CX Book Gems #39: "Rewired" by McKinsey
Book summary of "Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI" by Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, and Rodney Zemmel.
Today’s newsletter feature is Rewired by Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, and Rodney Zemmel.
📘 Book Summary
Rewired is McKinsey’s playbook for digital and AI transformation, built on years of global consulting experience and hundreds of case studies. The book tackles why most digital efforts underperform and provides a clear, actionable roadmap for rewiring your organization for speed, scalability, and sustained business impact. It's a step-by-step guide to aligning technology, talent, operating models, and data into a high-performing digital engine.
Business leaders will be digitally transforming their companies for the rest of their careers.
💎 3 CX Gems
Digital transformation is a continuous journey
Transformation isn’t a “one-and-done” project; it’s an ongoing operating model powered by agile teams, data-driven decisions, and customer-focused design.Execution beats ambition
Most companies struggle not because of a lack of bold ideas, but because they fail to align leadership, talent, and technology around execution. Winning firms embed digital into the core of how the business runs.Customer experience must guide the operating model
Organizations that succeed put the customer journey at the heart of transformation using insights to reimagine products, design pods, and fuel iterative improvements.
✅ 3 Quickstart Tips
Rewire with agile pods linked to business outcomes
Start with a few high-value, cross-functional teams solving clear friction points. Build momentum before scaling.Build a data product mindset
Manage data like a product, with dedicated teams, secure pipelines, and federation of ownership, so that insights drive action.Professionalize product ownership and CX design
Invest in training product managers as mini-CEOs of their domains and embed human-centered design to ensure solutions are useful, usable, and delightful.
Rewired doesn’t just explain digital transformation, it maps it. With clear models for leadership, talent, technology, and customer-centricity, it empowers companies to stop experimenting and start executing. For CX leaders, it’s a reminder that transformation succeeds when experience, data, and delivery are tightly connected.