The Mckinsey Way : Using the Techniques of the World's Top Strategic Consultants to Help You and Your Business

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You should also get buy-ins throughout the organization along the process. Every important party has to agree with you. Ideally, the final document has already been discussed many times through many rounds with the client before the official presentation. Doing research Simon London: I am slightly torn about the nomenclature of problem solving because it’s on paper, right? Until you motivate people to action, you actually haven’t solved anything.

Real meaning: We’re so busy in meetings we really want to economize on the amount of actual analysis have to do. Include some questions you know the answer to. This gives insights into the interviewee’s style, knowledge, and honesty.You are looking for a fun, easy read that will teach you more about management consulting in general. Always wear impeccable clothing and groom yourself like you are being judged. Power dressing is called that for a reason Charles Conn: I think they’re entirely complementary, and I think Hugo’s description is perfect. When we do problem definition well in classic problem solving, we are demonstrating the kind of empathy, at the very beginning of our problem, that design thinking asks us to approach. When we ideate—and that’s very similar to the disaggregation, prioritization, and work-planning steps—we do precisely the same thing, and often we use contrasting teams, so that we do have divergent thinking. The best teams allow divergent thinking to bump them off whatever their initial biases in problem solving are. For me, design thinking gives us a constant reminder of creativity, empathy, and the tactile nature of problem solving, but it’s absolutely complementary, not alternative. Although the book is fun and well structured, the book skims the surface on a wide variety of topics and doesn’t go into great detail. Because of that, I feel some chapters are worth reading twice though few chapters should be just skimmed through, I will leave it to you to decide, which of the chapters you feel should be skipped. Charles Conn: My favorite step is step two, which is to use logic trees to disaggregate the problem. Every problem we’re solving has some complexity and some uncertainty in it. The only way that we can really get our team working on the problem is to take the problem apart into logical pieces.

You might think that’s a funny thing to apply problem solving to, but in my mind it’s not fundamentally different from business problem solving, which answers the question “What should my strategy be?” Or problem solving at the policy level: “How do we combat climate change?” “Should I support the local school bond?” I think these are all part and parcel of the same type of question, “What should I do?” Hugo Sarrazin: It starts with an incredible amount of empathy for the user and uses that to define the problem. It does pause and go out in the wild and spend an enormous amount of time seeing how people interact with objects, seeing the experience they’re getting, seeing the pain points or joy—and uses that to infer and define the problem. Simon London: Hence, these are absolutely critical steps. If you don’t do this well, you’ve just got a bunch of analysis. With both types, the number 1 option is to subtly trade them out of your realm. When that is not possible, the next best option is to play ignorant. Leak out information only with the right “secret audience”. The most brilliant solution is useless without proper implementation. So know your client’s weaknesses, strengths, and capabilities and tailor your solutions accordingly.Simon London: OK. So step one—and there is a real art and a structure to it—is define the problem. Step two, Charles? Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah, it is not easy when people have spent an enormous amount of time seeped in design thinking or user-centric design, whichever word you want to use. If the person who’s applying classic problem-solving methodology is very rigid and mechanical in the way they’re doing it, there could be an enormous amount of tension. If there’s not clarity in the role and not clarity in the process, I think having the two together can be, sometimes, problematic.

You are looking for an intellectually stimulating and exhaustive book on strategy and consulting ideologies. The Lords of Strategy would be a better book for that.When you propose or work extensively with a running hypothesis, it’s easy to get emotionally attached and turn the problem-solving process into a proving exercise. So keep an open mind and listen to what the data have to say. Too generalist (though I believe one should not expect secret recipes or detailed problem-solving algorithms from such a book.. I was still very eager for some level of detail or specificity)