The First Step-by-Step Manual for Achieving McKinsey-Style Solutionsand Success
International bestseller The McKinsey Way provided a through-the-keyhole look at McKinsey & Co., history's most prestigious consulting firm. Now, the follow-up implementation manual, The McKinsey Mind, reveals the hands-on secrets behind the powerhouse firm's successand discusses how executives from any field or industry can use those tactics to be more proactive and successful in their day-to-day decision-making.
Structured around interviews and frontline anecdotes from former McKinsey consultantsas well as the authors, themselves McKinsey alumniThe McKinsey Mind explores how McKinsey tools and techniques can be applied to virtually any business problem in any setting. Immensely valuable in today's crisis-a-minute workplace, it discusses:
- Techniques for framing problems and designing analyses
- Methods for interpreting results and presenting solutions
- Keys for managing teams, managing clients, and managing yourself
The ability to think in a rigorous, structured mannera McKinsey manneris not a birthright. It can, however, be a learned behavior. Let The McKinsey Mind show you how to approach and solve problems with the skill of a McKinsey consultant and obtain the positive results that have been delivered to McKinsey clients for over a century.
Now, The McKinsey Mind pulls back the curtain to reveal the ways in which McKinsey consultants consistently deliver their magic and how those methods can be used to achieve exceptional results in companies from 10 employees to 10,000. Packed with insights and brainstorming exercises for establishing the McKinsey mind-set, this book is an in-depth guidebook for applying McKinsey methods in any industry and organizational environment.
Taking a step-by-step approach, The McKinsey Mind looks at the McKinsey mystique from every angle. Owners, executives, consultants, and team leaders can look to this comprehensive treatment for ways to:
- Follow McKinsey's MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) line of attack
- Frame business problems to make them susceptible to rigorous fact-based analysis
- Use the same fact-based analysisin conjunction with gut instinctto make strategic decisions
- Conduct meaningful interviews and effectively summarize the content of those interviews
- Analyze the data to find out the "so what"
- Clearly communicate fact-based solutions to all pertinent decision makers
- Capture and manage the knowledge in any organization to maximize its value
Because organizational problems rarely exist in a vacuum, The McKinsey Mind discusses these approaches and more to help you arrive at usable and sensible solutions. It goes straight to the sourceformer McKinsey consultants now in leadership positions in organizations throughout the worldto give you today's only implementation-based, solution-driven look at the celebrated McKinsey problem-solving method.
"The McKinsey Mind provides a fascinating peek at the tools, practices, and philosophies that have helped this much-admired firm develop generations of bright young MBAs into trusted corporate advisors. But the book's practical, down-to-earth advice is not just for consultants. The disciplined way in which McKinsey consultants frame issues, analyze problems, and present solutions offers valuable lessons for any practicing or aspiring manager."
Christopher A. Bartlett, Daewoo Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
About the Author Ethan M. Rasiel joined McKinsey & Co.'s New York office in 1989 and worked there until 1992. While at "the firm", his clients included major companies in finance, telecommunications, computing, and consumer goods sectors. Before working at McKinsey, he worked as an equity fund manager at Mercury Asset Management in London. He has also worked as an investment banker. He has a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
