Fast Times: How Digital Winners Set Direction, Learn, and Adapt

An expert guide for senior executives who want to quickly understand what really matters in digital business and what it takes to win.

Today’s technology demands lightning-fast changes. But speed without purpose is not progress. In Fast Times, McKinsey leaders cut through the hype to provide a readable inside look into what digital winners do best: set direction, learn, and adapt faster than anyone else.

For executives frustrated with their pace of change, Fast Times digs into the root questions that shine a light on the issues that keep companies like yours from setting direction, learning, and adapting: Do you really know how your company is performing? How do you make it safe for people to experiment so you can build a proactive culture? How do you balance fast execution with deliberate decision-making? Are your training programs up to the challenge of reskilling the talent you need tomorrow? Do your IT people have the skills needed to build the tech that’s needed and incorporate cybersecurity?

The experts at McKinsey & Company draw from decades of experience and detailed analysis to highlight what matters most in order to become a digital winner. With illuminating sidebars and real-life scenarios, Fast Times is an invaluable shortcut to setting direction, learning, and adapting to win.

Arun Arora, partner at McKinsey & Company, has more than twenty-five years of experience managing operations for US-based and multinational companies and has held various operational and leadership positions with industry leaders including Apple, Sun Microsystems, 3M, Groupon, Staples, and Sears. He has extensive expertise in digital, retail, and omnichannel environments. As former president and 16B officer of Sears Holding Corporation’s home-appliance and home-services businesses, Arora launched the 95/5 initiative, which defined the service standard for the industry. At Staples, he served as senior vice president and general manager of global e-commerce and ran Staples.com and mobile properties for Staples―the second largest behind Amazon. As head of global risk and operations at Groupon, he helped scale the business from $100 million to $2 billion in less than eight months while developing standards and expectations that allowed for Groupon’s global management.

Peter Dahlstrom, senior partner at McKinsey & Company, leads McKinsey’s client and firm communications. As the global leader for McKinsey Digital’s B2C team, he serves leading institutions in the telecommunications, high-tech, media, and fast-moving consumer-goods industries. Previously, Dahlstrom led the firm’s Marketing & Sales Practice in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; and he has also been the global leader of McKinsey’s Mobile Telecom Practice as well as Telecom, High-Tech, Media & Entertainment Practices in the UK, Ireland, and the Nordic regions. He is a cofounder of Venture Cup Öresund, Scandinavia’s leading start-up competition; and he has written a book and several articles on marketing and sales topics in telecom and other industries. Dahlstrom has a BA in economics and business administration from the University of Hannover in Germany and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Klemens Hjartar, senior partner at McKinsey & Company, is the global leader of McKinsey Digital in the telecommunications, media, and technology sectors and in Western Europe. An experienced transformation leader, Hjartar has created performance-based partnerships with the leaders of prominent companies to direct digital transformations. The aim is a significant shift in capabilities, commercial performance, and operational costs. Hjartar brings expertise in technology modernization, dealing with legacy IT architectures, and putting agile organizations in place.

Florian Wunderlich, senior partner at McKinsey & Company, is one of the global leaders of McKinsey’s work in large-scale digital transformations and is a cofounder of Leap by McKinsey, which helps large enterprises build new businesses. Over the past twenty-plus years, he has been helping telecom, technology, industrial, and professional services companies rapidly transform into digital and agile leaders, as well as building and scaling digital businesses. Beyond his consulting work, Wunderlich is a board member of a midsize family-owned media company and serves on several McKinsey executive committees.