Thread by @p_millerd

1/ Many people ask me about my experience in strategy consulting - especially at McKinsey & BCG. I've come to really enjoy teaching people what I've learned and teaching people those skills.

Here are some nuggets you might find valuable.

2/ One fundamental shift in consulting is from solutions to problems. Seems simple, but isn’t. Most people jump to solutions.
Example: “We need to guarantee health insurance to all Americans”
Consultant: “Who said the problem we are solving is insurance coverage?”

3/ Consulting problem solving also requires a slightly delusional level of belief that you can learn new things AND provide new solutions or identify new problems.

However, it is usually achievable because most workers are not incentivized to find and solve new problems.

4/ Most companies are plagued by modishness:

Modishness (noun): Doing what is fashionable or stylish

Example: OKRs, ping pong tables, eliminating performance reviews. writing reports about the future of work or latest buzzwords

5/ Problem Solving is basically a painful iterative process that you iterate on 50+ times (not 2-3 times)

Consultants use SCQA:
S: Situation
C: Complication
Q: Questions
A: Answers

Seems straightforward, but again – it isn’t.

6/ You often spend days if not weeks on the SC – defining the situation clearly and determining what the complication is.

In some cases, the complication isn’t big enough to incentivize any change. Consultants ignore this and move on in many cases. Gotta walk the walk.

7/ The next part QA is about hypotheses and then research.

Problem solving at its core is about making falsifiable statements. Just like the scientific method.

If its not falsifiable, you are writing hope statements

Much of business is run on hope statements.

8/ Once you nail down some questions, you conduct "research" to prove or disprove the questions. This process is all about iteration.

Top down hypotheses and bottoms up digging and rabbit holes of research.

Often you tweak the questions you are asking and dive back in.

9/ As you start to get answers you want to start formulating your "story" - for this we need to introduce you to the Pyramid Principle - popularized by Barbara Minto at McKinsey

10/ I wanted to take a short detour to acknowledge that Barabara Minto is a badass - she was the first MBA Women consultant at McKinsey.

Of course she created all sorts of ideas that changed the course of the firm like MECE and Pyramid Principle

11/ In my telling of the pyramid principle, I look at it as two parts:

12/ The first part is about taking the A - the answers and synthesizing them.

Typically you use a "rule of three" to help guide your thinking. The dots represent the research you did and the answers you found - you want to make sure that the three areas are MECE

13/ MECE was also invented by Barbaro Minto at McKinsey.

The principle is simple but hard to implement. It is more of an ideal than a hard and fast law.

This graphic shows the principle in a simple way

14/ A quick example:

Apples Revenue:
- Americas Revenue
- Non-Americas Revenue

This is MECE because the categories do NOT overlap and collectively make up all of apples Revenue. This would NOT be MECE:

- Americas Revenue
- Europe Revenue

where is Asia?!

15/ Back to the pyramid principle. You'll likely start sorting the research you came up with and coming up with your high level story - you want to make sure that the three insights are MECE

16/ Then we get to telling the story.

The key thing about the pyramid principles is that you

=> Start with the answer

Or at McKinsey "communicate top down"

17/ Typically this is done in writing first. Often people don't create this space for thinking - there needs to be a gap or space between data gathering and writing your memo or powerpoint. This is why so many powerpoints suck.

Here is a rough framework:

18/ There are two ways to think about structuring your story. Directly or indirectly - both of which depend on the context of communication.

Hostile audience? Go Indirect

Friendly? Go Direct

19/ In PowerPoint you want to map your pyramid principle structure to slides.

Argument #1 - Divider 1 + Slides
Argument #2 - Divider 2 + Slides
Argument #3 - Divider 2 + Slides

20/ The next "hack" is to ensure you have horizontal and vertical flow with the slides.

Horizontal flow = there is a clear and consistent story
Vertical flow = titles tell the takeaway of the slide

21/ Here is the simplest example of vertical flow.

The reason is most people add WAY too much information and when people read slides they make a judgement in 3-5 seconds.

Can you figure out the takeaway in 5 seconds? If not you have work to do

22/ The best way to check for horizontal flow is to go into outline view and read the titles in the left pane or to copy and paste the titles into a word document.

Does it make sense? If not, you'll have a hard time making any sort of compelling argument:

23/ There are all sorts of other principles and tricks, but the best way to learn them is to:

1. Practice
2. Get direct feedback

For me it took almost 10 years and 5 years of teaching others for me to "get it"

24/ If you're nerdy enough to make it here you should join the live course starting August 5th for $399 or gift pricing for those with financial difficulties.

I'll be facilitating with the great @JayTdike

COURSE: learn.think-boundless.com/p/think-like-a…

More Lessons: strategyu.co/free-lessons/