Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds

Chris Bradley is a Senior Partner at Mckinsey&Company, Sydney. One of the developers of McKinsey’s “Ten Timeless Tests of Strategy,” Chris has worked on strategic transformations for organizations across Australia’s retail, mining, transportation, consumer goods, and telecommunications sectors. Chris helps major institutions undergo strategic transformations to navigate large-scale shifts in their environment. He connects high-level conceptual thinking to practical shop-floor improvements. He has deep expertise in retail, covering grocery, discount department stores, specialty apparel, hardware, and consumer electronics. He has driven major strategic repositioning in six retail banners and has extensive experience in commercial execution, from consumer positioning to vendor negotiations, deploying data and analytics to get real results. Outside of retail, Chris has over a decade of experience in mining, helping his clients navigate the resources boom in China. Recently, Chris has also helped a print-media client radically change its business model to adapt to its new environment—and remain a sustainable and healthy company. Chris is the global leader of the firm’s work in business-unit strategy, where he spearheads the development and modernization of McKinsey’s tools and capabilities for strategy development. His widely read research includes the Ten Timeless Tests of Strategy and the “Strategy Method.” He has conducted workshops with hundreds of strategy teams from around the globe, applying the ten tests to their strategies. Chris is also joint-lead faculty of the strategy program in the McKinsey Academy, an online executive-education initiative launched recently. Outside his client work, Chris has contributed influential thinking on making Australia’s economy better, including a McKinsey Global Institute study on productivity in Australia and a report with the Business Council of Australia on competitiveness.

Martin Hirt is a Senior Partner at McKinsey&Company, China. Martin leads McKinsey's global Strategy Practice. He is one of McKinsey's most experienced client leaders on topics including strategy, growth, and business transformation in emerging markets and has deep expertise in high tech and telecommunications. Previous leadership roles at the firm include heading the Asia Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice, leading high-tech and telecom-sector work in Greater China, and managing the Taiwan office. Martin's work with leading global companies ranges from corporate strategy, M&A, board-related topics, and merger management to growth strategy, go-to-market strategy, business-model innovation, end-to-end transformations, and culture change. He provides counsel to chairmen and women, to CEOs and executive teams of Asian companies on their global expansion, and to leading multinationals on their growth in Asia. Martin's extensive expertise in high tech and telecommunications covers the advanced-electronics value chain from components, semiconductors, and flat panels to original-design manufacturing and electronics-manufacturing services; branded business models in PC, TV, and mobile devices; and telecom services. He also advises Internet businesses on advanced analytics, capability building, and disruptive online strategies. In his current leadership role in strategy and corporate finance, Martin has led the development of new service lines and advanced-analytics tools; he worked on the creation and scaling of McKinsey's Strategy Academies, leading these events with hundreds of client executives across Asia and Europe.

Sven Smit is a Senior Partner in Amsterdam. He leads McKinsey Western Europe and, before that, led McKinsey's Strategy Practice. He is the co-author of the bestselling books Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick and Granularity of Growth.