mckinsey-7s

Assesses an organization through the McKinsey 7-S framework (Waterman, Peters, and Phillips): Strategy, Structure, Systems (hard), and Shared Values, Skills, Style, Staff (soft). The elements are interdependent and effectiveness comes from their alignment; the failure this catches is treating the parts in isolation and missing where they pull against each other.

The seven elements, the hard/soft split, the alignment checks, and the pitfalls live in references/seven-s.md. Load that file before analyzing.

When to use

The user wants to understand organizational effectiveness or alignment: diagnosing underperformance, planning or sequencing a change, integrating post-merger, or realigning after a strategy shift. The unit of analysis is an organization or a unit within one, not a market or a product.

Language

Conduct the session and write the report in the language the user is writing in. The reference file is English; keep the framework keyed to it regardless of output language.

Inputs

• ORGANIZATION (required): the organization or unit to analyze.
• CONTEXT (required): why the analysis is being run (diagnose underperformance, plan a specific change, integrate a merger). For a change, also state the intended future state. The context decides whether this is a current-state diagnosis or a current-versus-desired gap analysis, so ask if it is unclear.