McKinsey’s 7S Model

Every high-performance organization runs on 7 engines:

SHARED VALUES – The Mission Engine
↳ The core beliefs everyone shares
↳ Guides choices without asking
↳ Skip this? Teams pull apart

STRATEGY – The Direction Engine
↳ Your plan to beat the competition
↳ Shows what matters most
↳ Get it wrong? Everyone’s confused

STRUCTURE – The Organization Engine
↳ Clear roles and decision rights
↳ Makes things fast or slow
↳ Mess up? Everything stalls

SYSTEMS – The Process Engine
↳ Your step-by-step playbooks
↳ Makes success repeatable
↳ Skip this? Start from zero daily

STYLE – The Leadership Engine
↳ What leaders do, not what they say
↳ Creates the real culture
↳ Fake it? Teams know

STAFF – The Talent Engine
↳ Right people in right seats
↳ All rowing the same way
↳ Wrong fit? Nothing works

SKILLS – The Capability Engine
↳ The abilities that matter
↳ Built by doing, not reading
↳ Don’t have them? You lose

The pattern never changes:

🟢 Great companies align all 7
🟡 Stuck companies fix only 3-4
🔴 Failing companies ignore 5+

Key truths:

✓ Fix one, affect all others
✓ Small gaps become big problems
✓ Most leaders can’t see the whole picture
✓ The “soft” stuff breaks you

Big mistakes leaders make:

❌ Think new org charts fix culture
❌ Believe good strategy beats bad execution
❌ Hope computer systems replace leadership
❌ Assume people learn skills alone

When all 7 parts work together:

✅ Decisions happen 10x faster.
✅ Teams stop fighting each other.
✅ Growth becomes automatic.

And best of all?

Your business stops feeling like separate pieces
and starts working like one machine.

So, stop fixing only what you like.
Start fixing the whole system.