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.

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.

Introduction

The enterprise capabilities that turn digital into a source of ongoing competitive advantage

Section One: Creating the Transformation Roadmap

A business-led roadmap is the blueprint for a successful digital transformation

1. Get your top team inspired and aligned

2. Choose the right transformation "bite size"

3. Have business leaders define what's possible

4. Figure out what resources you need to get what you want

5. Build capabilities for now and the next decade

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

7. The ultimate corporate team sport

Getting started – Section One

Section Two: Building Your Talent Bench

Creating an environment where digital talent thrives

8. Core versus noncore capabilities – strategic talent planning

9. The talent team that can build your digital team

10. Hiring digital talent when they're actually interviewing you

11. Recognize distinctive technologists

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

13. From doing agile to being agile

14. Operating models that support hundreds of agile pods

15. Professionalize product management

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

17. Modular architecture for development flexibility and operational scalability

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

19. Engineering practices for speed and high-quality code

20. The tools to make your developers highly productive

21. Delivering "production-grade" digital solutions

22. Build in security and automation from the start

23. MLOps so AI can scale

Getting ready – Section Four

Section Five: Embedding Data Everywhere

What it takes to make data easy to consume across the organization

24. Determine what data matters

25. Data products: The reusable building blocks for scaling

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

27. Organize to get the most from your data

Getting ready – Section Five

Section Six: Keys to Unlock Value: Adoption and Scaling

How to both get users to adopt your digital solutions and scale those solutions for the greatest impact

28. Nail user adoption and underlying business model changes

29. Design solutions for easy replication and reuse

30. Ensuring impact by tracking what matters

31. Managing risk and building digital trust

32. So, what about culture?

Getting ready – Section Six

Section Seven: Transformation Journey Stories

An exploration of how four companies have driven successful digital transformations.

33. Freeport-McMoRan turns data into value

34. DBS: A multinational bank becomes a digital bank

35. How ADP became a tech company that offers services

36. The future of play takes shape at the LEGO Group

Acknowledgments

Index