Inside the Strategy Room

Despite persistent uncertainty in global markets, 2024 was the year that private equity began to emerge from a multi-year fog, with a rebound in dealmaking and distributions. Our Global Private Markets Report for 2025 revealed an industry that is more resilient, more innovative, and perhaps stronger than before. To discuss the nuances of that report we are joined by two of the report’s authors, Alex Edlich and Christopher Croke.

Alex is a senior partner in our New York office where he helps private equity and financial services clients achieve superior performance, by driving innovation with new technology. He is a senior leader in our Financial Services, Private Capital, and Digital Practices. Christopher Croke is a partner in our London office, where he is a leader in our Private Capital Practice. He advises private equity firms on their investments and strategy and helps the companies they own with their strategy and value creation.

Related insights

Global Private Markets Report 2025: Private equity emerging from the fog

Insights on Private Capital

Deal Volume Podcast

CEO alpha: A new approach to generating private equity outperformance

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

A key challenge to developing corporate strategy is moving quickly enough with the right insights to gain and maintain a competitive edge. Generative AI can help with this, as our guests this week describe.In this episode, we talk with three strategy experts about their research into using gen AI to help develop corporate strategy and the successes and challenges they encountered.

Bruce Delteil is the managing partner of our Vietnam office and leads our Strategy Practice in Asia. He serves clients on all aspects of strategy development, including scenario planning, visioning, war games, and the impact of gen AI. Antoine Montard is our Strategy Practice director of client capabilities based in Lisbon. He leads our Strategy, Research, and Insight Center and helps develop novel approaches for strategy, builds capabilities of teams and clients, and serves as a strategy expert on client projects. Andrea Tricoli is an associate partner in our Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice based in London. He leads our initiative to apply generative AI to our Strategy Method. He serves organizations on how to use analytics and AI to drive better decision-making, especially across the finance and strategy functions.

Related Insights

How AI is transforming strategy development

Gen AI: Opportunities in M&A

Four critical strategies for sustainable gen AI adoption

Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick

Why strategists should embrace imperfection

The art of 21st-century leadership: From succession planning to building a leadership factory

Achieving growth: Putting leadership mindsets and behaviors into action

Six strategies for growth outperformance

McKinsey Strategy & Corporate Finance on LinkedIn

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Innovation and transformation become critical imperatives for many organizations, especially as they grow larger and mature. The complex merger and series of spin-offs that Dow Inc. underwent with E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company between 2017 and 2018 is among the more dramatic of such reinventions. The move to create a materials science company (Dow), an agricultural business (Corteva), and an industrial company (Dupont), remains a much-studied growth strategy case.

In this episode, Dow Inc. Chair and CEO Jim Fitterling talks with McKinsey Senior Partner and Global Energy and Materials Practice leader John Warner about why the “merge-spin” made sense then and now, and about leading a global company with compassion in a rapidly changing world. 

Related insights

How Dow reinvented itself

Getting fit for growth: The leadership mindsets and behaviors that matter

The Committed Innovator: A conversation with Neal Gutterson of Corteva

The making of a megadeal: Howard Ungerleider on the merger of Dow and DuPont

Top M&A trends in 2024: Blueprint for success in the next wave of deals

How one approach to M&A is more likely to create value than all others

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The best leaders are masterful communicators. They advance the aspirations of their companies with compelling, singular narratives that inspire a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. In this episode, we’re joined by three CEO and stakeholder relations experts who share their research into how CEOs can foster deeper dialogues and more meaningful connections with their wide range of stakeholders. Blair Epstein is a partner in our Bay Area office and a leader in our CEO Excellence Practice. Julia McClatchy is a partner in our Philadelphia office and a leader in our Growth, Marketing, and Sales Practice, and Eric Sherman is an expert based in our New York office who co-leads our CEO communications work.

Related Insights

How the best CEOs build lasting stakeholder relationships

The CEO’s essential checklist: Questions every chief executive should be able to answer

CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinquish the Best Leaders from the Rest

The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead From the Inside Out

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Judy Marks is one of the few dozen women who lead Fortune 500 companies. She joined Connecticut-based Otis Elevator in 2017 as President, and was appointed CEO in 2019. After leading the company’s 2020 spinoff to become an independent publicly traded company, she was appointed Chair as well. Additionally, Judy serves on the board of Caterpillar.

In this episode McKinsey Senior Partner and North America Chair Eric Kutcher talks with Judy about how she thinks about geopolitical shifts, technological change, and leading 71,000 employees in more than 200 countries and territories around the globe.

Related insights

The art of 21st-century leadership: From succession planning to building a leadership factory

A business of its times: Haier’s self-evolving organization

Author Talks: IBM’s Ginni Rometty on leading with ‘good power’

Getting fit for growth: The leadership mindsets and behaviors that matter

Opening doors for women leaders: An interview with Caroline Feeney

CEO Perspectives

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Corporate boards face increasing complexity as factors such as technological and geopolitical change challenge the organizations they serve. At the same time, boards are expected to do more, including to serve as catalysts of value creation. In this episode we talk with three experts on board effectiveness about their research: Senior partners Frithjof Lund and Celia Huber lead McKinsey’s Board Services Practice, together with senior expert Nina Spielmann. Their recently published analysis, “Better together: Three ways to boost board–CEO collaboration,” looks at the ways boards can do more to help advance the corporations they steward.

Related insights

The rising complexity of board directorship

Ready to board: Ascending new heights through CEO-board communication

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

We discuss the role of technology in improving board communications, the challenges boards face in managing information, and how AI and cloud-based platforms can help streamline board meetings and improve decision-making.

Our guests are Niamh Corbett, the Head of Americas for Board Intelligence, McKinsey senior partner Celia Huber, who leads our North American Board Services Practice, and actor, filmmaker, and entrepreneur Edward Norton, who is also the co-founder and head of strategy at Zeck—a cloud-based software platform designed specifically for boards.

Related insights

Better together: Three ways to boost board–CEO collaboration

The rising complexity of board directorship

Ready to board: Ascending new heights through CEO-board communication

Zeck is software that reimagines the board meeting process to improve decision-making for boards, investors, and management teams.

Board Intelligence provides management reporting software and a board portal that unlocks your business’s performance and governance.

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

In this bonus episode of Inside the Strategy Room, we feature an interview with OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar from the At the Edge podcast. Sarah joined our senior partner, Lareina Yee, to discuss how to lead through this era of intense technological change and what it means for the future of the finance function and business leadership.  

Our At the Edge podcast features conversations with creative leaders and pioneers who demystify cutting-edge technologies and share strategies for companies to capture big opportunities. 
 

Related insights  

At the Edge podcast 

Keeping artificial intelligence real 

Cisco Systems CFO on M&A, geopolitics, and the emerging AI opportunity  

Managing the risks around generative AI 

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The way leaders talk about the goals and process of transformation has a profound influence on outcomes.

The process of transformation can challenge any organization that undertakes it. In this episode, McKinsey transformation experts John Parsons, Dominic Skerritt, and Mary Lass Stewart talk about the role of communication to engaging and keeping team members on board and energized throughout the process. The trio recently co-authored an article on the subject, Going all in: Why employee ‘will’ can make or break transformations.

Related insights

How to communicate effectively in times of uncertainty

To deliver a transformation’s full potential, put the front line first

The powerful role financial incentives can play in a transformation

How many people are really needed in a transformation?

McKinsey Insights on Transformation

McKinsey Transformation on LinkedIn

Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/

See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information