Chip Cutter’s Post

Few people are quitting. Few are getting promoted. So how do you not feel stuck? With the labor market cooling, pay increases slowing and turnover down sharply, many workers say they feel trapped in their roles. Bosses are beginning to notice, and some companies are trying new ideas to create additional movement within companies -- even if that doesn't mean an entirely new job. Here's my story:

McKinsey is best known for offering strategy advice to companies — a proposition it increasingly views as table stakes in the Al era. "That part of the profession will get disrupted," the firm’s top executive, Bob Sternfels, told me. He and his colleagues are embarking on a wide-ranging plan to change how McKinsey operates; he recently sat down with me to talk about it. The firm is adjusting some of its fee structures, taking on more work in which it defers payment until companies reach agreed-upon results. It has created a 30-person "partnership modernization" task force to evaluate issues tied to McKinsey's governance, including the length of a term for the firm's leader and how often it conducts elections. McKinsey plans to hire 6,000 people this year and increase its budgets to let people move to take on assignments in different offices. Sternfels also wants to make sure the firm is a place of “unrivaled development.” That means feedback. Earlier this year, the company put about 3,000 employees on notice with unsatisfactory performance ratings. “The great reveal is people have always been rated that way,” he said. “Guess what? Not everybody gets an A.” More from our interview here:

What's behind Howard Schultz's recent outburst here on LinkedIn? Lots of great behind-the-scenes reporting from Heather Haddon:

Six months ahead of the U.S. election, businesses are going to extraordinary lengths to stay off the political radar. Some CEOs are privately drawing up plans to tell employees not to expect comments on political matters in all-hands sessions. Others are reconsidering common election initiatives, such as get-out-the-vote drives, fearing those could be viewed in the current moment as partisan. A number of companies are also taking a harder line on workplace activism after long tolerating dissent. Here's our story, with Ray Smith:

Warren Buffett had plenty to say about AI at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting this weekend. The billionaire investor compared AI to nuclear weapons, saying that both could have devastating consequences on society, if used incorrectly. He also saw a recent deepfake of himself that convinced him AI will enable more effective scams. “We let a genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons,” Buffett said on Saturday. “AI is somewhat similar—it’s part way out of the bottle.”