McKinsey 7S Framework

The McKinsey 7S framework is an organizational analysis model developed in the late 1970s by consultants at McKinsey & Company, including Robert Waterman and Tom Peters, that identifies seven interdependent internal elements a company must align to be effective: strategy, structure, systems, shared values, skills, style, and staff. The framework distinguishes between three so-called hard elements, strategy, structure, and systems, and four soft elements, shared values, skills, style, and staff, and argues that shared values sit at the center, connecting and shaping the other six. It is commonly used in organizational change and management consulting to diagnose why a company's elements are misaligned and to plan how a change in one element will affect the others.