Beat the odds with a bold strategy
We’ve all seen hockey stick business plans before. A future where results sail confidently upward, but with a dip coinciding with next year’s budget.
CEOs usually rely on their experience and business smarts to figure out which of those hockey sticks are real, and which are fake. But all too often getting to a “yes,” competing for resources, and striving to claim credit, cloud the hard decisions. Another strategy framework? No thanks, we already have plenty of those, and they don’t fix the real problem: the social dynamics in your strategy room.
Mining the data from thousands of large companies, McKinsey Partners Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt and Sven Smit open the windows of that room, and bring an “outside view.” They found three discrete groups of companies: the bottom quintile with massive economic losses; the long, flat, middle 60 percent with practically no economic profit; and the top 20 percent to whom all the value accrues.

Some companies do achieve real hockey stick performance: but just 1-in-12 jump from the middle tier to the top over a ten year period. This does not happen by magic—there is an empirically-backed science to improve your odds of success by capitalizing on your endowment, riding the right trends, and most importantly, making a few big moves.

用大胆的策略战胜困难
我们以前都看过曲棍球棒的商业计划。一个业绩自信向上的未来，但与明年的预算同时出现下滑。
首席执行官们通常依靠自己的经验和商业智慧来判断这些曲棍球棍中哪些是真的，哪些是假的。但是，太多的时候，得到一个“是的”，争夺资源，努力争取信用，云的艰难决定。另一个战略框架？不，谢谢，我们已经有很多了，但它们并不能解决真正的问题：你的战略室里的社会动态。
麦肯锡的合作伙伴克里斯·布拉德利（Chris Bradley）、马丁·赫斯特（Martin Hirt）和斯文·斯密特（Sven Smit）挖掘了数千家大公司的数据，打开了那间屋子的窗户，带来了一个“外部视野”。他们发现了三个离散的公司群体：经济损失惨重的底层五分之一；长的，平的，中间的60%，几乎没有经济利益；以及最有价值的20%。
一些公司确实取得了真正的曲棍球棒业绩：但在10年的时间里，只有1/12的公司从中层跃升到高层。这不是靠魔法实现的，有一种经验主义支持的科学，通过利用你的禀赋，把握正确的趋势，最重要的是，采取一些重大举措，来提高你成功的几率。