If strategising and organising must be considered as interlinked, managers are going to need to be convinced that the complexity of carrying out both processes at the same time will be worthwhile – there’s got to be a pay-off.

In this article, three McKinsey consultants explain how the ‘metaphor’ of ‘performance and health’ can help an organisation think rigorously both about how it performs and about its long-term ability to keep performing. Using anecdotal evidence from a wide variety of McKinsey clients, the authors diagnose some recurrent problems and call for an expansion to the classic strategy toolkit to cope with monitoring and managing the ongoing dynamics of strategising and organising, together with the application of a common set of language to both.

They offer a set of metrics to explicitly test five key performance and health dimensions, and show how the blurring of the strategising/organising boundary can actually lead to more sharply defined strategies. While this will require changes in mindsets and behaviours across organisations, it offers the chance for boards to frame their discussion to focus where they say they want to on delivering performance that endures.

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