Why Even Successful Transformations fall Short

After 15 years of original McKinsey research on organisational transformations, the results from the latest McKinsey Global Survey confirm an enduring truth: the more transformation actions a company takes, the greater its chances for success. Yet success remains the exception, not the rule. While we’ve known for years that a comprehensive approach to organisational transformation is more conducive to lasting change, the average success rate has remained persistently low. Less than one-third of respondents—all of whom had been part of a transformation in the past five years—say their companies’ transformations have been successful at both improving organisational performance and sustaining those improvements over time.

But even companies with successful transformations don’t always capture the full financial benefits of these efforts. So McKinsey took a closer look at the different stages of a transformation’s life cycle to understand where value is lost and what companies can do to preserve it. According to McKinsey's analysis, three core actions of a transformation are especially predictive of value capture—and the companies with successful transformations are more likely than the rest to pursue the specific tactics that support them. Read the full article at McKinsey here.