During my trip back to China, I finally finished reading the last several chapters of The Mckinsey Way. There are many books talking about the ways Mckinsey handles their projects and clients, the reason I chose this book is just because during my trip in Key West two years ago, one of my friends was reading this book and he said ‘You should read it’. Given his successful career, when I was trying to find some business books, this book occurred in my mind at once.

This book has five parts, but for me, most of the useful suggestions come from first two parts, which introduces Mckinsey way of thinking about and solving business problems. The rest of the book talks about how to work with clients and how to make your life easier in Mckinsey. I can’t say last three parts don’t make sense, but I think they include too many trivial contents and tell something that every one knows is correct.

Below are some points I found interesting from the first two parts of The Mckinsey Way:

Build Solution

  • No matter how it looks like, all the work should be based on fact.
  • Always be MECE (Mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) when structure solutions, and try to list 3 top-line issues.
  • Use hypothesis to help generate solutions.

Developing an Approach

  • Find the right direction. It is possible that your clients ask you to solve X but you find the true problem is Y.
  • Hypothesis is important, but don’t assume it’s correct. Never make the facts fit your solution.
  • Politics are common. Your proposal will truely affect people’s life. You need to figure some approach that is possible to be implemented.

Mckinsey Rules

  • Catch the main points. Elevator test is a good practice (try to sell you idea in 30 seconds).
  • Never accept ‘I have no idea’ because it just means the repondents are not really thinking about the question. Give more educated guessing and ask a few more pointed questions.

Selling a Study

  • Don’t sell, only market. Let people know you and they will call you when they really need you.
  • Be clear about what you are able to get for each step of the project. Don’t promise too much.

Assembling a Team

  • Give teammates more personal time is better than taking them to a fancy dinner. Don’t worry too much about team bonding because it would be built automatically in work.
  • Know what teammates are working and don’t keep changing the priorities.

Managing Hierarchy

  • Make sure your boss know everything when he/she needs to know it.
  • Assert your equality until someone tells you otherwise.

Conducting Interviews

  • Listen more and try to feel what others feel. Try not to make the interview brutal.
  • The goal of an inverview is to get information. So you can try to ask some questions after interviews because they are more relaxed at that time.

Making Presentation

  • Do a prewiring with all the relative players before holding a presentation so audience wouldn’t be too surprised at your presentation.