The Mckinsey Podcast

As AI capabilities accelerate, nearly anyone can create software. The real business constraint is no longer code, but judgment: how quickly an organization can learn, adapt, and redeploy talent at scale. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy joins McKinsey’s North America Chair Eric Kutcher to dig into how AI is industrializing intelligence, supercharging productivity, and forcing leaders to rethink everything from pricing models to workforce strategy. In this recurring series on The McKinsey Podcast, Eric speaks with top CEOs about the practice of leadership The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro. To watch the full-length version of this interview, visit The McKinsey Podcast playlist on McKinsey’s YouTube channel.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Affordable luxury: It may sound like an oxymoron, but in an uncertain economy, it’s striking a chord with cautious consumers looking for value—and expecting more from the brands they buy. “Brands are actively thinking about the fact that people are shifting their spending,” according to McKinsey Senior Partner Gemma D’Auria. “If they want to stay relevant, they need to meet their customers where they are.” In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, D’Auria and McKinsey Senior Partner Holger Harreis speak with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about , including what consumers want, where they’re finding it, and how fashion executives can use AI to enhance creativity, competitiveness, and the customer experience overall. Any unanswered questions about this episode? Send them our way at: [email protected] Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Tariff tumult. Shifting geopolitical alliances. AI acceleration. Structural shifts are reshaping global trade. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partner Shubham Singhal and McKinsey Partner Jeongmin Seong speak with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about how to adapt to the current phase of global trade reconfiguration—from where to manufacture to supply chain decisions—and how best to invest. In the second half of this episode, McKinsey Senior Partner Kate Smaje joins Lucia to answer some audience questions from our last McKinsey Live webinar, based on the second edition of the book Rewired, about how to rewire your organization in the age of digital and AI. This episode has been adapted from our McKinsey Live webinar series.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

McKinsey’s latest research on global banking demonstrates that artificial intelligence isn’t just another efficiency play for financial institutions; it represents a fundamental shift in how these companies manage costs, attract and retain customers, and stay ahead of the competition. In this episode, Ido Segev, McKinsey senior partner and Roberta Fusaro, editorial director talk about the speed with which AI is advancing, what’s holding banks back from scaling it, and the potential advantages for early movers. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

For more than a century, medicine has largely followed a one-size-fits-all model—but that paradigm is beginning to break. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, joins Eric Kutcher, McKinsey’s North America chair, to explore how mRNA technology is transforming healthcare. From the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines to new approaches to rare genetic diseases and individualized cancer treatments, Bancel explains how treating biology as information could reshape how drugs are discovered, manufactured, and delivered. This is the second episode in a recurring series in which Eric talks with top CEOs about the practice of leadership. The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro. To watch the full-length version of this interview, go to The McKinsey Podcast’s YouTube channel.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

A historic wave of ownership transitions is set to reshape the backbone of the US economy. The fate of jobs, local spending, and wealth creation all hinge on whether enough qualified—and diverse—buyers can step in to continue to pave the way for small business ownership. In this episode, Shelley Stewart III, McKinsey senior partner and Roberta Fusaro, editorial director, talk about the scale and stakes of the "Great Ownership transfer". After, Ken Yearwood, McKinsey partner, joins to talk about the risks of inaction and the practical pathways to making these transitions work.  The McKinsey Podcast: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-podcast Shelley Stewart III: https://www.mckinsey.com/our-people/shelley-stewart The Great Ownership Transfer report: https://www.mckinsey.com/institute-for-economic-mobility/our-insights/the-great-ownership-transfer-a-new-era-of-business-stewardship McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility: https://www.mckinsey.com/institute-for-economic-mob

As generative and agentic AI reshape how work gets done, the real divide isn’t who has the best ideas—it’s who can turn them into real results at speed and scale. In this webinar, McKinsey Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly speaks with Senior Partners Kate Smaje and Robert Levin about the updated Rewired playbook—and why winning with AI now depends less on ambition and more on building the organizational capabilities to deliver. The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro. This conversation has been adapted from our McKinsey Live series. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Most leaders herald the promise of AI, but many employees see it as a looming threat—a modern echo of Annie Oakley’s classic lines: “Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.” What does it take, then, to lead constructive partnerships between humans and AI agents at work? In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partner Alexis Krivkovich and McKinsey Global Institute Partner Anu Madgavkar speak with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about new research on what AI can and can’t do, where humans will continue to add value, and what needs to happen to help all of us work side-by-side with agents and robots successfully. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

People often expect their leaders to have all the answers; David Novak built his career by challenging that assumption. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, the former CEO and cofounder of Yum! Brands and current chair of Versant speaks with Eric Kutcher, McKinsey’s chair of North America, about the experiences that shaped his leadership—from engaging with front-line franchisees to managing a very public product flop—and how other leaders can learn from them. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Foreign direct investment (FDI) used to sit in the background—important, but distant from day-to-day strategy. That’s no longer true. Today, massive capital commitments into areas like AI, semiconductors, and clean energy are signaling which industries will scale, where supply chains will land, and which regions will dominate. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partners Nick Leung and Olivia White explain to Editorial Director Roberta Fusaro why FDI has become a critical early indicator of competitive advantage—and what leaders should be watching now. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The US has had a phenomenal run of success: at 250 years old, it’s home to the world’s most competitive economy, accounting for more than a quarter of global GDP and more than half of the world’s top 100 companies. But America also confronts a raft of new challenges—mounting national debt, eroding infrastructure, slipping test scores, persistent income disparity, and more—that could threaten its historical momentum. “I don’t bet against the US,” says McKinsey’s North America Chair Eric Kutcher. “If you believe in entrepreneurial spirit as core to who we are, then you have to believe this success will continue. But it’s not a foregone conclusion. There’s a lot that must happen to enable it.” In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Kutcher and Senior Partner Olivia White speak with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about new McKinsey Global Institute research on what drives the US’s competitive edge—and what le

Yes, AI is astonishing: fast, powerful, and learning every day. But even as leaders strike up new pilots across their organizations, most still struggle to translate experimentation into enterprise value—and now, agentic AI is raising the stakes. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partner Alexis Krivkovich speaks with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about what it will take to build an “agentic organization”—from reimagining workflows to reshaping leadership roles, skills, and culture for a future where humans increasingly operate above the loop. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Companies backed by private equity (PE) tend to transform faster and more often than public or family-owned firms do, leading to consistently outperforming their peers. Marla Capozzi and Sacha Ghai, McKinsey leaders, researched nearly 300 CEOs across PE and private-capital companies to define their tactics and share their best practices with others. They and their coauthors published the findings in a recent Harvard Business Review article, and in this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, they speak with Editorial Director Roberta Fusaro about lessons from PE that any company can implement. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Many leaders can get agentic pilots rolling—but realizing ROI can mean activating thousands of AI agents enterprise-wide. Is your organization ready? “Agency isn’t a feature—it’s a transfer of decision rights,” says McKinsey Partner Rich Isenberg. “The question shifts from ‘Is the model accurate?’ to ‘Who’s accountable when the system acts?’” On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Isenberg joins Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly to explore how leaders can scale AI safely, mitigate risk for autonomous systems, and build the trust required to make innovation stick. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

McKinsey research has found that while many leaders believe they’ve adopted and implemented productive mindsets for growth, those attitudes and ambitions don’t always translate into the behaviors and actions necessary to achieve their growth objectives. On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Editorial Director Roberta Fusaro speaks with McKinsey Senior Partners Greg Kelly and Jill Zucker about how leading organizations translate growth intent into sustained performance. In part, it involves making clear bets, allocating resources deliberately, and staying committed through uncertainty. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Lars Hartenstein, senior fellow at the McKinsey Health Institute, and Roberta Fusaro, an editorial director at McKinsey, discuss the findings from McKinsey’s recent research on obesity and metabolic health—specifically, the potential interventions for sparking a metabolic health revolution, the economic impact of improving outcomes, and the technologies that are emerging as the connective tissue between prevention and treatment. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

This is a special episode of The McKinsey Podcast covering last week’s meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. McKinsey Senior Partners Becca Coggins and Shelley Stewart III speak with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about what was top of mind for CEOs—from geopolitics to leading through the AI moment to the faster-than-expected arrival of humanoid robots at scale. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

AI has yet to deliver the ROI many leaders expected. What are they getting wrong? “This is probably the biggest, most complex transformation we’ve seen—but it’s 80 percent business transformation and 20 percent tech,” according to McKinsey’s North America Chair Eric Kutcher. “That’s different from how most people have thought about it.” On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, Eric speaks with Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about how CEOs can deliver on AI’s revolutionary potential—and meet this “legacy moment” successfully. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas offers a showcase for breakthrough AI applications, humanoid robots, advances in mobility, and more. In this special episode of The McKinsey Podcast, we hear from McKinsey leaders on the ground at CES about what they saw and the tools and themes that most resonated with them. Theme music composed, performed, and produced by Joy Ngiaw.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

This year on The McKinsey Podcast, we’ve dived into an array of topics on leadership, organizational change, and technological innovation, talking to McKinsey’s most seasoned experts about how to lead during times of geopolitical upheaval and economic uncertainty, as well as how to harness and then radiate the advances made possible by AI. We didn’t just go for the broad strokes. We heard from McKinsey partners about the questions they’re getting every day from their clients across industries. How can leaders move forward competitively in a business climate so full of flux and opportunity? Our guests this year had plenty of ideas.See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information