Only 7 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs believe their companies should “mainly focus on making profits and not be distracted by social goals.” And with good reason. While shareholder capitalism has catalyzed enormous progress, it also has struggled to address deeply vexing issues such as climate change and income inequality—or, looking forward, the employment implications of artificial intelligence.

Yet when companies fully leverage their scale to benefit society, the impact can be extraordinary. The power of purpose is evident as the world fights the urgent threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a number of companies doubling down on their purpose, at the very time stakeholders need it the most (for more, see “Demonstrating corporate purpose in the time of coronavirus”). Business also has an opportunity, and an obligation, to engage on the urgent needs of our planet, where waiting for governments and nongovernmental organizations to act on their own through traditional means such as regulation and community engagement carries risk (for more, see “Confronting climate risk”).

In response to the coronavirus, organizations of all shapes and sizes are moving in this direction. They are setting up “control towers,” “nerve centers”—which take over some of the company’s critical operations—and other crisis-response teams to deal with rapidly shifting priorities and challenges. They see that these teams make faster, better decisions, and many are wondering how they can replicate this effort in other parts of their organization.

Creating a central “rapid response” group is the right first move, but leaders shouldn’t stop there. In this article, we will focus on the steps leaders should take to create a cohesive and adaptable network of teams, united by a common purpose, that gathers information, devises solutions, puts them into practice, refines outcomes—and does it all fast.

Pressure on companies to pay attention to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues continues to mount. Researchers, business groups, and nongovernmental organizations have variously warned of the risks—or emphasized the opportunities—that such issues present to company performance.¹ Most executives and the investment professionals who scrutinize their companies seem to agree that ESG programs affect performance. In our latest McKinsey Global Survey on valuing ESG programs,² 83 percent of C-suite leaders and investment professionals say they expect that ESG programs will contribute more shareholder value in five years than today. They also indicate that they would be willing to pay about a 10 percent median premium to acquire a company with a positive record for ESG issues over one with a negative record. That’s true even of executives who say ESG programs have no effect on shareholder value.

Among respondents who say that such programs increase shareholder value, perceptions of how the programs do so have shifted since our survey on the subject in 2009.³ A majority of these business leaders and investment professionals now say that environmental, social, and governance programs individually create value over both the short term and the long term. Moreover, the perceived long-term value of environmental and social programs now rivals or exceeds the value attributed to governance programs.

Research shows that most of us tend to believe that we have changed a lot up to now but won’t change much in the years ahead. Yet we tend to express this belief at any point in our lives when we’re asked about it. Like Hans, we assume that our identity is settled and that the real challenge is how to stay relevant in a fast-moving world. We may look outward for new information that helps increase our expertise, but we tend to avoid looking inward at how we make sense of what we know. We draw a line between the growing, evolving person we were and the evolved person we are now.

Unfortunately, we’re mistaken. Because we don’t think of ourselves as changing in the future, we focus our energy on projecting—and protecting—the person we have become, not on growing into the person we might become next. We are caught in the identity mindtrap.

Much of this happens instinctively, hidden from our awareness, and it happens constantly. Like Hans, we might think we’re “doing what it takes” or we’re “standing up for ourselves” or any other self-justification technique we might choose to explain our behavior as we subconsciously seek to manage the impressions that others have of us. So powerful is this impulse that it often acts as a master switch, activating other mindtraps to serve it: for instance, instinctively arguing that we are right, holding onto simple stories where we feature as heroes and others as villains, tribal—or polarizing—behavior, and inflating our sense of personal agency while deflecting responsibility. 

Mergers create vast organizational anxiety about the future: in most cases, the operating model and culture will change dramatically for one or both merging companies. These changes go far beyond a new name and senior leadership; they challenge the core of an organization’s identity, purpose, and day-to-day work. Even small tactical changes, like new expense policies or cafeteria options, can rattle employees. Anticipating and addressing these “organizational emotions” can set the foundation for seamless, effective integration. Failing to anticipate and address them can lead to poor business performance, a loss of critical talent, and the leakage of synergies.

Merging companies must shift the day-to-day behavior and mind-sets of their employees to protect a deal’s sources of value, both financial and organizational, and to make changes sustainable. Yet when McKinsey asked 3,199 leaders if they regarded the change programs at their own companies as successful, only one-third did. What’s more, ten years of data from an annual McKinsey survey of M&A executives shows that organizational issues like cultural differences and changed operating models account, on average, for almost 50 percent of the failure of mergers to meet expectations.