Beyond Performance : How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage

What makes your company great today, however, won't necessarily make it great tomorrow. Evolving is critical to long-term corporate performance and health. Humankind's greatest invention isn't the wheel, it is organization: people working together towards a goal that is beyond what can be achieved by the sum of individuals acting alone. As each generation finds better and better ways of working together, we perform at levels that previous generations could never have imagined. On top of long term trends like cost-free availability of information and deriving differentiation by creating an experience, the world appears to be emerging from the most profound and far-reaching economic crisis since the great depression of the 1930's. And five other factors will continue to drive global change: the historic shift in economic growth from the developed to the developing world; an unprecedented imperative for mature economics to raise productivity to preserve living standards; the rise of new networks of communication and trade; a profound challenge in balancing economic growth and environmental sustainability; and an expanded role for the state in regulating markets. For organizations to not only be excellent but stay excellent, companies need to respond to these challenges with tact and understanding that with the right techniques, change can be driven to a company's advantage. If you are a leader of people who wants to change things for the better, this book is for you. If you want to leave a profound and lasting legacy in your organization and the stakeholder it serves, this book will help you do so.

Scott Keller is a director in the Southern California office of McKinsey & Company, and leads its transformational change practice inthe Americas. He has published several articles on change management and organizational behavior, as well as a book for colleagues and clients. He holds an MBA and a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a manufacturing manager with Procter & Gamble and a photovoltaic engineer for the U.S. Department of Energy. Outside McKinsey, Scott is a cofounder of Digital Divide Data, an award-winning social enterprise that utilizes a sustainable IT service model to benefit some of the world's most disadvantaged people.

Colin Price is a director in McKinsey's London office, and leads its organization practice worldwide. He has advised many of the world's largest corporations, several national governments, and a number of charitable institutions. His booksinclude Mergers (with his colleague David Fubini and Maurizio Zollo of INSEAD), and Vertical Take-Off (with Sir Richard Evans, former chairman of British Aerospace). He holds degrees in economics, industrial relations and psychology, and organizational behavior. He is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and a visiting professor at Bath University.