Signal Certain strategic moves raise the odds of reaching the top performance quintile sixfold

Summary

McKinsey points to its research showing that organizations making a specific set of strategic moves are six times as likely to climb into the top fifth of performers. The moves fall into two families: portfolio moves, such as putting money into core initiatives and exiting noncore activities quickly, and performance moves that raise differentiation and productivity. The report stresses that bold moves need to be executed with discipline rather than spread across many small bets. It also ties the odds of reaching the top quintile to how well a company's core business is growing. The implication is that focus and decisive reallocation, not incremental adjustment, separate outperformers from the rest.