Thread by @strategyskills

1/ I've been teaching consulting skills to colleagues, students and business leaders for years. I love sharing these ideas.

People get excited by how quickly they can adopt these principles I learned while at McKinsey & BCG in their work
strategyu.co

2/ I do have an online course with challenging assignments so you can practice these skills, but I delight in giving these ideas away so that people can piece it together without having to pay me anything.

If you have questions, just DM me and I'll help you.

3/ One fundamental shift 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?”

strategyu.co/consulting-min…

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

However, since many in the org have never tried to solve these problems, it can be achievable strategyu.co/mindset-shifts…

5/ 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

6/ 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.
strategyu.co/scqa-a-framewo…

7/ 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 and this is where consulting projects may go off the rails.

8/ 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.

9/ Once you identify questions, you conduct "research" to prove or disprove the questions & iterate over and over.

Top down hypotheses and bottom-up digging and rabbit holes of research.

Often you tweak the questions you are asking and dive back in.
strategyu.co/how-scqa-and-t…

10/ 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

11/ We should pause here to acknowledge that Barabara Minto is a badass - she was the first MBA Women consultant at McKinsey and more importantly helped create a system of thinking, writing & communication that enabled the consulting industry to take off

mckinsey.com/alumni/news-an…

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

13/ 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

14/ The important thing here and is one of the most important ideas of the pyramid principle is that the insight is only composed of the information below it

15/ MECE was also invented by Barbaro Minto at McKinsey and pairs well with the pyramid principle.

Like a red wine and steak.

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

This visual shows the principle in a simple way

16/ 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?!

17/ 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

18/ 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"

19/ 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:

20/ 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

21/ 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

22/ 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

Dive deeper here =>

23/ 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

24/ 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:

25/ If you want to get wild with persuasion tips, formatting and the brain science behind mastering presentations - these 20 tips I published are a must read. strategyu.co/20-powerful-pr…

26/ These tips rely on iteration. The best way to get feedback is within a team that understands these principles and gives great feedback.

Great feedback is like improv - "yes, and"

Don't criticize fonts - give feedback on how to improve their thinking

27/ In consulting the iteration and continuous feedback is what makes some lose their minds and makes others love the work.

I broke down what makes this tick at a place like McKinsey
strategyu.co/decoding-high-…