they have, the ones they need, and the ones that will change over time, they can find more creative ways to meet the inevitable mismatches.

This view of talent as crucial to transformation is at its core a C-suite issue, and several companies are finding creative ways to shake up long-held management certainties. McKinsey recently spoke with Tammy Lowry, the head of talent innovation at Roche, about the global healthcare company’s immersive program, called Kinesis, to help senior leadership address what she calls its “collective consciousness.”

It starts with a 360-degree assessment that helps executives understand how their mind-sets and behaviors affect their success as leaders, then challenges them to confront entrenched patterns of thought. Participants reimagine how to make Roche’s “structures, processes, and culture more agile,” she says, ending with a member of the executive committee joining to discuss ideas.

Other companies are bringing nudge units—the colloquial term for behavioral-science teams that use a mix of economics and psychology to affect people’s choices—into the workplace. The impact is real, but questions abound. How to staff the team? Where to focus on future roles? What does success look like? Good questions to ask. Now.

OFF THE CHARTS

You don’t need a crisis to be agile

Sometimes an emergency makes people behave in new ways to achieve a crucial outcome fast. But an organization shouldn’t wait for a crisis to implement agile principles. At its core, agility is a shift in the mental model of what an organization is and how it operates. The goal is to move from organizations as “machines,” with hard coded instructions and a rigid blueprint, to organizations as organic systems, in which people collaborate quickly and effectively around tasks and projects.

MORE ON MCKINSEY.COM

Let communications do the talking | During a merger, a strong communications strategy promotes business continuity, boosts morale, and helps retain talent. Here’s how to empower your team.

Behind all that buzz about micromobility | The market for shared e-bikes and scooters is booming–attracting a strong customer base roughly two to three times faster than either car sharing or ride hailing. Here’s an assessment of the market’s potential.

Solving the carve-out conundrum | Sometimes it makes sense to buy a corporate asset that’s going to remain entangled with its former parent. But that makes it harder to estimate the asset’s value. Due diligence in three areas can help.

THREE QUESTIONS FOR | Scott Blackburn

Scott Blackburn, a partner in Washington, DC, rejoined McKinsey from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where he focused on modernizing the VA’s technology infrastructure and improving the military-to-civilian transition process and access to healthcare. Scott is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.

What was it like to serve in the military early in your career?

The Army taught me the values of service, teamwork, and being part of a mission larger than yourself. My first real job, at age 22, was leading a diverse Arctic scout platoon in Alaska; to this day, those 18 months remain the best of my professional life in terms of creating life-long relationships and spurring personal growth. I was a first lieutenant on 9/11; being able to serve my country in that period was something I will be forever proud of. But service to others does not have to end after you take off the uniform or leave a formal government position.

How does your military experience influence your approach to transformation work?

Mission and values must be at the heart of any transformation. You need to be resilient, collaborative, and able to solve tough problems with limited resources. In short, you have to win hearts and minds, something the military knows a lot about but that is also crucial in the public sector.

How can governmental organizations drive successful transformations and large-scale culture change?

All governments face challenges in how best to serve their citizens. How can a large bureaucracy understand customer preferences, advances in technology, and the competitive landscape? How can governments create and communicate a vision for the future rather than thinking about shorter-term political cycles?

Developing a creative value proposition for talent and recruiting that talent into government is incredibly tough, but often that’s what success in government transformation hinges on most. To best deliver services, you must also forge strategic partnerships with other agencies, nonprofits, or private-sector partners. These are all things we do naturally in private-sector transformations and that governments need to do more of to be worthy of their citizens.

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