Rewired
The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI
Book Edition Details
Summary
In the high-stakes arena of digital evolution, "Rewired" stands as the definitive manifesto for leaders yearning to transform their companies into agile, tech-savvy powerhouses. Conceived by McKinsey & Company's digital vanguards, Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, and Rodney W. Zemmel, this book serves as a battle-tested guide to building resilient businesses that thrive on technological innovation. Here, strategy meets execution in a seamless fusion, as readers navigate through an expertly crafted playbook that demystifies digital transformation. From crafting a strategic roadmap to fostering a culture of continuous innovation, "Rewired" reveals the secrets to harnessing the full potential of AI and digital tools. With diagnostic insights, robust frameworks, and over a hundred illustrative exhibits, this work offers a treasure trove of knowledge for those ready to propel their enterprises to new heights. Engage with this indispensable resource and prepare to lead in a world where digital prowess defines success.
Introduction
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, leaders find themselves at a crossroads where traditional approaches no longer guarantee success. The digital revolution isn't just changing how we work—it's fundamentally reshaping what it means to compete and thrive in the modern economy. Every executive will spend the rest of their career navigating digital transformation, not as a one-time project, but as an ongoing journey of organizational evolution. This transformation demands more than new technology; it requires rewiring the very DNA of how companies operate, innovate, and create value. The stakes couldn't be higher, yet the path forward has never been clearer for those willing to embrace comprehensive change.
Build Your Digital Foundation
Building a digital foundation begins with understanding that technology alone never drives transformation—it's the enterprise capabilities that turn digital investments into competitive advantages. Your foundation must encompass four critical pillars: talent, operating model, technology architecture, and data infrastructure working in harmony. Consider the journey of a global mining company, Freeport-McMoRan, which faced declining copper prices and aging assets. Rather than pursuing costly new facilities, leadership made a bold decision to unlock value through artificial intelligence. Their visionary leader of North American operations recognized that survival required evolution, drawing inspiration from cutting-edge practices in other industries. The company began with a pilot at their Bagdad, Arizona site, where a small team of metallurgists, operators, and engineers developed AI models to optimize processing rates. The transformation was remarkable—copper production increased by 5%, with throughput exceeding 85,000 tons of ore per day, representing a 10% improvement. This success stemmed not from technology alone, but from building integrated capabilities that connected data infrastructure, talent development, and operational excellence. The foundation they established enabled rapid scaling across their entire Americas operations, ultimately delivering the equivalent of a new processing facility without the typical $2 billion investment. To build your own digital foundation, start by assessing your current capabilities across all four pillars simultaneously. Map your talent gaps, evaluate your data readiness, examine your technology architecture, and honestly assess your organizational agility. Then create an integrated capability-building plan that addresses these elements holistically rather than in isolation. Remember that foundation-building requires patient capital and sustained commitment—typically 50% of early transformation investments should focus on capabilities rather than individual solutions.
Assemble Your Transformation Team
Digital transformation succeeds or fails based on the people who drive it forward, making talent acquisition and team assembly your most critical early decisions. The challenge isn't just finding skilled individuals—it's creating an environment where digital talent thrives while traditional expertise remains valued and integrated. DBS Bank exemplified this approach during their remarkable transformation from traditional bank to digital leader. CEO Piyush Gupta established a clear vision to "make banking joyful" and committed to bringing 70% of tech talent in-house, up from just 20% historically. They didn't simply hire technologists; they created a comprehensive talent ecosystem with over 10,000 technologists representing a third of their workforce. The bank established three technology hubs and pioneered nontraditional recruitment methods, including hackathons that served dual purposes: identifying talent and training senior executives in cutting-edge technologies. DBS's success came from recognizing that transformation teams need both technical excellence and business context. They implemented a "2-in-a-box" leadership model where business and technology leaders jointly managed each platform. Journey managers acted as product owners, leading agile teams of 8-10 people with clear objectives, value targets, and timeframes. This structure eliminated traditional silos while ensuring new digital capabilities remained connected to business outcomes. Begin assembling your team by establishing a Talent Win Room—a dedicated unit focused exclusively on building your digital talent bench. This team should include tech recruiters who speak the language of candidates, HR specialists experienced with digital roles, and business leaders who can articulate compelling career opportunities. Create employee value propositions that emphasize skill development, modern technology stacks, and meaningful business impact. Design recruitment experiences that reflect your digital aspirations, moving from application to offer in four weeks maximum while showcasing the innovative environment candidates will join.
Scale Through Technology and Data
Scaling digital transformation requires more than implementing new tools—it demands creating technology and data architectures that enable distributed innovation across your entire organization. Your infrastructure must empower hundreds of teams to build, test, and deploy solutions rapidly while maintaining security, governance, and operational excellence. The LEGO Group demonstrated this principle masterfully during their digital transformation journey. Recognizing that their beloved brand needed to evolve for an increasingly digital world, leadership made fundamental architectural decisions that would support global scale from day one. Their Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Atul Bhardwaj, established clear standards: all technology solutions must be designed for global use, employ prescribed API standards, and follow company-wide data taxonomy with clear definitions and accountability. This architectural discipline paid extraordinary dividends. Teams could work in parallel without getting stuck in regression testing or complex team-to-team communication. The foundation enabled everything from rebuilding their website for scale to increasing LEGO Builder app downloads by 42%. More importantly, it opened new growth avenues including partnerships with Epic Games to explore digital play and the metaverse. Their enterprise-wide capabilities became the platform for continuous innovation rather than one-time improvements. Start scaling by adopting a "minimum viable architecture" approach that serves your priority digital solutions while building toward future needs. Implement API-first thinking that decouples systems and enables independent evolution of different components. Migrate critical workloads to cloud infrastructure that provides elasticity and modern development tools. Most importantly, establish data products that package information for easy consumption across multiple use cases—this single decision can reduce development time for new solutions by up to 90%. Create developer platforms that make it simple for teams to provision resources, access data, and deploy solutions without lengthy approval processes.
Summary
Digital transformation represents the defining challenge of our business era, requiring leaders to rewire their organizations for continuous evolution rather than treating change as a destination. As Jeff Bezos wisely observed, "It's still Day 1" for digital and AI transformation—the journey of building enterprise capabilities that turn technology into competitive advantage has only just begun. Success demands integrated thinking across talent, operating models, technology, and data, with each element reinforcing and amplifying the others. The companies that thrive will be those that embrace this holistic approach, building capabilities that enable distributed innovation while maintaining coherence and direction. Your transformation starts today with a single crucial decision: commit to building the enterprise capabilities that will define your organization's future, then take the first concrete step toward assembling the team and foundation that will make that future possible.
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By Eric Lamarre
