战略冠军如何获胜（英）2025

Crafting a strategy—the process of making coherent, hard-to-reverse choices underuncertainty with the aim of building long-term value—has always been demanding. In 2010, only35 percent of more than 2,000 surveyed executives reported that their strategies passed four ormore of McKinsey’sTen Tests of Strategy1(see sidebar “The Ten Tests of Strategy: Assess yourstrategy’s quality”).The increasing uncertainty and complexity of the business environment have made that taskeven harder. The World Uncertainty Index shows baseline uncertainty more than doubling since1990, high-uncertainty events occurring more often, and each major spike being more severethan its predecessor (Exhibit 1).2The challenge of navigating uncertainty is compounded bygrowing complexity—from the rapid advance of AI to geopolitical tensions to the emergence ofnew business and operating models—that multiplies the variables that strategists must consider.1Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit, “Have you tested your strategy lately?,”McKinsey Quarterly, January 1, 2011.2World Uncertainty Index database, World Uncertainty Index, updated April 4, 2025.Exhibit 1Web <2025><Strategy champions>Exhibit <1> of <6>World Uncertainty Index, quarterly11Index measures global uncertainty by analyzing country reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit. The chart shows the unbalanced GDP weighted averagefor 142 countries, as of Q2 2025.Source: Economist Intelligence Unit World Uncertainty Index; McKinsey analysisUncertainty has been rising, and high-uncertainty events have beenincreasing in frequency and intensity.McKinsey & Company1990Years between peakuncertainty events~11Trend lineStandarddeviationsfrom trend line~9~7~5199520002005201020152020020,00040,00060,00080,000 These two challenges have taken a toll on the quality of corporate strategies. In a 2024–2025survey, only 21 percent of executives reported that their strategies passed four or more of theTen Tests of Strategy—a 40 percent drop from a decade and a half earlier.3Not surprisingly,strategists are feeling the pressure. In 2022, 42 percent of survey respondents said they werestruggling to achieve the level of impact they desired.4Yet the rewards for delivering breakthrough strategies have never been greater—and neitherhave the penalties for getting strategy wrong. Plotting the economic profit of thousands ofthe world’s largest companies yields apower curve, in which the top quintile captures nearly90 percent of all economic surplus, the bottom quintile digs a similarly large hole of valuedestruction, and the companies in the middle generate modest, if any, economic value5(seesidebar “The Economic Profit Power Curve: Beat the market”). Successful strategy moves acompany up this power curve, but the curve is growing steeper. The gap between the averagegains of top-quintile outperformers and the average losses of bottom-quintile stragglers hasdoubled over the past two decades (Exhibit 2).6In essence, the returns on great strategies andthe costs of bad (or nonexistent) strategies are rising.3McKinsey Strategy Method Survey, 416 senior executives around the world, December 12, 2024, to January 7, 2025.4Role of the Strategist Survey, 247 participants around the world, October 11 to October 24, 2022.5Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit, “Strategy to beat the odds,”McKinsey Quarterly, February 13, 2018.6Value Intelligence Platform by McKinsey.The Ten Tests of Strategy: Assess your strategy’s qualityThe Ten Tests of Strategycomprise a setof provocative questions designed to helpyou assess the quality and robustness ofyour strategy. They intentionally set a highbar to reveal a strategy’s weaknesses andblind spots:—Will your strategy beat the market. . .. . . or are you just playing along?—Does your strategy tap a true source ofadvantage. . .. . . or is it based on a misplaceddiagnosis of why you earn returns?—Is your strategy detailed enough aboutwhere to compete. . .. . . or are markets defined generically,failing to allocate resources to matchopportunities?—Does your strategy put the enterpriseahead of trends and discontinuities. . .. . . or does it assume continuation ofthe status quo, not reacting to changeuntil it’s too late?—Does your strategy embedprivileged insights and foresight. . .. . . or does it rely on commonanalysis of common data to yieldcommon wisdom?—Is uncertainty properly definedand accounted for. . .. . . or is it being ignored or inducingparalysis?—Does your strategy balancecommitment-rich choices withflexibility and learning. . .. . . or is there too much planning andtoo little focus on choices that canunfold over time?—Have you evaluated alternativeswithout bias or false inference. . .. . . or does your strategy fall victim tobiases and faulty logic in the way thatdecisions are made?—Do you have conviction to act. . .. . . or are the old beliefs behind the newstrategy left unchanged? —Have you translated your strategyinto clear actions and reallocationof resources. . .. .