McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator

Empower is a McKinsey Inclusive Business Accelerator-supported platform for the Black business community focused on networking and honing leadership skills. We host three quarterly Empower conferences every year. Empower also hosts breakout “Empower Hour” sessions that focus on specific operations topics with McKinsey experts.

An online interactive library of best-practice content covering 13 key operations topics across lean-management principles, procurement, and supply-chain essentials. These can be used for individual skill-building or facilitated workshops led by McKinsey experts to help unlock team potential.

Dedicated teams with cross-operations expertise engage with clients for six-12 weeks. Teams work side-by-side with company executives and decision makers to understand pain points, diagnose problems, design solutions, and kickstart transformations.

A team worked with a food ingredient manufacturer and supplier to Fortune 500 corporations. The six-week engagement focused on supporting growth and reducing inventory. The team identified a 16-26 percent recurring cost reduction and 15 percent inventory reduction, and more than a dozen leaders signed up for capability-building courses.

We led a three-month coaching effort with an energy-efficiency services provider, advising the CEO and senior leaders to help them align on a holistic growth strategy for the company. Coaching led to consensus by leadership to target four times over revenue by 2024, while staying true to their team’s core values of maintaining a diverse workforce, 100 percent customer satisfaction, and a sustainable workload.

A two-phase impact partnership with an automotive OEM subcontractor focused on improving priority operations and performance targets, as well as recruiting and retention. The client achieved a 15-20 percent reduction in production errors and a 30-40 percent reduction in downtime, while enhancing management infrastructure and performance management. On the people side, the client achieved a 15-20 percent increase in recruiting and a 30-35 percent decrease in monthly turnover.