Useful Things I learned from The McKinsey Way
By Alisa Chen
February 2025
The McKinsey Way is a book about McKinsey & Co. written by Ethan M. Rasiel. If you want to learn more about the book or the firm, Google it. This article is a mess of notes I took while reading.
Forces at Work
If you’re looking for an unnecessarily convoluted way of performing a SWOT analysis, look no further, The McKinsey Way introduces you to the ‘Forces at Work’! Here are the steps involved:
Find external pressures affecting the client
Suppliers, customers, competitors, possible substitute products, etc.
Identify and list the changes taking place in each category
What positive or negative impact does each change have on the client?
The Elevator Test
“Can you sell me your solution as we ride down the elevator?”
It’s hard. That’s only about 30 seconds. It’s important though.
Research Tips When Solving a Problem
Start with the annual report
Take a look at the “Message to Shareholders” or the “Chairman’s Remarks”
Look for outliers in the data
Look for best practice (a.k.a copy whoever’s doing it right)
Keys to an Effective Message
Brevity
Thoroughness
Structure
BTS should be an easy acronym to remember, right?
MECE
MECE (pronounced mee-see) stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. McKinsey & Co. consultants approach every problem using the MECE framework. Essentially, you list issues that make up the problem, or ways to solve a specific problem. To MECE it, ask yourself, “are the items in this list separate and distinct?” If so, they are mutually exclusive. “Have I thought of everything” Yes? The list is collectively exhaustive. If there’s a slight bit of overlap within your ideas, use subpoints.
Applying MECE
Here at Bob Company, we want to increase widget sales. After brainstorming, we’ve come up with a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive list of ways to achieve that. We’re changing the way we sell to retail outlets, improving the way we market to consumers, and reducing unit costs.
In addition, improving the quality of products would probably “improve the way we market to consumers”, because quality generally equates to better optics for the company.
Reengineering the production process could also be useful, but there’s some overlap with that and reducing unit costs.
Final result:
How to sell more widgets?
Change the way we sell to retail outlets
Improve the way we market to consumers
Improving product quality
Reduce unit costs
Reengineering the production process