《财富》500强急需堵上新兴市场缺口

    如果你真的着眼于某个有价值的东西，你就会以它为目标，派遣最得力的人手，同时投入最多的资金。

    这个观点已经是老生常谈，但管理者真的把它付诸实践了吗？麦肯锡（McKinsey & Company）研究了1,600多家美国公司在15年间（1990-2005年）的表现，结果显示大多数公司每年分配给各项业务的资金都差不多，出于这个原因它们一直处于低速增长状态。与之相反，在重新分配资金方面最为积极的公司在各项业务之间调配的资金量占自身资金总额的56%以上，它们带给股东的总回报也比前者多30%。

    简而言之，顺利完成这项工作说起来容易做起来难。但它至关重要。

    如果向全世界的管理者们提出第二个问题——目前最有价值的是什么？那么在他们的答案中，抓住新兴市场的增长机遇必然会排在最前面，或者比较靠前的位置。麦肯锡对其中的价值做了这样的估算：到2025年，新兴市场消费者将增加30亿左右，消费规模将超过30万亿美元（183.9万亿元人民币）。在此期间，全球近一半的GDP增量将来自440座新兴市场城市。

    但认识和行动之间总是存在差异。目前，虽然新兴市场占全球GDP的38%，但就总部设在发达市场的公司而言，新兴市场对其收入的平均贡献率只有17%。

    跨国公司可能会在新兴市场正在崛起的一代中寻找管理人才和经营思路，有意思的是，这样做也许会有助于着手解决上述问题。和总部设在发达经济体的对手相比，总部设在新兴市场的公司在富裕地区的增长率是前者的两倍，在新兴市场的增长率是前者的两倍半，这主要是因为它们正在更积极地把资金调整到今后的高增长领域。

    跨国公司在经营管理方面能承担更多风险并更加关注增长吗？答案是肯定的。借助最近公布的《财富》美国500强名单，我们站在新兴市场的角度对这些公司去年的董事会结构进行了分析。结果表明，只有57%的公司至少有一名来自新兴市场的董事（在此我们采用了广义概念，包括拥有新兴市场公民身份，在新兴市场接受过管理教育或者有过工作经历）。整体来看，来自新兴市场的董事只占这些公司全部董事的9%。

    当然，问题并不仅限于董事会。根据我们的经验，许多公司在组织结构方面都成功地尝试了各种各样的措施，目的都是确保管理团队能够体现出新兴市场日益增长的重要性。一些全球性消费品公司已将业务部门以及研发等核心机构转移到新兴市场，少数几家公司甚至把总部也迁到了那里。大型国际性金融服务企业和自然资源公司都为董事会设立了专门针对新兴市场的咨询部门，为的就是利用他们的专长。显然，要全面弥补新兴市场缺口，只采取某一项措施还远远不够。

    但就像我们在其他领域中学到的那样，多元化真的很重要，高层确立的基调也是如此。一位高级管理者最近这样对我说：“这是个大问题。虽然我们公司的大多数增长都来自新兴市场，我们的管理团队却不是来自那里。”他说的对。既然这就是问题所在，那么以更快的速度在新兴市场聘请更多的董事和高管人员可能会是个好的开始。（财富中文网）

    作者是麦肯锡全球总裁，他将在6月6-8日在四川成都召开的《财富》全球论坛上发表担任演讲嘉宾。

    译者：Charlie

    If you truly have your eyes on the prize, then you deploy your best people and biggest investments against that goal.

    But are executives really putting this truism into practice? McKinsey & Company studied the performance of more than 1600 US companies over a 15 year-period (1990-2005). Most companies doled out roughly the same amount of capital to business units as they did the previous year—and cruised forward in low-gear as a result. By contrast, the most aggressive re-allocators—companies that shifted more than 56% of their capital across business units over that period—delivered 30% higher total returns to shareholders.

    In short, getting this right is easy to say and hard to do. But it matters big-time.

    Now ask almost any global executive a second question—What's the biggest prize out there today?—and capturing emerging markets growth would surely rank at or near the top. Here's how McKinsey sizes this particular prize: By 2025 consumption in emerging markets alone will surpass $30 trillion as some 3 billion new members of the consuming class come online. Just 440 cities in emerging markets alone will account for nearly half of global GDP growth over that period.

    But once again, there's a mismatch between awareness and action. Today, while 38% of global GDP comes from emerging markets, companies headquartered in advanced markets on average earn only 17% of their revenue from these countries.

    Interestingly, one place multinationals might turn for the executive talent and management mindsets that could help begin to address this problem: the rising generation of emerging markets champions themselves. Companies headquartered in emerging markets are growing twice as quickly in wealthy countries as their rivals who are based in advanced economies and 2.5 times faster in emerging markets. And the main reason, it turns out, is because they are reallocating capital more aggressively into tomorrow's high-growth businesses.

    Is there an opportunity to get more of that risk-taking, growth-focused executive DNA into multinationals? Yes. For the recent issue of the Fortune 500, we ran an analysis of the previous year's board composition using an emerging markets lens. As it turns out, only 57% of companies in the Fortune 500 have even one board member from an emerging market (broadly defined as someone with either emerging market citizenship or extensive education and work experience in those countries). Overall, only 9% of board members of Fortune 500 companies met this cut.

    It's not just about boards, of course. In our experience, we've seen a number of companies experiment successfully with a range of organizational initiatives aimed at ensuring that their leadership teams reflect the growing importance of emerging markets. Some global consumer products companies have relocated business units, core functions, such as R&D, and in rare cases their headquarters to emerging markets. We have also seen large, international financial services and natural resource companies build advisory councils to their boards that have a deliberate skew towards emerging markets, in order to capture that expertise. Clearly closing our collective emerging markets gap requires far more than pulling one lever.

    But as we have learned in other areas, diversity really matters, as does the tone from the top. "It's a big problem," as one senior business leader told me recently, "that while most of my growth is in emerging markets, my management is not from emerging markets." He's right. And since that's the case, moving faster to recruit more board members and senior executives from emerging markets seems like a good place to start.

    Dominic Barton is the global managing director of McKinsey & Company and a featured speaker at the Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu, China, June 6-8.