Mc Kinsey Mind

Choice Quotes

Chapter Sequence
1. Framing the Problem
2. Designing the Analysis
3. Gathering the Data
4. Interpreting the Results
5. Presenting Your Ideas
6. Managing Your Team
7. Managing Your Client
8. Managing Yourself

Framing the Problem:
Generate your initial hypothesis: Every client faces the temptation of taking the clients’ diagnosis of his problem at face value. Resist this temptation. You generate your initial hypothesis by drawing conclusions based on the limited facts that you know about the problem in hand without doing a lots of additional research.
If something leaps out at you immediately, congratulations; you’ve just formed a hypothesis. Your next step is to figure out which analyses you have to perform and which questions you have to ask in order to prove or disprove your hypothesis. One way to layout these questions is the issue tree, in which each branch of the tree is an issue or question, bridges the gap between structure and hypothesis. By answering the questions in your issue tree, you can very quickly validate your hypothesis.
As a first step you need to figure out the top-line issues, the issues that have to be true for your hypothesis to be true.

Issue Tree
Let us now look at how to plan an analysis to prove or disprove the hypothesis

Designing the Analysis: To prove or disprove the initial hypothesis
Initial hypothesis is like solving the problem at first sight. However, the analysis that backs it, eventually either proving or disproving the hypothesis is what is discussed in here.
Designing the planning in McKinsey is termed as ‘Work Planning’. Many successful managers have developed highly accurate instincts that allow them to reach good decisions quickly.
Analytical course:
· Identify the key drivers
· Look at the ‘Big Picture’
· Don’t boil the Ocean
· Sometimes you have to let the solution come to you.
· Focused analysis is more important than volume.
· Pluck the low hanging fruit
· Follow the 80/20 rule
· Back of the envelope is quite useful because it lets you know if you are in the ballpark. At times all I want to know is if a new product idea is going to be worth $5 million or $ 50 million or $ 200 million. I don’t always need elaborate details.
· Implementation guidance: when designing your analysis, you have a specific end product in mind: your work plan. A comprehensive work plan begins with all the issues and sub issues you identified during the framing of your initial hypothesis. For each issue or sub issue you should list the following elements
· Your initial hypothesis as to the answer
· The analyses that must be done to prove or disprove that hypothesis, in order of priority
· The data necessary to perform the analysis
· The likely sources of data(e.g. census data, focus groups, interviews)
· Brief description of the likely end product of each analysis
· The person responsible for each end product(you or a member of your team)
· The due date for each end product

Whatever it is put it on paper.


Gathering of Data, McKinsey’s principles for research:
· Facts are friendly. Don’t accept ‘I have no idea’- people always have an idea if you probe a bit. Ask some pointed questions and you’ll be amazed to know what people know.

· Specific research tips: Annual report, look for outliers (is to look for ratios or calculating key measures such as sales per salesperson by region) paying particular attention to high and low performers, look for Best practices.

· Lessons of strategic data gathering for your orgs:

· Diagnose the data orientation of your org
Ø IS the culture of your company more or less fact based?
Ø Do colleagues present their ideas with factual support?
Ø Do the decision makers explain you the rationale for their decision? Wrt facts

· Demonstrate the power of good facts:
Providing fact based insights using info. That had previously not been shared across business units

· Interview tips:
Ø Have the interviewee’s boss set up the meeting
Ø Interview in pairs
Ø Listen, don’t lead
Ø Paraphrase, paraphrase, paraphrase
Ø Use the indirect approach
Ø Don’t ask for too much
Ø Adopt the Colombo tactic

Other interview tips

Ø Write a thank u note after the interview
Ø Post interview follow up also adds value to the interview process.
Ø It is usually safe to begin with a big picture of what you are trying to accomplish and why you are meeting with that particular person.
Ø Consider an ice breaker for eg. I don’t think I could ever spot defective widgets with my eyesight. How perfect does your vision have to be to do a job like yours?

· KM: knowledge is a mix of info, experience and context in a value adding process.
· Don’t reinvent the wheel
· Develop a rapid response culture
· Acquire external knowledge (GE way)
· McKinsey’s consultants realize that clients don’t at the eod pay for fancy docs and pretty slide shows. They pay for advice that will add value to their businesses; this Is the end product of the consulting process and, by extension of business problem solving in general.

Interpreting the Results -Data interpretation:
· Always ask ‘what’s the so what?’
· Perform sanity checks
· Remember that there are limits to analysis
· Consulting isn’t about analysis, its about insights.
· While some like to think of intuition and data as polar opposites, they actually work together.
· Generating then ‘end product’: By end product we don’t mean collection of charts, slides, images etc.
· End product for our purposes, means the actual message that you will communicate.
· Make sure the solution fits your client.
Ø See through your client’s eyes
Ø Respect the limits of your client’s limitations
If you ask a McKinsey consultant what they do, the most common answer is ‘We help our clients make change happen’.

Presenting your Ideas:
· Be structured
· Elevator test (Its the time you have with a top brass of a company, in case you encounter them in an elevator, 2 mins, perhaps 4 mins if you are lucky. You gotta impress them with your idea within this time span. Gist: Have the gist of your entire plan/idea explainable in 2-4 mins)
· Keep it simple, one message per chart (When you present the idea in a powerpoint/chart)
Support your ideas with a solid structure.
We recommend starting with your conclusion. Having your conclusions or recommendations up front is sometimes known as inductive reasoning. We might have only 20 mins with the mgmt, but only the first 2 count.
If you are presenting data, always document your sources.
BUY-IN
Prewiring and tailoring: prewiring means taking your audience through your findings before you give your presentation. Tailoring means adapting your presentation to your audience, both before you give it and if necessary, on the fly.
Managing your team:
· Recruiting McKinsey style – hiring smart people vs. hiring people with tons of experience in a given area.
· Bonding: It is important to bond with the team
· Take your team’s temperature to maintain morale
· Obtaining Clients: We believe that the best selling is done by not selling. To build relationships, the firm markets: it publishes books and articles; it performs extensive community service, sponsors topical presentations and workshops.

Self-management:
· Find your own mentor
· Hit singles
· Make your boss look good
· Aggressive strategy for managing hierarchy

Selected few Choice Words/Phrases from McKinsey MindRecco: Very good read if yu are interested in IT Consulting

Captain Cool- by Gulu Ezekiel

Choice Quotes from 'Captain Cool

Facts and Notes: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (MSD) was born in Ranchi on 7 July, 1981. Mahi was naturally talented at sports, excelling at hockey, table tennis, badminton and football. He was a football goal keeper.
His tryst with cricket was quite accidental. It happened when he was in class VII when his sports instructor Keshab Ranjan Banerjee asked him to try his hands at wicket keeping when the then incumbent of the cricket team was not available for a match. The logic was, goalkeeping and wicket keeping are similar and since he was good as a football goalkeeper he would be able to adapt to wicket keeping. Could this be called, ‘Cricket’s’ gain and ‘football’s’ loss!! In 1998 Dhoni joined the Central Coalfields Limited where he received a monthly stipend of Rs.2200. It was with this money that the 18yr old bought his first second-hand bike. Later on, he took up his first full time job in 2001 as a ticket collector in Indian Railways.

Dhoni and National Cricket :
The innings that shot him to national prominence was the Deodhar trophy match against Central zone in 2004 while he was working for Indian Railways.
After this, Dhoni rarely looked back. He went on to his second game against Zimbabwe Select 11 in Harare where Dinesh Karthik played as a specialist batsmen while Dhoni donned the keeper’s gloves –It was the first time he wore India colours.
The match against Pakistan on 16th August 2004, in the tri-nation tournament in Kenya involving India ’A’, the hosts and Pakistan ‘A’ marked Dhoni’s first International century. His ODI Debut was in the India vs. Bangladesh match at Chittagong, 23 Dec 2004.


The tour of Pakistan 2001:
There were four centuries in Pakistan’s massive 679 for 7 declared. The Indian response was a massive opening partnership of 410 runs, Sehwag with 254 , Dravid with 128 not out and that’s where the test ended.
The next test at Faisalabad: India’s bowlers were thrashed to the tune of 588 as captain Inzamam-ul-Haq and Afridi made went on a rampage. Indians lost 5 wickets in a heap. At 281 for five, the Indians still needed more than 100 runs to avoid the follow-on. It was a nervy time for Dhoni to walk to the crease. Akthar bowled with a terrifying speed with the second new ball. As Akthar bowled to Dhoni – the first ball of the over was heading straight for his temple. But in Dhoni's mind the decision had already been made. On such choices are careers made or broken. The ball was smashed over square-leg for six. There was a touch of Viv-Richards style arrogance to it. Akthar roared in, striving for more and more pace and losing out on accuracy. Dhoni grew in confidence and smacked a few more daring shots till the bowler conceded defeat and walked off, head bowed.
In the one-day match at Rawalpindi, Dhoni took the bowling to task. Dhoni tore into the bowling. His smashing 72 from 46 deliveries earned him the ‘Man of the Match’ award and led Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac to describe his batting rather chillingly as : ‘hooligan stuff, casually violent and full of chauvinistic machismo’.
As he started making headlines in the cricketing arena, he spearheaded into the ad world as well, with Exide batteries, Cherry Blossom shoe polish, GE Money, TVS bikes, Pepsi, Reebok, Bharat Petroleum and Videocon Electronics being the early brands he signed on.

A small peek at his personal life - at home in Ranchi it is his dogs, black Labrador Zara, and pug Sam that he loves to spend time with. Asked what kind of girl he would eventually marry, he stated categorically that she should be an animal lover. Hope it rings bells for his die hard young lady fans :)

The World Cup fiasco and aftermath:
India crashed out of the world cup at the opening stage and the World Cup was a financial failure… Rumours floated around that companies sporting their logos on bats had clauses offering bonuses linked more to the time the player spent at the crease than actual runs scored. The BCCI had reacted to these in a haste. The board decided that players’ personal endorsements would be restricted to three products and not more than two players could endorse products other than those contracted to the board. Indian cricket was at its low and bitterness was in the air. Just 6 months from then things were to change…

The 20-20 world cup match between India and Pakistan at Durban: The match ended up in a tie. Bowl-out was employed to decide the winner, Cricket’s equivalent of football’s penalty shoot-out. The first three Indian bowlers – Sehwag, Harbhajan and Uthappa- hit the stumps while the Pakistanis all missed. India had won the match by the football-like score of 3-0. Dhoni revealed that the Indians had been preparing for such an eventuality during practice sessions.

The Critics: Dhoni’s 100th ODI catch was caught out on a technicality. Former wicket keeper Ian Healy, spotted that Dhoni’s specially manufactured gloves had extra webbing between the thumb and the forefinger and reported it to match referee Jeff Crowe. The gloves were deemed illegal as according to the rules the wicket keeper’s gloves should have no webbing between the fingers except joining index finger and thumb. Dhoni was let off with a warning and was asked to change the gloves immediately. But the controversy blew over when Australian wicket keeper Adam Gilchrist sprang to his defense. Dhoni has since switched to custom-made gloves with a green camouflage design reflecting his passion for all things connected with the military.

There’s lot more to the Dhoni story- be it his captaincy leading to the 20-20 world cup win or his performance at the 20-20 Indian Premier League or his love for pets and passion for military… All this and more , but can he be termed a legend as yet??? Well, that's debatable.
Lets Learn a few things from ‘Captain Cool’: Time to see what one can take away from this book. This book being a biography , the main learnings come from the characteristics of the protagonist- our Captain Cool in this case.
Some of the super features of MSD are his:
· Unconventional appeal
· Positive mindset
· Desire to Perform Consistently and Perform Greatly
· Casually violent nature
· Silent yet a strong Presence
· Level-headedness in a crisis
· Attitude to do what he is good at and what he thinks is right
& the
· Arrogance and attitude with which he Crushes his opponents All these are great management and life lessons indeed…..

CHOICE WORDS/PHRASES

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Recommendation: A decent read.