Rewired

In Rewired, the world’s most influential management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, delivers a road-tested, how-to manual their own consultants use to help companies build the capabilities to outcompete in the age of digital and AI.

Many companies are stuck with digital transformations that are not moving the needle. There are no quick fixes but there is a playbook. The answer is in rewiring your business so hundreds, thousands, of teams can harness technology to continuously create great customer experiences, lower unit costs, and generate value. It’s the capabilities of the organization that win the race.

McKinsey Digital’s top leaders Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje and Rodney W. Zemmel provide proven how-to details on what it takes in six comprehensive sections – creating the transformation roadmap, building a talent bench, adopting a new operating model, producing a distributed technology environment so teams can innovate, embedding data everywhere, and unlocking user adoption and enterprise scaling.

Tested, iterated, reworked, and tested again over the years, McKinsey’s digital and AI transformation playbook is captured in the pages of Rewired. It contains diagnostic assessments, operating model designs, technology and data architecture diagrams, how-to checklists, best practices and detailed implementation methods, all exemplified with demonstrated case studies and illustrated with 100+ exhibits.

Rewired is for leaders who are ready to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work needed to rewire their company for long-term success.

How companies navigate the technology world to achieve competitive advantage is the defining business challenge of our time. It’s not a simple journey. As one CEO said, “We can find digital everywhere in our company but the bottom line.” For digital and AI to deliver on its potential, executives need to be ready and willing to undertake the organizational “surgery” required to become a digitally capable enterprise.

The answer is in rewiring your business so hundreds, if not thousands, of teams can harness technology to continuously create great customer experiences, lower unit costs, and generate value. Rewiring a business is a journey―one that executives will be on for the rest of their careers. This book is your how-to guide through the most important changes: how to align your team on transforming your core business, reskill your talent bench, implement a new operating model, build a distributed technology and data environment to power teams, and scale the value.

Written by the digital and AI leaders at McKinsey & Company, Rewired takes the lessons learned working with more than 200 large-scale B2C and B2B companies and translates them into step-by-step actions that have been proven to work. Tested, iterated, reworked, and tested again over the years, Rewired is the detailed playbook McKinsey’s own consultants use. It contains diagnostic assessments, operating model designs, technology and data architecture diagrams, how-to checklists, best practices, and detailed implementation methods, all exemplified with case studies and illustrated with 100 exhibits.

Rewired is a practitioner’s guide for leaders who are ready to do the hard work needed to outcompete in the age of digital and AI.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The enterprise capabilities that turn digital and Al into a source of ongoing competitive advantage

Section One: Creating the Transformation Roadmap: A business-led roadmap is the blueprint for a successful digital and Al transformation

Chapter 1 Get your top team inspired and aligned

Chapter 2 Choose the right transformation “bite size”

Chapter 3 Have business leaders define what’s possible

Chapter 4 Figure out what resources you need to achieve what you want

Chapter 5 Build capabilities for now and the next decade

Chapter 6 The digital roadmap is a contract for your C-suite

Chapter 7 The ultimate corporate team sport

Getting Ready Section One

Section Two: Building Your Talent Bench: Creating an environment where digital talent thrives

Chapter 8 Core versus noncore capabilities – strategic talent planning

Chapter 9 The talent team that can build your digital team

Chapter 10 Hiring digital talent when they’re actually interviewing you

Chapter 11 Recognize distinctive technologists

Chapter 12 Fostering craftsmanship excellence

Getting Ready Section Two

Section Three: Adopting a New Operating Model: Rearchitecting your organization and governance to be fast and flexible

Chapter 13 From doing agile to being agile

Chapter 14 Operating models that support hundreds of agile pods

Chapter 15 Professionalize product management

Chapter 16 Customer experience design: The magic ingredient

Getting Ready Section Three

Section Four: Technology for Speed and Distributed Innovation: Building a technology environment that empowers the entire organization to digitally innovate

Chapter 17 Decoupled architecture for development flexibility and operational scalability

Chapter 18 A more surgical and value-backed approach to cloud

Chapter 19 Engineering practices for speed and high-quality code

Chapter 20 The tools to make your developers highly productive

Chapter 21 Delivering production-grade digital solutions

Chapter 22 Build in security and automation from the start

Chapter 23 MLOps so Al can scale

Getting Ready Section Four

Section Five: Embedding Data Everywhere: What it takes to make data easy to consume across the organization

Chapter 24 Determine what data matters

Chapter 25 Data products: The reusable building blocks for scaling

Chapter 26 Data architecture, or the system of data “pipes”

Chapter 27 Organize to get the most from your data

Getting Ready Section Five

Section Six: The Keys to Unlock Adoption and Scaling: How to both get users to adopt your digital solutions and scale those solutions across the enterprise

Chapter 28 Nail user adoption and underlying business model changes

Chapter 29 Design solutions for easy replication and reuse

Chapter 30 Ensuring impact by tracking what matters

Chapter 31 Managing risk and building digital trust

Chapter 32 So, what about culture?

Getting Ready Section Six

Section Seven: Transformation Journey Stories: An exploration of how three companies have driven successful digital and Al transformations

Chapter 33 Freeport-McMoRan turns data into value

Chapter 34 DBS – A multinational bank becomes a digital bank

Chapter 35 The future of play takes shape at the LEGO Group

Praise for REWIRED

“Rewired will become the go-to playbook for people who want to harness digital innovation to drive competitive business outcomes.”

―DR. ALBERT BOURLA, Chairman and CEO, Pfizer

“In typical McKinsey fashion, this insightful book makes the challenge of tech-enabled transformations all the more approachable and actionable.”

―CHUA (“SK”) SOCK KOONG, Board at Bharti Airtel, Prudential, Royal Philips, Ayala Corporation; former CEO, Singtel

“An absolute must-read for any executive with aspirations for leading a multinational company.”

―MARTIN SHANKLAND, Executive Board Member for Global Operations, adidas

“This book gives insight into the capabilities and frameworks needed to win.”

―JULIE DILLMAN, EVP, Chubb Group; Senior Executive, Operations and Technology, and Digital Transformation Officer

“Rewired is written with a practitioner’s eye and provides a clear roadmap for building your enterprise capabilities and concrete examples that will greatly increase your organization’s odds of success.”

―JEFF HARMENING, Chairman and CEO, General Mills

“Rewired shows the way forward by not just clarifying the role of technology, but also showing how to apply the technology in order to achieve a competitive advantage.”

―DR. MARKUS KREBBER, CEO, RWE AG

“A must-read for any organization looking to stay competitive in the digital age.”

―MATT ANDERSON, Chief Digital Officer, The Carlyle Group

“Lamarre, Smaje, and Zemmel have undertaken a unique service to cut through the complexity of digital and AI transformations and make it navigable.”

―CHUCK MAGRO, CEO, Corteva Agriscience

“To stay competitive and at the forefront of any industry, businesses must continuously adapt and evolve with technology. Rewired tackles the key question of how.”

―ROBIN VINCE, President and CEO, BNY Mellon

About the Author

ERIC LAMARRE is a senior partner and leads McKinsey Digital in North America. He is an engineer by training and worked in research at MIT on water waves and underwater acoustics before joining McKinsey. Eric has pioneered the development of McKinsey’s Digital & AI client service methodologies and published extensively on the topic. He previously served as managing partner of McKinsey Canada. Eric is on the board of the Montreal Heart Institute Foundation. He is married and has two wonderful daughters.

KATE SMAJE is a senior partner at McKinsey and the global co-leader of McKinsey Digital. A history major at heart, Kate has spent the past 20+ years at McKinsey working with B2C companies. A frequent speaker and publisher on digital topics, she also works with clients across geographies and sectors to marry the power of technology and AI with the human change required to leap forward. She has experience as a chief technology officer and a self-proclaimed geeky interest in technology, continuous learning, and developing people. Kate is a trustee of Tommy’s, the London-based children’s charity.

RODNEY ZEMMEL is a senior partner at McKinsey and is the global co-leader of McKinsey Digital. He has served as the managing partner for McKinsey’s New York and northeast offices in the United States, and led McKinsey’s Healthcare Practice, working with clients in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and healthcare services. He is a recognized thought leader and previously co-authored the book Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking Is Your Best Short-Term Strategy. Rodney started out as a molecular biologist and now partners with clients on digital transformations, AI, technology productivity, and digital business building.