The challenge of sustaining corporate performance has long exercised the minds of executives and management thinkers. Pioneering leaders such as GM’s Alfred Sloan and IBM’s Thomas Watson, who sought to create enduring institutions, have become the stuff of business legend. And scholars have spilled oceans of ink trying to explain what makes strong performance endure.¹

Yet many senior executives, try as they might, still find it hard to shift their attention away from today’s stock price and the next set of interim results. The forbidding presence of hedge fund and private-equity investors on corporate share registers and the increasingly short tenure of CEOs have only intensified the obsession with short-term performance.

A series of articles in The McKinsey Quarterly has described the way companies can take steps today to ensure that they perform well not only this year but also in the years to come (see Related Articles to the right). Underlying these actions is a mental discipline founded on the simple metaphor of human health, which improves when cared for and deteriorates when neglected. Further research has deepened the understanding of what a healthy corporation looks like and, more important, what business leaders can do to embed healthy...