McKinsey's 7S Framework adds four additional factors - style, staff, skills, and shared goals - to the traditional three factors of organizational framework: strategy, structure, and systems. The 7S approach uses these seven factors to evaluate organizations and identify improvements in key areas to strengthen leadership. Each of the seven factors - strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills, and shared goals - are important to consider when planning and implementing organizational change to ensure sustainability. McKinsey's 7S model can be used to scan an organization, identify gaps, and evaluate structures to pinpoint specific changes needed across the seven factors for the organization to succeed.

1. McKinsey‟s 7S Framework
Traditional approaches to organizational framework typically involve three factors: strategy,
organizational structure, and systems. Strategy leads to structure, with complex systems leading to
performance. McKinsey‟s 7-S model adds four additional factors: style, staff, skills, and shared goals.
This model is more than a strategy model, the model is a way of considering and assessing the
current state and possible remodelling of organizations (McKinsey‟s 7s model, 2005).
The 7-S approach uses these factors to evaluate organizations and make improvements in these key
areas to improve leadership. The 7-S approach differs from traditional approaches in that it brings
attention to crucial implications of factors that are often overlooked. While typical managers
sometimes rely on strategy, structure and systems, the leader must master style, skills, staff, and
shared values. (Watson, 1983). These 7 factors can be described as follows (McKinsey‟s 7s model,
2005):
1. Strategy – How a company must adapt to the environment in order to capitalize on potential.
2. Structure – The way organizational departments are grouped and related to each other.
3. Systems – The processes that are used to identify important issues, make decisions, and
accomplish goals.
4. Style – How the organizational leaders affect the culture through their words and actions.
5. Staff – What skillsets does the organization need in its employees.
6. Skills – What areas the organization must excel at in order to accomplish its goals.
7. Shared goals – The guiding themes that all individuals understand to be crucial to organizational
success.
Strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills, and shared goals are important in change and
sustainability. The first action in using this model for environmental scanning is to determine
strategy, then to define the skills that are necessary to achieve the strategy. Finally, an analysis is
conducted to determine what changes are needed in the other five factors in order for the change to
succeed and be sustainable (McKinsey's 7s model, 2005).
McKinsey‟s 7-S can be adopted for scanning and improving the organizational effectiveness of
organizations in various fields. This model identifies the roles of stakeholders, identifies knowledge
and skill gaps, and evaluates existing structures (Khan, 2004). By evaluating each of the 7 factors as
they currently exist, and identifying what they should be in order for the organization to succeed,
specific changes can be identified in each factor. The model can also be modified or tailored by
organizations. Higgins (2005) revised the original 7-S model by replacing skills with resources and
adding strategic performance to create the 8 S‟s of Strategy Execution. This helps to focus the
model on strategy execution.