What McKinsey’s “Out of Balance” Report Means for CFOs and Operators
The world has never been wealthier — or more distorted.
According to McKinsey’s Out of Balance report (October 2025), global wealth has surged past $600 trillion, but much of that growth isn’t real. For every dollar of new investment, the world created two dollars of debt. More than a third of household wealth gains since 2000 came purely from asset inflation — not productive output.
McKinsey modeled four futures for the global economy.
Only one restores balance without destroying real value: productivity acceleration.
Every other path — sustained inflation, balance-sheet reset, or a return to stagnation — either erodes wealth or kills growth. Productivity is the only scenario that maintains both.
The Path Forward: Productivity or Paper Wealth
In a world fueled by debt and paper gains, productivity is no longer an efficiency play — it’s survival.
Wealth and asset values can keep rising, but if they’re not grounded in output, balance sheets will eventually correct. Inflation devalues them, stagnation traps them, and resets erase them.
The only way to preserve value is to earn it.
That means building systems that produce more from the same inputs — time, people, and capital.
The Surprising Insight: A Few Firms Drive the Shift
McKinsey’s data shows that productivity acceleration doesn’t require the entire economy to move — it just takes a few.
“A small number of standout firms contribute the bulk of national productivity growth. Just a few dozen of the highest-contributing firms may suffice to double productivity growth.”
That’s the real takeaway.
Transformation doesn’t happen through policy. It happens through execution — led by Operators who automate, measure, and allocate better than the rest.
The CFO’s Mandate
For CFOs, this moment defines the next decade.
Balance sheets have become the new battleground for strategy.
Inflated valuations, rising debt, and flat productivity mean that finance — not finance policy — will determine which companies create lasting value.
CFOs and their teams now sit at the center of that equation. They decide where capital goes, how automation is deployed, and how discipline is enforced.
The Operator Advantage
This is the space Automated AF was built for.
Our tools aren’t about reporting. They’re about engineering productivity inside finance itself — automating low-value work so that every decision, forecast, and allocation is anchored in output and return.
In a world where wealth has drifted away from reality, Operators bring it back to ground level.
Bottom line:
The global economy is out of balance. Only productivity restores it.
And that responsibility doesn’t sit with governments or markets — it sits with Operators.