problem solving for consultants

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The mckinsey problem solving approach to consulting: a comprehensive guide, by: jason branin.

In the realm of management consulting, McKinsey & Company stands out as a beacon of excellence and innovation. Since its founding in 1926 by James O. McKinsey, the firm has grown to become one of the most prestigious and influential consulting firms in the world. Central to McKinsey's success is its unique problem-solving approach, which has not only shaped the firm’s own practices but has also significantly influenced the broader consulting industry. This article delves into the intricacies of the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach, exploring its methodologies, tools, and the impact it has on delivering high-value solutions to clients.

The Essence of the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach

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At its core, the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach is a structured methodology designed to tackle complex business challenges through a combination of rigorous analysis, strategic thinking, and practical recommendations. This approach is characterized by its systematic nature, emphasizing clarity, precision, and thoroughness in every step of the problem-solving process. The primary objective is to deliver actionable insights and sustainable solutions that drive tangible results for clients.

Key Components of the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach

1. Defining the Problem

The first and most crucial step in the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach is defining the problem. This involves clearly articulating the issue at hand, setting the boundaries for the analysis, and establishing the objectives of the engagement. McKinsey consultants use a structured framework known as the “problem statement” to capture the essence of the challenge. A well-defined problem statement typically includes:

- Context: The background information and relevant facts about the client and the issue.

- Objective: The desired outcome or goal of the analysis.

- Scope: The boundaries and constraints of the problem.

- Hypotheses: Initial assumptions or potential solutions that will be tested during the analysis.

By investing time and effort in defining the problem accurately, McKinsey ensures that the subsequent analysis is focused, relevant, and aligned with the client’s needs.

2. Disaggregating the Problem

Once the problem is defined, the next step is to break it down into smaller, manageable components. This process, known as disaggregation, allows consultants to tackle each part of the problem systematically. McKinsey employs the MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) principle to ensure that all aspects of the problem are covered without any overlap or gaps. The MECE framework helps in organizing information logically and ensures that the analysis is comprehensive.

For example, if the problem involves improving a company's profitability, McKinsey might disaggregate it into components such as revenue enhancement, cost reduction, and operational efficiency. Each of these components is then further broken down into sub-components, allowing for a detailed and focused analysis.

3. Conducting the Analysis

The analysis phase is where McKinsey's analytical rigor comes to the fore. This phase involves gathering data, testing hypotheses, and developing insights. McKinsey consultants use a variety of tools and techniques to conduct their analysis, including:

- Benchmarking: Comparing the client’s performance against industry standards or best practices.

- Financial Modeling: Building detailed models to simulate different scenarios and their financial impact.

-Root Cause Analysis: Identifying the underlying causes of the problem rather than just addressing the symptoms.

-Scenario Planning: Exploring different future scenarios to anticipate potential challenges and opportunities.

Data-driven decision-making is a hallmark of McKinsey’s approach. The firm places a strong emphasis on using quantitative data to support its findings and recommendations. This ensures that the solutions proposed are not only theoretically sound but also practically viable.

4. Synthesizing Insights

After conducting the analysis, the next step is to synthesize the insights and draw conclusions. This involves distilling the vast amount of data and information into clear, actionable insights that address the client’s problem. McKinsey consultants use the “Pyramid Principle,” a communication technique developed by Barbara Minto, a former McKinsey consultant, to present their findings. The Pyramid Principle advocates starting with the main conclusion or recommendation and then supporting it with key arguments and data.

This top-down approach ensures that the most important insights are communicated upfront, making it easier for clients to understand and act upon the recommendations. It also helps in structuring complex information in a logical and coherent manner.

5. Developing Recommendations

Based on the synthesized insights, McKinsey consultants develop specific recommendations for the client. These recommendations are not just theoretical ideas but practical, actionable steps that the client can implement to address the problem. McKinsey places a strong emphasis on creating “value-driven” recommendations that deliver measurable impact.

To ensure the recommendations are actionable, McKinsey follows a few guiding principles:

- Feasibility: Ensuring that the recommendations are realistic and can be implemented within the client’s constraints.

- Sustainability: Focusing on long-term solutions that deliver sustained benefits rather than short-term fixes.

- Client Buy-in: Engaging the client throughout the process to ensure they understand and are committed to the recommendations.

6. Implementing Solutions

The final step in the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach is implementing the solutions. McKinsey often works closely with clients to support the implementation phase, ensuring that the recommendations are executed effectively. This involves developing detailed implementation plans, setting up monitoring mechanisms, and providing ongoing support and guidance.

McKinsey’s commitment to implementation reflects its philosophy of “seeing it through.” The firm recognizes that the true value of its consulting services lies not just in developing insightful recommendations but in helping clients achieve tangible results.

Tools and Techniques in the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach

McKinsey employs a wide range of tools and techniques to support its problem-solving approach. Some of the most commonly used tools include:

1. The Issue Tree

The Issue Tree is a visual representation of the problem and its sub-components. It helps in organizing the problem into a hierarchical structure, making it easier to identify the key issues and areas of focus. The Issue Tree is typically used during the disaggregation phase to break down the problem into smaller, manageable parts.

2. The Decision Tree

The Decision Tree is a tool used to map out different decision paths and their potential outcomes. It helps in evaluating the implications of different choices and identifying the most optimal decision. The Decision Tree is particularly useful in scenarios where there are multiple possible solutions or courses of action.

3. The Hypothesis Pyramid

The Hypothesis Pyramid is a tool used to structure hypotheses in a logical manner. It helps in organizing hypotheses into a hierarchy, with the main hypothesis at the top and supporting hypotheses underneath. This tool is used to guide the analysis and ensure that all relevant hypotheses are tested systematically.

4. The MECE Framework

The MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) framework is a key principle in the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach. It ensures that all aspects of the problem are covered without any overlap or gaps. The MECE framework is used during the disaggregation phase to organize information logically and comprehensively.

5. The Pyramid Principle

The Pyramid Principle is a communication technique used to present findings and recommendations in a clear and structured manner. It advocates starting with the main conclusion or recommendation and then supporting it with key arguments and data. This top-down approach ensures that the most important insights are communicated upfront.

The Impact of the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach

The McKinsey Problem Solving Approach has had a profound impact on the field of management consulting and beyond. Some of the key impacts include:

1. Driving Business Success

McKinsey’s structured and rigorous approach to problem-solving has helped countless organizations achieve significant improvements in performance and profitability. By providing data-driven insights and practical recommendations, McKinsey has enabled clients to address complex challenges and capitalize on new opportunities.

2. Setting Industry Standards

McKinsey’s methodologies and best practices have set industry standards for consulting. Many of the tools and techniques developed by McKinsey, such as the MECE framework and the Pyramid Principle, have become widely adopted across the consulting industry. McKinsey’s emphasis on analytical rigor and strategic thinking has influenced the way consulting firms approach problem-solving.

3. Fostering Innovation

McKinsey’s approach to problem-solving fosters innovation by encouraging consultants to think creatively and challenge conventional wisdom. The firm’s focus on developing hypotheses and testing them systematically promotes a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement. This has led to the development of innovative solutions that drive business success.

4. Building Client Capabilities

McKinsey’s commitment to implementation and client engagement helps build the capabilities of client organizations. By working closely with clients throughout the problem-solving process, McKinsey ensures that clients not only achieve immediate results but also develop the skills and knowledge to sustain improvements over the long term.

The McKinsey Problem Solving Approach is a testament to the firm’s commitment to excellence and innovation. Its structured methodology, emphasis on analytical rigor, and focus on delivering actionable insights have made McKinsey a trusted advisor to some of the world’s most successful organizations. By continually refining its approach and embracing new tools and techniques, McKinsey remains at the forefront of the consulting industry, helping clients navigate complex challenges and achieve sustainable growth.

As businesses continue to face an ever-changing landscape, the principles and practices of the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach will remain highly relevant. Its focus on defining the problem accurately, conducting rigorous analysis, and developing practical recommendations provides a robust framework for tackling the most pressing business issues. For organizations seeking to drive performance and innovation, embracing the McKinsey Problem Solving Approach can be a powerful catalyst for success.

If you are looking to continue this conversation or are looking for some advice, please, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].

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Resources >

Mckinsey approach to problem solving, a guide to the 7-step mckinsey problem solving process.

McKinsey and Company is recognized for its rigorous approach to problem solving. They train their consultants on their seven-step process that anyone can learn.

This resource guides you through that process, largely informed by the McKinsey Staff Paper 66. It also includes a PowerPoint Toolkit with slide templates of each step of the process that you can download and customize for your own use.

In this guide you'll learn:

Overview of the mckinsey approach to problem solving, problem solving process, problem definition.

Problem Statement

Stakeholder Analysis Worksheet

Structure the problem, hypothesis trees, issue trees, analyses and workplan, synthesize findings, craft recommendations, communicate, distinctiveness practices, harness the power of collaboration, sources and additional reading, request the mckinsey approach to problem solving.

Problem solving — finding the optimal solution to a given business opportunity or challenge — is the very heart of how consultants create client impact, and considered the most important skill for success at McKinsey.

The characteristic “McKinsey method” of problem solving is a structured, inductive approach that can be used to solve any problem. Using this standardized process saves us from reinventing the problem-solving wheel, and allows for greater focus on distinctiveness in the solution. Every new McKinsey associate must learn this method on his or her first day with the firm.

There are four fundamental disciplines of the McKinsey method:

1. Problem definition

A thorough understanding and crisp definition of the problem.

2. The problem-solving process

Structuring the problem, prioritizing the issues, planning analyses, conducting analyses, synthesizing findings, and developing recommendations.

3. Distinctiveness practices

Constructing alternative perspectives; identifying relationships; distilling the essence of an issue, analysis, or recommendation; and staying ahead of others in the problem-solving process.

4. Collaboratio n

Actively seeking out client, customer, and supplier perspectives, as well as internal and external expert insight and knowledge.

Once the problem has been defined, the problem-solving process proceeds with a series of steps:

Structure the problem
Prioritize the issues
Plan analyses
Conduct analyses
Synthesize findings
Develop recommendations

Not all problems require strict adherence to the process. Some steps may be truncated, such as when specific knowledge or analogies from other industries make it possible to construct hypotheses and associated workplans earlier than their formal place in the process. Nonetheless, it remains important to be capable of executing every step in the basic process.

When confronted with a new and complex problem, this process establishes a path to defining and disaggregating the problem in a way that will allow the team to move to a solution. The process also ensures nothing is missed and concentrates efforts on the highest-impact areas. Adhering to the process gives the client clear steps to follow, building confidence, credibility, and long-term capability.

The most important step in your entire project is to first carefully define the problem. The problem definition will serve the guide all of the team’s work, so it is critical to ensure that all key stakeholders agree that it is the right problem to be solving.

The problem definition will serve the guide all of the team’s work, so it is critical to ensure that all key stakeholders agree that it is the right problem to be solving.

There are often dozens of issues that a team could focus on, and it is often not obvious how to define the problem.

In any real-life situation, there are many possible problem statements. Your choice of problem statement will serve to constrain the range of possible solutions.

Constraints can be a good thing (e.g., limit solutions to actions within the available budget.) And constraints can be a bad thing (e.g., eliminating the possibility of creative ideas.) So choose wisely.

The problem statement may ignore many issues to focus on the priority that should be addressed. The problem statement should be phrased as a question, such that the answer will be the solution.

Example scenario – A family on Friday evening :

A mother, a father, and their two teenage children have all arrived home on a Friday at 6 p.m. The family has not prepared dinner for Friday evening. The daughter has lacrosse practice on Saturday and an essay to write for English class due on Monday. The son has theatre rehearsal on both Saturday and Sunday and will need one parent to drive him to the high school both days, though he can get a ride home with a friend.

The family dog, a poodle, must be taken to the groomer on Saturday morning. The mother will need to spend time this weekend working on assignments for her finance class she is taking as part of her Executive MBA. The father plans to go on a 100-mile bike ride, which he can do either Saturday or Sunday. The family has two cars, but one is at the body shop. They are trying to save money to pay for an addition to their house.

Potential problem definitions – A family on Friday evening :

The problem definition should not be vague, without clear measures of success. Rather, it should be a SMART definition:

Action-oriented

Given one set of facts, it is possible to come up with many possible problem statements. The choice of problem statement constrains the range of possible solutions.

Before starting to solve the problem, the family first needs to agree on what problem they want to solve.

What should the family do for dinner on Friday night?
How can the family schedule their activities this weekend to accomplish everything planned given that they only have one vehicle available?
How can the family increase income or reduce expenses to allow them to save $75K over the next 12 months to pay for the planned addition to their house?

Problem Statement Worksheet

This is a helpful tool to use to clearly define the problem. There are often dozens of issues that a team could focus on, and it is often not obvious how to define the problem. In any real-life situation, there are many possible problem statements. Your choice of problem statement will serve to constrain the range of possible solutions.

Use a question . The problem statement should be phrased as a question, such that the answer will be the solution. Make the question SMART: specific, measurable, action-oriented, relevant, and time-bound. Example: “How can XYZ Bank close the $100 million profitability gap in two years?”
Context . What are the internal and external situations and complications facing the client, such as industry trends, relative position within the industry, capability gaps, financial flexibility, and so on?
Success criteria . Understand how the client and the team define success and failure. In addition to any quantitative measures identified in the basic question, identify other important quantitative or qualitative measures of success, including timing of impact, visibility of improvement, client capability building required, necessary mindset shifts, and so on.
Scope and constraints . Scope most commonly covers the markets or segments of interest, whereas constraints govern restrictions on the nature of solutions within those markets or segments.
Stakeholders . Explore who really makes the decisions — who decides, who can help, and who can block.
Key sources of insight . What best-practice expertise, knowledge, and engagement approaches already exist? What knowledge from the client, suppliers, and customers needs to be accessed? Be as specific as possible: who, what, when, how, and why.

In completing the Problem Statement Worksheet, you are prompted to define the key stakeholders.

As you become involved in the problem-solving process, you should expand the question of key stakeholders to include what the team wants from them and what they want from the team, their values and motivations (helpful and unhelpful), and the communications mechanisms that will be most effective for each of them.

Using the Stakeholder Analysis Worksheet allows you to comprehensively identify:

Stakeholders
What you need from them
Where they are
What they need from you

The two most helpful techniques for rigorously structuring any problem are hypothesis trees and issue trees. Each of these techniques disaggregates the primary question into a cascade of issues or hypotheses that, when addressed, will together answer the primary question.

A hypothesis tree might break down the same question into two or more hypotheses.

The aim at this stage is to structure the problem into discrete, mutually exclusive pieces that are small enough to yield to analysis and that, taken together, are collectively exhaustive.

Articulating the problem as hypotheses, rather than issues, is the preferred approach because it leads to a more focused analysis of the problem. Questions to ask include:

Is it testable – can you prove or disprove it?
It is open to debate? If it cannot be wrong, it is simply a statement of fact and unlikely to produce keen insight.
If you reversed your hypothesis – literally, hypothesized that the exact opposite were true – would you care about the difference it would make to your overall logic?
If you shared your hypothesis with the CEO, would it sound naive or obvious?
Does it point directly to an action or actions that the client might take?

Quickly developing a powerful hypothesis tree enables us to develop solutions more rapidly that will have real impact. This can sometimes seem premature to clients, who might find the “solution” reached too quickly and want to see the analysis behind it.

Take care to explain the approach (most important, that a hypothesis is not an answer) and its benefits (that a good hypothesis is the basis of a proven means of successful problem solving and avoids “boiling the ocean”).

Example: Alpha Manufacturing, Inc.

Problem Statement: How can Alpha increase EBITDA by $13M (to $50M) by 2025?

The hypotheses might be:

Alpha can add $125M revenues by expanding to new customers, adding $8M of EBITDA
Alpha can reduce costs to improve EBITDA by $5M

These hypotheses will be further disaggregated into subsidiary hypotheses at the next level of the tree.

Often, the team has insufficient knowledge to build a complete hypothesis tree at the start of an engagement. In these cases, it is best to begin by structuring the problem using an issue tree.

An issue tree is best set out as a series of open questions in sentence form. For example, “How can the client minimize its tax burden?” is more useful than “Tax.” Open questions – those that begin with what, how, or why– produce deeper insights than closed ones. In some cases, an issue tree can be sharpened by toggling between issue and hypothesis – working forward from an issue to identify the hypothesis, and back from the hypothesis to sharpen the relevant open question.

Once the problem has been structured, the next step is to prioritize the issues or hypotheses on which the team will focus its work. When prioritizing, it is common to use a two-by-two matrix – e.g., a matrix featuring “impact” and “ease of impact” as the two axes.

Applying some of these prioritization criteria will knock out portions of the issue tree altogether. Consider testing the issues against them all, albeit quickly, to help drive the prioritization process.

Once the criteria are defined, prioritizing should be straightforward: Simply map the issues to the framework and focus on those that score highest against the criteria.

As the team conducts analysis and learns more about the problem and the potential solution, make sure to revisit the prioritization matrix so as to remain focused on the highest-priority issues.

The issues might be:

How can Alpha increase revenue?
How can Alpha reduce cost?

Each of these issues is then further broken down into deeper insights to solutions.

If the prioritization has been carried out effectively, the team will have clarified the key issues or hypotheses that must be subjected to analysis. The aim of these analyses is to prove the hypotheses true or false, or to develop useful perspectives on each key issue. Now the task is to design an effective and efficient workplan for conducting the analyses.

Transforming the prioritized problem structure into a workplan involves two main tasks:

Define the blocks of work that need to be undertaken. Articulate as clearly as possible the desired end products and the analysis necessary to produce them, and estimate the resources and time required.
Sequence the work blocks in a way that matches the available resources to the need to deliver against key engagement milestones (e.g., important meetings, progress reviews), as well as to the overall pacing of the engagement (i.e., weekly or twice-weekly meetings, and so on).

A good workplan will detail the following for each issue or hypothesis: analyses, end products, sources, and timing and responsibility. Developing the workplan takes time; doing it well requires working through the definition of each element of the workplan in a rigorous and methodical fashion.

It’s useful to match the workplan to three horizons:

What is expected at the end of the engagement
What is expected at key progress reviews
What is due at daily and/or weekly team meetings

The detail in the workplan will typically be greater for the near term (the next week) than for the long term (the study horizon), especially early in a new engagement when considerable ambiguity about the end state remains.

Here are three different templates for a workplan:

This is the most difficult element of the problem-solving process. After a period of being immersed in the details, it is crucial to step back and distinguish the important from the merely interesting. Distinctive problem solvers seek the essence of the story that will underpin a crisp recommendation for action.

Although synthesis appears, formally speaking, as the penultimate step in the process, it should happen throughout. Ideally, after you have made almost any analytical progress, you should attempt to articulate the “Day 1” or “Week 1” answer. Continue to synthesize as you go along. This will remind the team of the question you are trying to answer, assist prioritization, highlight the logical links of the emerging solution, and ensure that you have a story ready to articulate at all times during the study.

McKinsey’s primary tool for synthesizing is the pyramid principle. Essentially, this principle asserts that every synthesis should explain a single concept, per the “governing thought.” The supporting ideas in the synthesis form a thought hierarchy proceeding in a logical structure from the most detailed facts to the governing thought, ruthlessly excluding the interesting but irrelevant.

While this hierarchy can be laid out as a tree (like with issue and hypothesis trees), the best problem solvers capture it by creating dot-dash storylines — the Pyramid Structure for Grouping Arguments.

Pyramid Structure for Grouping Arguments

Focus on action. Articulate the thoughts at each level of the pyramid as declarative sentences, not as topics. For example, “expansion” is a topic; “We need to expand into the European market” is a declarative sentence.
Use storylines. PowerPoint is poor at highlighting logical connections, therefore is not a good tool for synthesis. A storyline will clarify elements that may be ambiguous in the PowerPoint presentation.
Keep the emerging storyline visible. Many teams find that posting the storyline or story- board on the team-room wall helps keep the thinking focused. It also helps in bringing the client along.
Use the situation-complication-resolution structure. The situation is the reason there is action to be taken. The com- plication is why the situation needs thinking through – typically an industry or client challenge. The resolution is the answer.
Down the pyramid: does each governing thought pose a single question that is answered completely by the group of boxes below it?
Across: is each level within the pyramid MECE?
Up: does each group of boxes, taken together, provide one answer – one “so what?” – that is essentially the governing thought above it?
Test the solution. What would it mean if your hypotheses all came true?

It is at this point that we address the client’s questions: “What do I do, and how do I do it?” This means not offering actionable recommendations, along with a plan and client commitment for implementation.

The essence of this step is to translate the overall solution into the actions required to deliver sustained impact. A pragmatic action plan should include:

Relevant initiatives, along with a clear sequence, timing, and mapping of activities required
Clear owners for each initiative
Key success factors and the challenges involved in delivering on the initiatives

Crucial questions to ask as you build recommendations for organizational change are:

Does each person who needs to change (from the CEO to the front line) understand what he or she needs to change and why, and is he or she committed to it?
Are key leaders and role models throughout the organization personally committed to behaving differently?
Has the client set in place the necessary formal mechanisms to reinforce the desired change?
Does the client have the skills and confidence to behave in the desired new way?

Once the recommendations have been crafted in the problem-solving process, it’s vital to effectively communicate those findings and recommendations.

An executive summary is a great slide to use for this. See more on executive summary slides, including 30 templates, at our Ultimate Guide to Executive Summary Slides .

Great problem solvers identify unique disruptions and discontinuities, novel insights, and step-out opportunities that lead to truly distinctive impact. This is done by applying a number of practices throughout the problem-solving process to help develop these insights.

Expand: Construct multiple perspectives

Identifying alternative ways of looking at the problem expands the range of possibilities, opens you up to innovative ideas, and allows you to formulate more powerful hypotheses. Questions that help here include:

What changes if I think from the perspective of a customer, or a supplier, or a frontline employee, or a competitor?
How have other industries viewed and addressed this same problem?
What would it mean if the client sought to run the company like a low-cost airline or a cosmetics manufacturer?

Link: Identify relationships

Strong problem solvers discern connections and recognize patterns in two different ways:

They seek out the ways in which different problem elements – issues, hypotheses, analyses, work elements, findings, answers, and recommendations – relate to one another.
They use these relationships throughout the basic problem-solving process to identify efficient problem-solving approaches, novel solutions, and more powerful syntheses.

Distill: Find the essence

Cutting through complexity to identify the heart of the problem and its solution is a critical skill.

Identify the critical problem elements. Are there some issues, approaches, or options that can be eliminated completely because they won’t make a significant difference to the solution?
Consider how complex the different elements are and how long it will take to complete them. Wherever possible, quickly advance simpler parts of the problem that can inform more complex or time-consuming elements.

Lead: Stay ahead/step back

Without getting ahead of the client, you cannot be distinctive. Paradoxically, to get ahead – and stay ahead – it is often necessary to step back from the problem to validate or revalidate the approach and the solution.

Spend time thinking one or more steps ahead of the client and team.
Constantly check and challenge the rigor of the underlying data and analysis.
Stress-test the whole emerging recommendation
Challenge the solution against a set of hurdles. Does it satisfy the criteria for success as set out on the Problem Statement Worksheet?

No matter how skilled, knowledgeable, or experienced you are, you will never create the most distinctive solution on your own. The best problem solvers know how to leverage the power of their team, clients, the Firm, and outside parties. Seeking the right expertise at the right time, and leveraging it in the right way, are ultimately how we bring distinctiveness to our work, how we maximize efficiency, and how we learn.

When solving a problem, it is important to ask, “Have I accessed all the sources of insight that are available?” Here are the sources you should consider:

Your core team
The client’s suppliers and customers
Internal experts and knowledge
External sources of knowledge
Communications specialists

The key here is to think open, not closed. Opening up to varied sources of data and perspectives furthers our mission to develop truly innovative and distinctive solutions for our clients.

McKinsey Staff Paper 66 — not published by McKinsey but possibly found through an internet search
The McKinsey Way , 1999, by Ethan M. Rasiel

For consultants

The 6 Essential Consulting Skills (Clients Want These)

Do you possess the consulting skills that make clients want to hire you?

Your core expertise — like environmental or sales consulting — form the basis of your consulting business

However, you’ll also need to cultivate a broad range of consulting skills.

Here are the consulting skills that are the most challenging for new consultants (according to our “ How To Start A Consulting Business in 2022 Study “):

Marketing : generating conversations with prospective clients (33%)
Sales : turning conversations with prospective clients into paid projects (26%)
Fees : figuring out what to charge for my services and why (12%)
Operations : setting up and running the business (accounting, legal, etc) (8%)
Knowing what to focus on and when (8%)
Time Management & Organization : getting everything on my to-do list done (6%)
Emotional : loneliness and frustration with starting a new business (3%)
Project Delivery : delivering on projects for my clients (3%)

These other consulting skills complement and reinforce your core expertise while dealing with clients and running your consulting business.

In this post, you’ll learn about the 6 essential consulting skills that will turn you into a better, more in-demand consultant.

1. Communication Skills

Consultants engage in a lot of oral and written communication with clients before, during, and after projects. Whether it’s…

Asking your client meaningful questions during sales conversations
Presenting your analysis during a project
Following up and asking for a referral

Your communications skills determine how your clients view you. Whether they trust and like you, as well as whether or not they see you as a real authority and expert.

However, good oral communication skills are not enough.

You also need the ability to communicate your value through your writing skills, including your…

Marketing and sales materials
Your consulting website copy
And blog content

If you can’t communicate the value you bring or the results you’ve created — you’ll have a tough time marketing your consulting business .

How to Demonstrate Your Communication Skills

Learning how to carry on a meaningful conversation with your consulting clients and asking great questions is key to demonstrating your communication skills.

But don’t forget that listening is just as important to your communication skills as the ability to speak and write.

If you don’t listen closely to what your clients are saying, you’ll be focused on just talking and offering ideas — like an inexperienced consultant:

(Chart taken from our article Best Questions to Ask Consulting Clients: Updated Playbook )

Elite consultants let their clients do most of the talking.

As a result, they ask better questions — questions that make their clients think and see different perspectives and opportunities. Questions that position the consultant as an expert and trusted advisor.

How to Improve Your Communication Skills

The best way to improve your consulting skills is to write.

Here’s an exercise Andrew Sobel introduced me to that you can use to improve your writing skills — and create tremendous value for your clients:

Bring up a blank document. Write a list of 30 of the major topics, problems, and questions currently facing your industry.
Every day, spend 30 minutes writing a 1-page article on each topic, problem, or question — adding your insight and value to the discussion.
By the end of 30 days, you’ll have a 30-page document adding your insight to the most important topics in your industry.

Use a tool like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor to help you write with focus and clarity.

Don’t write to make yourself sound smart. Write so that clients easily grasp your ideas, points of view, and insights.

In Momentum, our flagship program for early-stage consultants , we have an entire module on how to write thought-leadership content that attracts clients:

From Momentum , our early-stage program for consultants.

Communication Skills Example

Nancy Duarte , communication expert and CEO of Duarte, Inc, is an expert on giving presentations and using data to tell stories.

Here’s an example of how she communicates suggested actions directly and confidently to a client:

“Some people would say, “The data speaks for itself,” but somebody has to form a perspective around it. Technically, artificial intelligence can read data and tee up an observation from the data. In this case, somebody has to form a point of view about it.

Six-Figure Blueprint

You wanted an example of a point of view. You’re making a claim that if we do this action our data could transform in the future.

Here’s a little example: “changing the shopping cart experience and our shipping policies could increase sales by 40%.”

There’s an action — changing our cart and shipping policies — and what’s at stake is a 40% increase in sales. It’s super tight. It’s one sentence. It’s not super complex but doing it as a tight lockup where it’s like, “Here’s my point of view. Here’s the payoff,” or “Here’s my point of view, and here’s the problem.” It makes it clear.”

2. Observation Skills

As a consultant, you’ll often play the role of the observer .

You’ll be focused on whatever part of your client’s organization you are engaged with. And, you must be able to notice, analyze, and provide feedback on any areas of concern or interest.

It’s difficult for your clients to assess their own business because they are so close to it. They hire you to provide an outsider’s view. You help them make more objective and informed decisions. More on this in #6.

How To Demonstrate Your Observation Skills

Demonstrating your observation skills involves every other skill on this list.

By using your skills in problem-solving, objectivity, and communication skills together, you analyze and present your findings to your client — which demonstrates your skills as a keen observer.

Powerful observation skills highlight areas in the client’s business they’ve never seen or considered before.

How To Improve Your Observation Skills

The more projects, businesses, and clients you work with, the better your observation skills will become.

Practice your observation skills by learning to watch and listen carefully.

Learn how to take smart notes . Note-taking is an essential part of observation, and notes give you material to work with in your consulting projects.

Try and see the “bigger picture.” Connect the dots in the client’s business. Highlight patterns and trends. Communicate them to your client.

Observation Skills Example

Many years ago in Japan, I was sitting down in a design meeting with a design firm and the president of a multi-billion dollar company.

We were discussing how to re-brand the company.

The designers were hurling ideas across the table about how the visual brand should look.

The president was hearing a lot of different ideas and opinions, but nobody was giving him direction .

Leaders value direction — someone who can give them answers based on their expertise.

Even though I was the sole foreigner at the table — and younger than everyone — I decided to speak up.

“If you want to grow the brand in an international market, I would go with this option.”

“ OK, let’s do it.” the president responded.

After a discussion that lasted a few hours, his quick response surprised everyone in the room.

And I learned a valuable lesson: being a keen observer who can observe and suggest action is a fundamental consulting skill.

3. Problem-Solving Skills

Problem-solving is a core part of consulting.

It’s what you do for a living: applying your skills and expertise to a particular problem that your clients have and help them achieve their desired result.

Armed with a high level of skill and experience in your field, your ability to solve your client’s problems is a big part of why they hire you.

How to Demonstrate Your Problem Solving Skills

One of the best ways to demonstrate your problem-solving skills is by writing case studies.

Pick a successful project that you completed for a client.
Create four headers for the case study: Overview, The Problem, Actions, The Result
In the Overview section, describe the situation the client was in, what they wanted to accomplish, and the challenge they were facing. Keep this brief.
In The Problem section, write a detailed description of the problem your client was facing before they hired you.
In the Actions section, write a detailed description of how you solved the problem.
In The Results section, write a detailed description of the outcome your Actions created for the client.

Clients reading your case studies will pay close attention to the problem you helped your client solved.

If it’s similar to the problems they are (or may in the future) experience in their business, they’ll want to have a meaningful conversation with you about how you can help them solve their problem.

How To Improve Your Problem Solving Skills

The best way to improve your problem-solving skills as a consultant is by solving your client’s problems through project work, reading and studying deeply to understand different situations, cause and effect, and gain new perspectives.

The bigger the problem you solve for your clients, the better you’ll get at problem-solving.

There are no real shortcuts to improve your problem-solving skills. Solve difficult problems, study, learn, and you’ll become a master problem-solver — one your clients can’t afford to lose.

Problem Solving Example

Check out our consulting case studies that show how we’ve helped consultants solve problems in their businesses.

How we helped nonprofit consultant Nic Campbell double her number of clients within a few weeks
How we helped software consultant Sam Schutte increase revenue by 60% and win a $250K project
How we helped marketing consultant Donna Bates win 1 1 new clients, 10X her fees, and gain a new sense of confidence

4. People Skills

Developing and sustaining good relationships with your client, their employees, and other key players is paramount. The success of your consulting projects depends on these relationships.

If you have good people skills, people like, trust, and respect you more. When clients like, trust, and respect you, your projects will run smoothly.

How To Demonstrate Your People Skills

One of the best ways to demonstrate your people skills is to practice being empathetic and being someone they know they can trust.

In the context of consulting, one of the best ways to practice being empathetic and gain trust — and thus, demonstrate your people skills — is to add value .

Do what you say you will do
Deliver results to your client
Don’t just meet, but exceed expectations
Be consistent and show them you understand their situation
Listen attentively
Always look for new opportunities to add value

Adding value to client’s lives shows that you are listening to them, understanding them, and are taking time out of your day to make their life better.

How To Improve Your People Skills

Improving your “people skills” might seem like an abstract idea.

To improve your people skills, focus on building relationships.

Here’s something you can do every day to build relationships and improve your people skills.

Every day, reach out to 1 new potential client.
Learn a little about them, their business, and their interests.
When you message them, lead with empathy — make the message more about them, what they are likely thinking about and feeling, and their interests instead of you and your business.
Don’t pitch. Instead, use this as an opportunity to learn about the pains and desires of this ideal client.
Once you understand their pains and desires, look to add value to their lives by sharing content to help them.

Not only will this habit help you improve your people skills, but you’ll be “in the flow”: continually connecting with and building relationships with the clients in the industry you serve.

People Skills Example

In our 2021 February Mastermind Group, we invited Jason Bay, founder of Blissful Prospecting.

He gave a talk about prospecting. And for consultants, good prospecting takes good people skills.

Jason Bay teaches the REPLY method :

Relevant Results. Showing the prospect results you’ve created that are akin to the results they want.
Empathy. Showing prospects you understand their pains and desires.
Personalization. Showing prospects that you are not using automated messages, but know a bit about them.
Laser-focus. Showing prospects that you respect their time with a short, clear message.
You-oriented. Showing prospects that you’re interested in them, not pitching yourself.

Here’s an example of a real email that successfully landed a meeting using these principles:

Learning to send outreach messages like this requires solid people skills.

The best way to get better at them? Practice.

With good people skills, you’ll have a much easier time winning and completing consulting projects.

5. Organization & Time Management Skills

If you’re a freelance consultant, you’ll wear many hats and have many tasks to accomplish. In the early days, you are the business.

In the morning you might have a sales call. During the afternoon, you’re working on a project. Later that evening, you’re sending invoices and following up with clients.

It’s critical that you learn to manage your time well. Otherwise, you risk falling behind.

By staying organized, productive, and practicing good time management, you’ll be able to systematically and methodically complete your tasks.

How To Demonstrate Your Organization & Time Management Skills

Clients are always assessing you based on how organized you are and how you manage your time. If you are methodical in how you organize your work and your time, they’ll see you as being more organized and therefore, trust you more.

To demonstrate your organization & time management skills…

Make plans and stick to them
Use efficient methodologies (ex: Agile, Lean) that allow you to get results in a quicker time frame.
Be punctual, submit your work on time, and respond quickly to clients quickly.
When clients need a reminder about specific dates or details, be the one who reminds them.

How To Improve Your Organization & Time Management Skills

To improve your organization skills, don’t rely so much on your memory.

Instead, use note-taking tools like Asana , Evernote , Notion , or Roam to store key details. Keep your notes handy whenever you are speaking with a client so that you always have the key details on hand.

To improve your time management skills, create schedules for yourself and use a calendar.

Make a daily plan for yourself: what you will do, and when. And a tool like Google Calendar will help you organize your time effectively.

Using these tools to keep you organized and manage your time frees up your brain to focus on tasks that demand more attention and focus.

Organization & Time Management Skills Example

At Consulting Success®, we made the shift to using Asana to manage our meetings and various projects.

Prior to using Asana, we used a collection of Google Docs. It took us time to track down the Google Docs we needed.

With Asana, we’ve organized much of the business into a centralized system. This makes it easy for us to see who’s working on what, when it’s due, and how to do it.

It has helped everyone become more organized — and, as a result, frees up time for everyone to focus on deeper, more meaningful work.

6. Objectivity & Independence Skills

Clients need more than just your skills and experience. They need an unbiased and objective analysis of their situation. As a consultant, you are brought in as a third-party observer to provide your unbiased and objective opinions.

Don’t get too personally invested in your projects. What matters most is providing your client with the right solution to their problem. If that means telling them an uncomfortable truth, it’s your duty to tell them the truth.

Your clients are surrounded by “yes-men” and “yes-women.”

You need to be the one who can tell them “no” and given them a sound reason when appropriate.

How To Demonstrate Your Objectivity & Independence Skills

The best way to demonstrate your objectivity & independence skills is to be a source of truth to your client.

When they come to you for help, you need to tell them the truth.

This is easier said than done. Telling the truth often requires you to be harsh, blunt, or even disagreeable.

Being straightforward and telling the truth can also cause some short-term pain.

However, if you are truly looking out for your client, you’ll tell them the truth — or do the best you can to give them an accurate, objective analysis from your point of view.

Short-term pain is worth it if it improves your client’s condition in the long run.

How To Improve Your Objectivity & Independence Skills

To improve your objectivity & independence skills, practice being more direct & honest with your clients.

If they ask you if something is a good idea, and you don’t think it’s a good idea, tell them. Don’t beat around the bush: tell them “no” and give them reasons why.

“No” is an appropriate answer to give your client as long as you think it’s in their best interest.

If you’re afraid of coming across as mean or unpleasant, use the hamburger technique:

Source: The Feedback Burger – How To Give Proper Constructive Feedback

Start your feedback with a compliment. “I like where your head is at with this idea.”

Then, offer your criticism. “However, in this case, I don’t think that would work. Here’s why.”

Finish your feedback with another compliment: “But you’re on the right track. What do you think about doing this instead?”

This technique helps you cushion the blow and guide the client towards a better action.

Objectivity & Independence Skills Example

I was working with a consulting client who understood the importance of marketing — of doing outreach and follow-up — but they weren’t doing it.

They created “busyness” for themselves to avoid the uncomfortable work of growing your business.

During a coaching call with them, I asked:

“When you look back, how will you feel? Will you regret that you didn’t put in the effort? Will you regret not doing a bit more marketing and follow-up? Even though it’s uncomfortable, do you think you might regret it?”

“Yes, I probably would,” the client responded.

Then, I created an action plan to help the client with their marketing.

I could have avoided asking the uncomfortable question and playing it safe. But the client needed a push in the right direction.

Sometimes, your clients will need that same push. But you can’t give them a push in the right direction if you are afraid of telling them the issues that you see.

However, if you are being honest, you’ll have uncomfortable conversations that might hurt in the short-term, but help in the long term.

Imperfect Action: Work On Your Weakest Consulting Skills

Being a consultant requires more than subject matter expertise.

If you want to be successful, you must develop skills in…

interpersonal relations
communication
conflict-resolution

…and more.

Take time each week to work on the consulting skills where you’re lacking

Working on your weaknesses is frustrating, but it’s one of the best things you can do as a consultant.

The more consulting skills you have in your toolbox, the more value you’ll create for your clients — and, as a result, the more value you’ll capture for yourself.

What consulting skills have you found to be the most important?

Which consulting skills are you currently working on?

Leave a comment in the comments section below and join the discussion.

And if you’d like coaching to help improve your consulting skills, we can help.

In our Clarity Coaching program , we’ve helped over 850 consultants to build a more strategic, profitable, and scalable, consulting business.

We’ll work hands-on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, business model optimization, and help you to set up your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

You’ll learn how to make more money with every project you take on — and how to land more clients than ever before. Learn more about Clarity Coaching and get in touch to talk about your situation and goals .

One thought on “ The 6 Essential Consulting Skills (Clients Want These) ”

Thanks for going over some skills to have for a business consultancy. You mentioned that you should make sure you are good at problem solving especially since you need to be able to apply an objective to a particular problem. It sounds like you should really research different methods to understand what the different options could be.

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How to Problem-Solve Like a Management Consultant

Published: Apr 05, 2021

Traditionally, the art of problem-solving has been the professional domain of management consultants. However, you don’t have to be pursuing a management consulting career in order to be an adept problem-solver. Below are four mental models for effectively solving business problems like a consultant.

1. Start with a hypothesis.

First, it’s important to define the problem you’re trying to solve by making a hypothesis. Doing so offers clarity in terms of the next steps and the information needed to move forward.

For example, say you’re given the problem of trying to determine why a company is losing market share. You suspect the cause is poor customer experience, so this becomes your hypothesis. You start with that, and then you collect data and perform research that either proves or disproves this hypothesis.

Hypothesis testing is not a new model. Its earliest dates to the early 1700s, when the model was used to understand whether male and female births were equally likely. However, if you’re new to setting up a hypothesis, it might feel unnatural starting out. Eventually, though, you’ll likely come to appreciate the simplicity and clarity with which it allows you to navigate a complex problem.

2. Understand the difference between causation and correlation.

It’s important to differentiate between causation and correlation. Just because two data points move together in the same or opposite direction (correlation), it doesn’t mean that one causes the other (causation).

Using the example above, market share and the quality of customer experience might both be declining at the same time, but poor customer experience might not be causing the decline in the market share. Having the insight to differentiate between causation and correlation will allow you to course correct if necessary. If you find that there’s no causation, then you’ll be able to redefine your hypothesis and begin the process of problem-solving all over again

3. Think “Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive.”

The underlying idea behind Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) was developed by McKinsey & Company in the 1960s to help management consultants structure and frame business problems. The roots of MECE, however, date back to around 40 B.C., when Aristotle’s work on logic and syllogism was compiled into six collections of Organon .

MECE, in its simplest form, represents an approach to decomposing or segmenting a problem into a collection of ideas that are mutually exclusive to each other but when considered holistically are collectively exhaustive. For example, building upon the business problem above, what are the potential drivers that can cause the company’s market share to decline? You might be tempted to offer a laundry list of plausible drivers, such as customer experience, new market entrants, product quality, and new regulation.

As opposed to just creating a laundry list, MECE breaks out drivers into two categories: internal and external. Internal drivers (such as customer experience and product quality) and external drivers (such as new market entrants and new regulation) are mutually exclusive to each other and together encapsulate all the plausible drivers, and so are considered collectively exhaustive.

4. Use the 80/20 rule.

The 80/20 rule states that, in any business problem, 80 percent of the outcomes stem from 20 percent of the causes. Widely considered as an aphorism, the 80/20 rule does have an academic foundation in the Pareto Principle from the early 1900s, when it was first used to observe the distribution of wealth in Italy in the early twentieth century.

The 80/20 rule, as a model, helps to prioritize actions and focus on drivers that matter the most. Using the example above, there might be five potential drivers causing the decline in the market share: (1) poor customer experience, (2) new market entrants, (3) decline in quality of the product, (4) customers’ evolved preference, and (5) new regulatory requirements. However, new market entrants might be causing 80 percent (or most) of the decline. Consequently, the 80/20 rule helps with identifying and developing a succinct narrative around the crux of the problem.

A final note

While these mental models will help you solve business problems, you can’t solely rely on them under all circumstances. For example, certain problems require focusing on correlation more than causation. Also, redundancy, which MECE strives to eliminate, is sometimes needed. Nevertheless, these models will serve you well as building blocks for structuring even the most complex business problems.

Recipient of the Presidential Award from The White House, Vibhu Sinha is an intrapreneurial and bottom-line driven senior management professional with experience in leadership roles across banking and capital markets, advising institutional clients on corporate strategy, idea generation and pitching, financial planning and analysis, M&A, investor relations, and ESG. Vibhu developed his acumen in Behavioral Psychology at Harvard University as part of the master's degree program, and also earned an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson.

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Learning how to break down and solve complex problems is a core skill you need in today’s business world.

The more complex and multi-faceted your problems are, the more your problem solving skills and techniques will be put to the test.

No one understands this better than some of the world's most highly paid and highly regarded problem solving professionals, the strategy consultants whose fame and fortune is dependent on their ability to quickly break down complex problems and develop effective solutions.

This page details two powerful problem solving techniques you can take from the consulting world to begin breaking down your problems and tackling them like a pro.

Problem Solving Technique #1: Focus On The Key Drivers

When analyzing a complex problem, focus your time and energy on the key drivers and big wins; don't get bogged down in the problem solving minutia. And although this sounds obvious, it is easy to inadvertently end up doing the exact opposite when first applying your problem solving techniques.

Consultants recognize that complex problems can have hundreds, if not thousands, of issues surrounding them and that can it be tempting to dig into and analyze them all for potential solutions. To fight this temptation, one problem solving technique that consultants use is to focus their time and energy on the ' key drivers ' of their problem; in other words, they focus on the largest and most salient aspects of the problem that, if solved, would have the biggest immediate impact.

When problem solving, ask yourself this:

"What are two or three 'key drivers,' or main issues, affecting the problem I am trying to solve?"

For example, if you are hired by an organization to cut costs, think of all the different ways you could potentially help them cut costs. Instead of spinning your wheels analyzing all of the potential cost saving areas, you’re better off focusing on the two or three costs that, if reduced, would have the largest overall impact on the organization.

If you're having trouble finding the key drivers of your problem, use the 80-20 rule to find your problem’s highest value components.

The 80-20 Rule: The Secret to Achieving More with Less

The 80-20 rule, or the Pareto principle, was first adopted as a problem solving technique by a management consultant who coined the phrase after Vilfredo Pareto’s 1906 research in which he observed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced 80% of the peas.

This principle has since become known as the 80-20 rule, and simply states that 80% of the effects, come from 20% of the causes. When applied to business, the rule can be used as follows:

80% of a company's profits come from 20% of its clients.
80% of a company's costs come from 20% of its operations.
20% of a company's clients produce 80% of its complaints.

Although this is not a universal principle, the distribution often holds true in many aspects of business and life and, as such, is one of the first problem solving techniques used by consultants to get to the heart of an issue.

For example, using the 80-20 problem solving technique for cutting costs, you could start by asking yourself questions like:

Which 20% of the company’s divisions are generating 80% of its costs? – Reduce or reorganize the company’s divisions.
Which 20% of the company’s production costs represent 80% of its cost of goods sold? – Streamline manufacturing processes.
Which 20% of the company’s marketing costs are generating 80% of its new clients? – Cut the marketing fat.

If this problem solving technique produces too many key drivers, you can narrow them down by asking yourself which of them you can build a strong case for with hard data (see #2).

#2: Build Your Case with Hard Data

When problem solving, gathering and analyzing hard data is critical to effectively building a case for, and eventually selling, a solution.

As such, consultants focus their energy on the key drivers that they can prove or disprove, by gathering and analyzing hard factual data.

Executives are not going to give you the time of day unless you can prove your point with convincing facts and figures. As such, assume that no one will listen to you, or your message, unless you have strong factual evidence to back it up.

Arguably the most famous consulting firm in the world, McKinsey, is notorious for its rigorous data gathering methodologies and problem solving analysis. Why such a focus on hard data? As Ethan Rasiel notes in his book, " The McKinsey Way ", hard data allows McKinsey consultants to quickly achieve two things:

Make Up For Lack Of Gut Instinct

Consultants are typically generalists, which means they lack the 30 or 40 years of in-depth industry experience that their clients often have. Whereas a client might have a “gut” instinct for how to solve a specific problem based on their experience, McKinsey consultants will dig for hard data to prove or disprove their clients' “gut” instinct before moving forward.

Bridge The Credibility Gap

Hard data is objective and tends to be less prone to argument. As such, hard data allows McKinsey consultants, who are typically much younger and greener than their clients, to quickly establish credibility and authority when presenting their problem’s solutions.

Recognizing that hard data will be critical to the success of your problem solving, focus on key drivers that you can back up with hard data given your time constraints.

For example, if your solution to the problem of needing to cut an organization's costs was to reorganize all of its divisions into one location, ask yourself whether or not you can get access to enough hard data to thoroughly prove or disprove your solution. If not, ask for a project extension, break your key driver down into smaller pieces, or pick another key driver to focus on.

Two Data Analysis Tips From McKinsey

A common challenge when problem solving complex issues is knowing where to start and when to stop.

Here are two problem solving tips straight from McKinsey:

Problem Solving Tip #1 – Start With The Outliers:

A great problem solving technique when analyzing large sets of data is to calculate a performance metric around your key drivers and focus on the outliers.

For example, costs per unit per region:

Positive outliers (low cost per unit) will surface potential best practices you can mimic.
Negative outliers (high cost per unit) will give you something to immediately figure out and fix.

Problem Solving Tip #2 - Don’t Boil The Ocean:

It’s important to realize that when figuring out how to solve a problem, there is always an enormous amount of research and data analysis you could potentially do.

Instead of trying to perform all of it, which is the equivalent of trying to boil the ocean, McKinsey consultants focus on doing enough research and analysis to thoroughly prove or disprove their key drivers and ignore everything else.

Issue Tree in Consulting: A Complete Guide (With Examples)

What’s the secret to nailing every case interview ? Is it learning the so-called frameworks? Nuh-uh.

Actually, that secret lies in an under-appreciated, yet extremely powerful problem-solving tool behind every real consulting project . It’s called the “issue tree”, also known as “logic tree” or “hypothesis tree” – and this article will teach you how to master it.

Table of Contents

What is an issue tree?

An issue tree is a pyramidal breakdown of one problem into multiple levels of subsets, called “branches”. It can be presented vertically (top-to-bottom), or horizontally (left-to-right). An issue tree systematically isolates the root causes and ensures impactful solutions to the given problem.

The issue tree is most well-known in management consulting , where consultants use it within the “hypothesis-driven problem-solving approach” - repeatedly hypothesizing the location of the root causes within each branch and testing that hypothesis with data. Once all branches are covered and root causes are found, impactful solutions can be delivered.

The issue tree is only part of the process used in case interviews or consulting projects. As such, it must be learned within the larger context of consulting problem-solving, with six concepts: problem, root cause, issue tree, hypothesis, data & solution , that strictly follow the MECE principle .

Every problem-solving process starts with a well-defined PROBLEM...

A problem is “well-defined” when it is attached with an objective. Let’s get straight to a business problem so you can get a good perspective on how it is done. So here’s one:

Harley-Davidson, a motorcycle company, is suffering from negative profit. Find out why and present a solution.

Now we’ve got our first piece of the tree:

...then tries to find its ROOT CAUSES…

To ensure any solution to the problem is long-lasting, consultants always look for the root cause.

Problems are often the last, visible part in a long chain of causes and consequences. Consultants must identify the very start of that chain – the root cause – and promptly deal with it to ensure that the problem is gone for good.

The diagram is a simple representation. Real problems can have multiple root causes. That’s where the issue tree comes to the rescue.

Since Harley has been reporting losses, it tried to decrease cost (in the simplest sense, profit = revenue - cost) by shutting down ineffective stores. As you may have imagined, it wasn’t very effective, so Harley set out to find the real source of the problem.

...by breaking it down into different BRANCHES of an issue tree

An issue tree ensures that all root causes are identified in a structured manner by breaking the problem down to different “branches”; each branch is in turn broken down into contributing sub-factors or sub-branches. This process is repeated through many levels until the root causes are isolated and identified.

For this problem, Harley deducted that losses must be due to decreasing revenue or increasing cost. Each branch is in turn segmented based on the possible reasons

For a branch to be included in the issue tree, there must be a possibility that it leads to the problem (otherwise, your problem-solving efforts will be wasted on the irrelevant).

To ensure that all possibilities are covered in the issue tree in a neatly organized fashion, consultants use a principle called “ MECE ”. We’ll get into MECE a bit later.

A HYPOTHESIS is made with each branch…

After we’ve developed a few branches for our issue tree, it’s time to hypothesize, or make an educated guess on which branch is the most likely to contain a root cause.

Hypotheses must adhere to 3 criteria:

It must follow the issue tree – you cannot hypothesize on anything outside the tree

It must be top-down – you must always start with the first level of the issue tree

It must be based on existing information – if your information suggests that the root cause is in branch A, you cannot hypothesize that the root cause comes from branch B

Once a hypothesis is confirmed as true (the root cause is inside that branch), move down the branch with a lower-level hypothesis; otherwise, eliminate that branch and move sideways to another one on the same level.

Repeat this process until the whole issue tree is covered and all root causes are identified.

Harley hypothesized lower revenue is either due to losing its customers because they came to competitors or they weren’t buying anymore, or it couldn’t attract new buyers

But wait! A little reminder: When solving an issue tree, many make the mistake of skipping levels, ASSUMING that the hypothesis is true instead of CONFIRMING it is.

So, in our example, that means from negative profit, we go straight into “losing old customers” or “can’t attract new customers” before confirming that “decreasing revenue” is true. So if you come back and reconfirm “decreasing revenue” is wrong, your case is completely off, and that’s not something consultants will appreciate, right?

Another common mistake is hopping between sub-branches before confirming or rejecting one branch , so that means you just jump around “losing old customers” and “can’t attract new customers” repeatedly, just to make haste of things. Take things very slowly, step-by-step. You have all the time in the world for your case interview.

But testing multiple sub-branches is possible, so long as they are all under the same branch and have the same assessment criteria.

So for our example, if you are assessing the sales of each motorcycle segment for Harley, you can test all of them at once.

The hypothesis is then tested with DATA...

A hypothesis must always be tested with data.

Data usually yield more insights with benchmarks – reference points for comparison. The two most common benchmarks in consulting are historical (past figures from the same entity) and competitor (figures from similar entities, in the same timeframe).

Using “competitor benchmark” to test if competitors are drawing away customers, Harley found that its competitors are also reporting losses, so it must be from something else!

...to find an ACTIONABLE SOLUTION

After the analyzing process, it’s time to deliver actionable solutions. The solutions must attack all the root causes to ensure long-lasting impact – if even one root cause remains untouched, the problem will persist.

Remember to deliver your solutions in a structured fashion, by organizing them in neat and meaningful categories; most of the time, solutions are classified into short-term and long-term.

So Harley found that it is losing its traditional customer base - old people, as they were the most vulnerable groups in the pandemic, so they stopped buying motorcycles to save money for essentials, or simply didn’t survive.

Harley also found that it can’t attract new, younger buyers, because of its “old-school” stigma, while also selling at premium price tags. So the short-term solution is setting more attractive prices to get more buyers; and the long-term solution is renewing itself to attract younger audiences.

Our case was a real problem for Harley-Davidson during the pandemic, whose sales plummeted because its target audience were either prioritizing essentials, or dead. So now, Harley has to change itself to attract younger people, or die with its former customer base.

What Is MECE and How Is It Used in an Issue Tree?

A proper issue tree must be MECE, or “ Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive .” Mutually exclusive means there’s no overlap between the branches, and collectively exhaustive means all the branches cover every possibility. This is a standard all management consultants swear by, and together with the issue tree, a signature of the industry.

To answer whether an issue tree is MECE or not, you need to know all the basic and “advanced” rules of the MECE principle, and we’ll talk about those here. If you want a more comprehensive guide on MECE, check out our dedicated article on MECE .

Basic rule #1: Mutually exclusive

Adherence to this rule ensures that there will be no duplicated efforts, leading to maximum efficiency in problem-solving. It also allows the consultant to isolate the root cause more easily; otherwise, one root cause may manifest in multiple branches, making it harder to pinpoint.

For example, an apparel distributor trying to find out the cause of its decreasing unit sales may use the cleanly-separated product segments: High-end, mid-range, and entry-level. A non-mutually exclusive segmentation here would be: high-end products and footwear.

Basic rule #2: Collectively exhaustive

A collectively exhaustive issue tree also covers only the relevant factors - if one factor is not related to the problem, it must not be included.

If the aforementioned apparel distributor omits any of the product segments in its analysis, it may also ignore one or a few root causes, leading to ineffective problem-solving. But even if it produces runway-exclusive, not-for-sale pieces, those are not included in the issue tree because they don't contribute to unit sales.

Advanced rule #1: Parallel items

This rule requires that all items are on the same logical level.

High-end, mid-range, and entry-level are three parallel and MECE branches. But if we replace the first two with “high-and-mid-range”, the whole issue tree becomes non-parallel and non-MECE, because the new branch is one level higher than the remaining “entry-level” branch.

Advanced rule #2: Orderly List

This rule requires that all items are arranged in a logical order.

So for our apparel distributor, the branches can be arranged as high-mid-low or low-mid-high. Never go “high-low-mid” or “mid-low-high”, because this arrangement is illogical and counter-intuitive.

Advanced rule #3: The “Rule of Three”

The ideal number of branches on any level of the issue tree is three - the most intuitive number to the human mind.

Three items are often enough to yield significant insights, while still being easy to analyze and follow; segmentations into 2 or 4 are also common. 5 is acceptable, but anything more than that should be avoided.

Our apparel distributor may have dozens of product lines across the segments, but having that same number of branches in the issue tree is counter-intuitive and counter-productive, so we use the much more manageable 3 segments.

Advanced rule #4: No Interlinking Items

There should be minimal, and ideally no connections between the branches of the issue tree.

If the branches are interlinked, one root-cause may manifest itself in multiple symptoms across the tree, creating unnecessary confusion in the problem-solving process.

Variants of an issue tree

Beside the “why tree” we used to solve why Harley was reporting losses, there are two other common trees, the “which tree” and the “how tree.” The which tree answers which you should do among the choices, and the how tree answers how you should do something.

Why tree helps locate and attack root causes of a problem

We’ve shown you how a why tree could be used to break down a problem into smaller pieces to find the root causes, which involves several important concepts, but in short there are 3 things you need to do:

Locate root causes by narrowing down your search area. To quickly locate root causes, use breakdown by math, process, steps or segment, or any combination of those. We’ll talk about that a bit later

Identify root causes from what you’ve hypothesized. Remember, all hypotheses must be tested with data before reaching a conclusion

Suggest solutions to attack the root causes to eliminate the problem for good. However, sometimes the root causes cannot be solved effectively and efficiently, so we might also try to mitigate their effects

Which tree helps make the most suitable decision

The which tree is a decision-making table combining two separate issue trees – the available options, and the criteria. The options and criteria included must be relevant to the decision-maker. When considering choosing X over something, consultants might take a look at several factors:

Direct benefits: Does X generate more key output on its own?

Indirect benefits: Does X interact with other processes in a way that generates more key output?

Costs: What are the additional costs that X incur?

Risks: Can we accept the risks of either losing some benefits or increasing cost beyond our control?

Feasibility: Do we have enough resources and capability to do X?

Alternative: Are there any other alternatives that are better-suited to our interests?

Additionally, the issue tree in “Should I Do A or B” cases only contains one level. This allows you to focus on the most suitable options (by filtering out the less relevant), ensuring a top-down, efficient decision-making process.

How tree helps realize an objective

The how tree breaks down possible courses of action to reach an objective. The branches of the tree represent ideas, steps, or aspects of the work. A basic framework for a how tree may look like this:

Identify steps necessary to realize the objective

Identify options for each steps

Choose the best options after evaluations

Again, like the two previous types of issue trees, the ideas/steps/work aspects included must be relevant to the task.

A restaurant business looking to increase its profitability may look into the following ideas:

Consulting frameworks – templates for issue trees

Don’t believe in frameworks….

In management consulting, frameworks are convenient templates used to break down and solve business problems (i.e. drawing issue trees).

So you might have heard of some very specific frameworks such as the 4P/7P, or the 3C&P or whatever. But no 2 cases are the same, and the moment you get too reliant on a specific framework is when you realize that you’re stuck.

The truth is, there is no truly “good” framework you can use. Everyone knows how to recite frameworks, so really you aren’t impressing anyone.

The best frameworks are the simplest, easiest to use , but still help you dig out the root causes.

“Simplest, easiest to use” also means you can flexibly combine frameworks to solve any cases, instead of scrambling with the P’s and the C’s, whatever they mean.

“Simplest, easiest to use” frameworks for your case interviews

There are 5 ways you can break down a problem, either through math, segments, steps, opposing sides or stakeholders.

Math : This one is pretty straightforward, you break a problem down using equations and formulae. This breakdown easily ensures MECE and the causes are easily identified, but is shallow, and cannot guarantee the root causes are isolated. An example of this is breaking down profits = revenues - costs

Segments : You break a whole problem down to smaller segments (duh!). For example, one company may break down its US markets into the Northeast, Midwest, South and West regions and start looking at each region to find the problems

Steps : You break a problem down to smaller steps on how to address it. For example, a furniture company finds that customers are reporting faulty products, it may look into the process (or steps) on how its products are made, and find the problems within each steps

Opposing sides : You break a problem down to opposing/parallel sides. An example of this is to break down the solution into short-term and long-term

Stakeholders: You break a problem down into different interacting factors, such as the company itself, customers, competitors, products, etc.

To comprehend the issue tree in greater detail, check out our video and youtube channel :

Scoring in the McKinsey PSG/Digital Assessment

The scoring mechanism in the McKinsey Digital Assessment

Case Interview End-to-End Secrets Program

Elevate your case interview skills with a well-rounded preparation package

A case interview is where candidates is asked to solve a business problem. They are used by consulting firms to evaluate problem-solving skill & soft skills

Case interview frameworks are methods for addressing and solving business cases. A framework can be extensively customized or off-the-shelf for specific cases.

MECE is a useful problem-solving principle for case interview frameworks with 2 parts: no overlap between pieces & all pieces combined form the original item

Solving Problems in Consulting: A Step-by-Step Guide

Consulting professionals are experts in problem solving and have developed a process to help identify and solve challenging problems. This process consists of mindset changes and structured approaches to thinking about and communicating ideas.

Solving Problems in Consulting: A Step-by-Step Guide

Consulting professionals, such as those at McKinsey, are experts in problem solving and have developed a process to help identify and solve challenging problems. This process consists of mindset changes and structured approaches to thinking about and communicating ideas. The first step in the problem solving process is to identify the issue . This involves gathering data, analyzing it, and determining the root cause of the problem.

Once the issue has been identified, the consultant can then develop a plan of action to address it. This plan should include specific goals, objectives, and strategies for achieving them. The consultant should also consider potential risks and how to mitigate them. The next step is to develop an implementation plan. This involves creating a timeline for completing each task, assigning responsibilities, and setting deadlines.

The consultant should also consider any potential obstacles that may arise during implementation and how to address them. Finally, the consultant should evaluate the results of their efforts and make any necessary adjustments. Problem solving in consulting requires an understanding of both the business environment and the client's needs. It also requires creativity and an ability to think outside of the box . By following a structured approach to problem solving, consultants can help their clients achieve their goals and objectives. The key to successful problem solving in consulting is to have a clear understanding of the problem at hand.

It is important to take the time to analyze the data and identify the root cause of the issue. Once this has been done, it is then possible to develop an effective plan of action that will address the issue in a timely manner. Additionally, it is important to consider potential risks and obstacles that may arise during implementation and how to address them. Finally, it is essential for consultants to evaluate their efforts regularly and make any necessary adjustments. By following these steps, consultants can ensure that they are providing their clients with effective solutions that will help them reach their goals.

Nadine Chris

Amateur beer practitioner. Passionate web nerd. Award-winning pop culture aficionado. Friendly web practitioner. Amateur internet guru.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT

Learn everything you need to know to develop a Problem Statement by an Ex-McKinsey consultant . Includes best practices , examples, and a free problem statement template at the bottom.

“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”

– Charles Kettering, Early 1900s American Inventor

I remember my first day on my first project at McKinsey, the partner got the team in a room for us to spend a few hours “defining the problem statement.” At first, I thought to myself, “man, what a dumb idea…this client is paying us millions of dollars, and we don’t even know what we are trying to solve?” But, as we started to debate the context of the client, the issues they faced, and the reasons why they brought us on, I started to appreciate defining the problem statement and the ability for the right problem statement to frame and focus problem solving .

What is a problem statement?

A problem statement is a clear description of the problem you are trying to solve and is typically most effectively stated as a question. Problem statements are subtly critical in effective problem solving. They have an uncanny ability in focusing the efforts of brainstorming , teamwork, and projects .

To understand this better, let’s go through some examples of how you can position a brainstorming session on various topics.

Beyond brainstorming, problem statements should be used at the beginning of any project to frame and focus on the problem. A good problem statement defines the “who” the problem involves, and defines the scope of the problem. Since problem statements guide much of the problem solving of a project, it is important not to be too narrow or broad with the problem statement.

How do you create an effective problem statement?

As stated before, every McKinsey project starts with the development of a problem statement. Once we landed on a strong problem statement, then we had to align the client with the problem statement. The easiest way for a project and team to get off track is if the team and the client are trying to solve different problems. A good problem statement aligns the expectations of the client with the team’s activities and output.

Here are the best practices when creating an effective problem statement:

Use the 5 Ws and one H

One of the most useful tools when developing a problem statement is the 5 Ws and one H, which is simply utilizing who, what, why, where, when, and how questions to frame the problem statement. Simply thinking through these questions as they relate to the problem can help you create a strong problem statement.

Ask the most crucial question, “What are we trying to solve?”

We’ve all been in those brainstorming sessions, meetings or on those projects, where you’re just scratching your head, as the conversation or directions are more like an Olympic ping-pong match going from one topic to the next. The most effective question that I’ve used in over a thousand meetings and conversations is simply “what are we trying to solve?” It cuts through the clutter, confusion, and misalignment, and quickly centers the focus and energy of everyone.

Frame the problem statement as a goal

Some of the best problem statements are simply goals formatted as questions. If you need to increase sales by 10%, a good problem statement is, “Within the next 12 months, what are the most effective options for the team to increase sales by 10%?”

Force the prioritization

Often, the most effective problem statements force the prioritization of issues and opportunities. Using phrases such as “the most important for the customer” or “the best way” will force prioritization.

DOWNLOAD THE PROBLEM STATEMENT POWERPOINT WORKSHEET

To get you going on defining a strong problem statement, download the free and editable Problem Statement PowerPoint Worksheet.

Correctly defining a problem statement at the beginning of a project or initiative will dramatically improve the success of the project or initiative. Problem statements help guide problem solving, analysis , hypotheses , and solutions.

Developing a problem statement is an iterative brainstorming process. Get the major stakeholders in a room for a few hours and start the process by having everyone write down what they think the problem is on index cards. Collect the index cards and post them on a whiteboard. You can either discuss each one or have the group pick the top 3 and then discuss them. You can use the Problem Statement Worksheet to further define the problem by answering the 5 Ws and 1 H. The key is to find the right problem statement all stakeholders feel strongly about, in that, if the problem statement were solved, the problem would be solved.

NEXT SECTION: HYPOTHESES

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The Ultimate Guide To “Scoping”: How Consultants Define Problems and Shape

Think about a problem that you are facing today.

“I want to wake up early to write my newsletter, but I always end up oversleeping.”

You might think you’re lazy or tired from not sleeping enough. But if you told a consultant about the problem, they would likely ask you a bunch of questions before saying that.

“Have you tried waking up early for another activity, like a gym session for example?

“What time do you have your last cup of coffee?”

“Are you able to keep up a consistent writing habit at any other time during the day?”

“Do you glance at your email one last time before going to bed?”

At the end of it, you might find out that you aren’t lazy or tired, and the real reason you can’t wake up is because you’re intimidated of writing online.

“I want to write a consistent newsletter but I’m afraid of sharing my thoughts online.”

This is a very different problem that needs to be addressed very differently (and reducing your caffeine intake won’t help!).

It’s the same in the consulting business. Most clients approach consultants with a problem, or more accurately, what they think is a problem. But what clients are really coming to consultants with is an undesirable outcome. It’s up to the consultant to find the real issue and solve it.

This is typically done through a structured process called “scoping”. In consulting, scoping means identifying the real problem, defining boundaries for the project, and understanding other factors that could affect the project’s outcome.

Learning how to scope is a valuable skill even outside the world of consulting firms. Most knowledge professionals deal with problems that are ambiguous and part of their job is to identify the core issues. There are also obvious benefits for freelancers to have a well-defined scope for their projects.

Here are a few useful things I learned about scoping in my consulting career :

Find the problem behind the problem

The first step of the consulting process is to define the problem. In my experience working with consulting firms, especially small and medium-sized ones, this is often one of the biggest points of failure in being able to build a sustainable process that helps scale the company.

But it’s hard and the reason it’s hard is the same reason the client hired you! Often the clients don’t even know what their problem is. They’ve just hired a firm because they feel like they aren’t doing things well. Clients struggle for a number of reasons and one of the most common is that their judgment is clouded by how involved they are in the situation. Other times, clients haven’t accepted or admitted to themselves. This is why consulting can feel more like therapy than business problem-solving.

This is the value of a consultant, the ability to continue to search for the problem behind the problem. One of the biggest skills of the consultant is the ability to remain curious. This sounds obvious, but in the corporate world, where many people have given up due to complexity, it is necessary to truly scope the problem. This is why when I worked in consulting we practiced interviewing clients – we needed to know what it would feel like to keep going deeper and continuing to ask questions.

A high-level executive might come to a freelance consultant with a problem that sounds like this:

“My team is not efficient”

It might seem like you should start with the team. What behaviors are making them inefficient? But to an experienced consultant, you want more.

“What do you mean by efficiency??”

“Are there any outliers on the team?”

“What is your role in this inefficiency?”

“Is there anything pushing you to make a change now?”

“What is the most costly thing that is happening from the company’s perspective?”

“Is this a training issue or a talent issue?”

“What does success look like?”

These questions may give me more information or they may not but what they all have in common is that the consultant is by default skeptical of the client’s assertion. You should pretty much always assume this, even if you agree with the client. In my experience, there is almost some context missing in the client’s own understanding of what’s going on.

This series of questions is how I would typically approach an initial conversation with a potential client and what I am really doing is running a search function in my head to dig for different issues. A lot of this is based on my experience being in hundreds of different situations and a deep knowledge of how organizations run but it’s also just a healthy obsessive curiosity to try to understand what’s going on. The consultant is there to dig and go deeper than the team has already done. And this can be tenuous too. Sometimes you unearth problems that the client may not have been aware of or may not want to acknowledge.

Bottom line: The more context, the better situated you’ll be at later stages of the project.

In a recent client call, someone said they wanted to do training with their team. But when I dug deeper, the client admitted that there were a couple of people on the team who just were not good fits for this kind of work. He wanted to foist the problem over to me and was hoping that it was going to say something like “Yes this training will fix things.”

Instead, I turned back to him and said, “Sounds like a talent problem, not a training problem. What do you think?”

We didn’t end up working together because we defined a problem that was his to solve, not mine.

Write it down and force the client to engage with it

Once you have a better sense of the problem, write it down . Be detailed. Include the context. Use language and phrases that the client used themselves. If they say “change program,” don’t call it a transformation. If they refer to weeks as “fiscal weeks,” use that in your timeline.

Too many people skip this step and leave vague language in an initial contract or statement of work and then never return to it.

I always write things down because it serves as a shared “source of truth” between the client and consultant. In initial meetings, and especially before working with the client, I bring up a shared screen or printed page if in-person, and ask them to take a second and read my problem statement. I ask them, “What doesn’t feel right?” and “What should we clarify or change?”

In freelance projects , I’ve gotten into the practice of kicking off all client calls with a review of the scope, which is a written agreement about what we are doing together and what we aren’t . As we continue to work together, if new things come up, I sometimes revise the scope in text form and then highlight the parts that have changed in bold.

I also use a timeline to review where we are in the project. This also will include deliverables and agreed-upon dates from the initial scope. Here’s an example where I use check marks to recognize completed tasks and red to signal where we are right now:

Writing out a detailed timeline in addition to the problem statement at the beginning of a project is valuable for the client but it also forces you to really think through every step of what you expect to happen.

This kind of preparation is vital, but defining things well doesn’t always mean you’ll stick to it…

Scope Creep: Friend or Foe?

Scope creep is an inevitable part of most modern knowledge work. In the consulting context, “scope creep” is when a client tries to change the scope of a project, often adding things not in the initial agreement. This may also not be intended by the client at all and can be a product of the consulting firm having a culture where a client says jump and they respond with “How high?”

Managing scope creep is an art and how much “creep” a consultant allows is really a matter of judgment. If this client is a big client or someone they enjoy working with, it might make sense for them to go above and beyond the defined scope to impress them. At the same time, it’s important to look for signs that the project is spiraling into a reactive mess, where the client starts to treat the consulting team like an extended bench of overachieving people pleasers, willing to do anything requested of them.

The biggest challenges of “scope creep” often arise when you’ve used project-based pricing. You might define a problem and say, “We’ll charge you $25k to do this work.” Everything may look perfectly straightforward in the initial proposal but three weeks in the client announces layoffs and the key client contact has been moved to a different division. But the company is still expecting something from you.

This is where an experienced project leader can step in and push back if the client is trying to reorient the project in a direction that does not align with your skill sets anymore. Many clients get a kick out of pushing consulting teams to see how much they can get them to do. Knowing when to push back and how much is key, not only to doing great work but to staying sane enough to stay in the industry, too…

But none of this is to say scope creep is always a bad thing. Many new capabilities emerge out of things you might define as “scope creep.” As experienced freelance coach David Fields points out , “When multiple clients struggle with the same responsibilities or request the same additions to scope, you may have surfaced an opportunity for a new consulting offering.” For example, in my consulting work with professional services firms, I found that many clients were asking not only for training, but wanted talks around high-performance consulting. For the first client, I did the talk as an add-on, but for the next, I charged a fee.

Scope creep can be a pain in the ass but it can also be a good signal of an opportunity you should be charging for.

Good scoping makes your job easier in the long run

The consulting process can be long and with many unexpected turns. Scoping well from the beginning and having a detailed problem statement that you can keep coming back to is powerful. Both consultants and the clients need a “source of truth” to “point to” when things get hard and everyone needs to take a step back.

There’s a common pitfall that many consultants fall into if they aren’t constantly stepping back and putting things within this broader context. They are brought in because of their technical or analytical horsepower but forget that the client is usually just a person in a broader organizational ecosystem. They show up to a meeting with the most impressive Excel spreadsheet only to confuse the client and make them feel like they don’t actually understand the problem.

Investing in the scoping process means having meaningful discussions with the client from the start and making sure that you really understand what the client is responsible for . This usually requires really spending time with the client and people inside the organization in a formal and informal way. I’m hearing increasingly that many consulting firms are struggling to get their junior colleagues to pick up the phone and build relationships with key clients. Often these conversations don’t need to be 100% business and can involve just getting to know each other’s situation.

When I was a junior consultant, I bonded with junior members of the client team about both of our managers making us do all the work. It’s key to take everyone from the client’s team seriously too, from the CEO to the admin. In fact, building a relationship with the admin can be one of the most valuable things you can do. They control the schedule and if you are savvy enough, they’ll fill you in on the behind-the-scenes politics and drama in the organization.

Most importantly, scoping reduces busy work. If you clearly define what you are working on, you can get a sense of what you need to do beforehand. You can create templates, interview guides, and other materials ahead of time, and also get the client’s buy-in as you go. Projects can devolve into endless busy work if you don’t have things defined – this is because you often feel like you need to do something (or at least until the client starts pushing you).

Scoping is not a one-and-done thing, it is a continuous process throughout a project

The biggest trap with scoping is thinking that once you’ve put it in an initial contract it’s done.

It makes sense for scoping to take place right at the beginning and to get everyone bought into the project. However, since things change and there will always be scope creep , you need to constantly revisit the problem and what you are actually doing with the client.

This makes consulting frustrating for some and is why so many people leave the industry after only a few years. In my experience, good scoping means more enjoyable projects, and the longer you spend going through the inevitable challenges of consulting projects, the more attention you’ll put on proactively planning for them to happen.

In consulting, things are always changing.

Put simply: scope early, scope deeply, and scope often.

Do you have a toolkit for business problem solving? I created Think Like a Strategy Consultant as an online course to make the tools of strategy consultants accessible to driven professionals, executives, and consultants. This course teaches you how to synthesize information into compelling insights, structure your information in ways that help you solve problems, and develop presentations that resonate at the C-Level. Click here to learn more or if you are interested in getting started now, enroll in the self-paced version ($497) or hands-on coaching version ($997). Both versions include lifetime access and all future updates.

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Problem-Solving for Consultants

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In consulting, problem-solving is really where the rubber meets the road. While problem-solving, you review the data that you sliced, diced, and otherwise processed to develop a set of solutions, one or more of which will ultimately become the recommended course of action that you present to your clients. Because of this, you want to open the net as wide as possible at the beginning of the problem-solving process — hauling in as many possibilities as you can. Then you need to throw some of your catch back into the sea (and keep the good ones for yourself) by weighing the alternatives until you are left with the best possible courses of action.

There's a right way and a wrong way to problem-solve. Here's the right way:

1. Brainstorm possible solutions.

The first step in the problem-solving process is to take the data and brainstorm possible solutions to the problems that the data raises. Although you could brainstorm by yourself, you get a much wider variety of options if you include your clients in your brainstorming sessions, and you begin building client buy-in to your recommendations.

The secret to conducting productive brainstorming sessions is to encourage every possible idea — no matter how far out it may seem. This means suspending judgment for the duration of the session and welcoming everyone's input. Record every idea on computer, paper, flip charts, or a white board so that you don't lose track of any of them.

2. Consider the implications of each possible solution.

Isolate each alternative that was generated during your brainstorming sessions and follow it to its logical conclusion. For example, if a client has a problem with the quality of the circuit boards leaving the factory floor, one possible cause is that workers are not using the correct soldering techniques. If you follow this possibility to its logical conclusion, a solution may be to provide more training to employees on soldering correctly or to monitor employees' work more closely.

3. Weigh alternatives and narrow your focus.

After you work through all possible alternatives, weigh them against each other to determine which ones are most likely to be relevant to the outcome. As a part of getting to your final recommendations, you have to focus your efforts more sharply at this point and move ahead on a few fronts instead of many. Discard the alternatives that are least likely to become viable recommendations, and focus on those that are most likely.

4. Pick the best courses of action.

By this time, you should have narrowed your list of possible alternatives to a manageable number. Continue to work through this list with your client until you whittle it down to no more than five of the best courses of action. After you complete this step, you are ready to go on to developing your recommendations.

About This Article

This article is from the book:.

Consulting For Dummies ,

About the book authors:

Peter Economy (La Jolla, CA) is a freelance business writer and publishing consultant who is associate editor of the Apex award-winning magazine Leader to Leader , and coauthor of the best-selling book Managing For Dummies, 2nd Edition, with Bob Nelson (Wiley), Giving Back with Bert Berkley (Wiley), The SAIC Solution with J. Robert Beyster (Wiley), as well as the author or coauthor of more than 30 other books on a wide variety of business and other topics. Visit Peter at his Web site: www.petereconomy.com and be sure to check out his Free Book Project at: www.booksforfree.org.

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Career in Consulting

Hypothesis-driven approach: the definitive guide

Imagine you are walking in one of McKinsey’s offices.

Around you, there are a dozen of busy consultants.

The word “hypothesis” would be one of the words you would hear the most.

Along with “MECE” or “what’s the so-what?”.

This would also be true in any BCG, Bain & Company office or other major consulting firms.

Because strategy consultants are trained to use a hypothesis-driven approach to solve problems.

And as a candidate, you must demonstrate your capacity to be hypothesis-driven in your case interviews .

There is no turnaround:

If you want a consulting offer, you MUST know how to use a hypothesis-driven approach .

Like a consultant would be hypothesis-driven on a real project for a real client?

Hell, no! Big mistake!

Because like any (somehow) complex topics in life, the context matters.

What is correct in one context becomes incorrect if the context changes.

And this is exactly what’s happening with using a hypothesis-driven approach in case interviews.

This should be different from the hypothesis-driven approach used by consultant solving a problem for a real client .

And that’s why many candidates get it wrong (and fail their interviews).

They use a hypothesis-driven approach like they were already a consultant.

Thus, in this article, you’ll learn the correct definition of being hypothesis-driven in the context of case interviews .

Plus, you’ll learn how to use a hypothesis in your case interviews to “crack the case”, and more importantly get the well-deserved offer!

Ready? Let’s go. It will be super interesting!

The wrong hypothesis-driven approach in case interviews.

Let’s start with a definition:

Hypothesis-driven thinking is a problem-solving method whereby you start with the answer and work back to prove or disprove that answer through fact-finding.

Concretely, here is how consultants use a hypothesis-driven approach to solve their clients’ problems:

Form an initial hypothesis, which is what they think the answer to the problem is.
Craft a logic issue tree , by asking themselves “what needs to be true for the hypothesis to be true?”
Walk their way down the issue tree and gather the necessary data to validate (or refute) the hypothesis.
Reiterate the process from step 1 – if their first hypothesis was disproved by their analysis – until they get it right.

With this answer-first approach, consultants do not gather data to fish for an answer. They seek to test their hypotheses , which is a very efficient problem-solving process.

The answer-first thinking works well if the initial hypothesis has been carefully formed.

This is why – in top consulting firms like McKinsey , BCG , or Bain & Company – the hypothesis is formed by a Partner with 20+ years of work experience.

And this is why this is NOT the right approach for case interviews.

Imagine a candidate doing a case interview at McKinsey and using answer-first thinking.

At the beginning of a case, this candidate forms a hypothesis (a potential answer to the problem), builds a logic tree, and gathers data to prove the hypothesis.

Here, there are two options:

The initial hypothesis is right

The initial hypothesis is wrong

If the hypothesis is right, what does it mean for the candidate?

That the candidate was lucky.

Nothing else.

And it certainly does not prove the problem-solving skills of this candidate (which is what is tested in case interviews).

Now, if the hypothesis is wrong, what’s happening next?

The candidate reiterates the process.

Imagine how disorganized the discussion with the interviewer can be.

Most of the time, such candidates cannot form another hypothesis, the case stops, and the candidate feels miserable.

This leads us to the right hypothesis-driven approach for case interviews.

The right hypothesis-driven approach in case interviews

To make my point clear between the wrong and right approach, I’ll take a non-business example.

Let’s imagine you want to move from point A to point B.

And for that, you have the choice among a multitude of roads.

Using the answer-first approach presented in the last section, you’d know which road to take to move from A to B (for instance the red line in the drawing below).

Again, this would not demonstrate your capacity to find the “best” road to go from A to B.

(regardless of what “best” means. It can be the fastest or the safest for instance.)

Now, a correct hypothesis-driven approach consists in drawing a map with all the potential routes between A and B, and explaining at each intersection why you want to turn left or right (” my hypothesis is that we should turn right ”).

And in the context of case interviews?

In the above analogy:

A is the problem
B is the solution
All the potential routes are the issues in your issue tree

And the explanation of why you want to take a certain road instead of another would be your hypothesis.

Is the difference between the wrong and right hypothesis-driven approach clearer?

If not, don’t worry. You’ll find many more examples below in this article.

But, next, let’s address another important question.

Why you must (always) use a hypothesis in your case interviews

You must use a hypothesis in your case interviews for two reasons.

A hypothesis helps you focus on what’s important to solve the case

Using a hypothesis-driven approach is critical to solving a problem efficiently.

In other words:

A hypothesis will limit the number of analysis you need to perform to solve a problem.

Thus, this is a way to apply the 80/20 principle and prioritize the issues (from your MECE issue tree ) you want to investigate.

And this is very important because your time with your interviewer is limited (like is the time with your client on a real project).

Let’s take a simple example of a hypothesis:

The profits of your client have dropped.

And your initial analysis shows increasing costs and stagnating revenues.

So your hypothesis can be:

“I think something happened in our cost structure, causing the profit drop. Next, I’d like to understand better the cost structure of our clients and which cost items have changed recently.”

Here the candidate is rigorously “cutting” half of his/her issue tree (the revenue side) and will focus the case discussion on the cost side.

And this is a good example of a hypothesis in case interviews.

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A hypothesis tells your interviewers why you want to do an analysis

There is a road that you NEVER want to take.

On this road, the purpose of the questions asked by a candidate is not clear.

Here are a few examples:

“What’s the market size? growth?”

“Who are the main competitors? what are their market shares?”

“Have customer preferences changed in this market?”

This list of questions might be relevant to solve the problem at stake.

But how these questions help solve the problem is not addressed.

Or in other words, the logical connection between these questions and the problem needs to be included.

So, a better example would be:

“We discovered that our client’s sales have declined for the past three years. I would like to know if this is specific to our client or if the whole market has the same trend. Can you tell me how the market size has changed over the past three years? »

In the above question, the reason why the candidate wants to investigate the market is clear: to narrow down the analysis to an internal root cause or an external root cause.

Yet, I see only a few (great) candidates asking clear and purposeful questions.

You want to be one of these candidates.

How to use a hypothesis-driven approach in your case interviews?

At this stage, you understand the importance of a hypothesis-driven approach in case interviews:

You want to identify the most promising areas to analyze (remember that time is money ).

And there are two (and only two) ways to create a good hypothesis in your case interviews:

a quantitative way
a qualitative way

Let’s start with the quantitative way to develop a good hypothesis in your case interviews.

The quantitative approach: use the available data

Let’s use an example to understand this data-driven approach:

Interviewer: your client is manufacturing computers. They have been experiencing increasing costs and want to know how to address this issue.

Candidate: to begin with, I want to know the breakdown of their cost structure. Do you have information about the % breakdown of their costs?

Interviewer: their materials costs count for 30% and their manufacturing costs for 60%. The last 10% are SG&A costs.

Candidate: Given the importance of manufacturing costs, I’d like to analyze this part first. Do we know if manufacturing costs go up?

Interviewer: yes, manufacturing costs have increased by 20% over the past 2 years.

Candidate: interesting. Now, it would be interesting to understand why such an increase happened.

You can notice in this example how the candidate uses data to drive the case discussion and prioritize which analysis to perform.

The candidate made a (correct) hypothesis that the increasing costs were driven by the manufacturing costs (the biggest chunk of the cost structure).

Even if the hypothesis were incorrect, the candidate would have moved closer to the solution by eliminating an issue (manufacturing costs are not causing the overall cost increase).

That said, there is another way to develop a good hypothesis in your case interviews.

The qualitative approach: use your business acumen

Sometimes you don’t have data (yet) to make a good hypothesis.

Thus, you must use your business judgment and develop a hypothesis.

Again, let’s take an example to illustrate this approach.

Interviewer: your client manufactures computers and has been losing market shares to their direct competitors. They hired us to find the root cause of this problem.

Candidate: I think of many reasons explaining the drop in market shares. First, our client manufactures and sells not-competitive products. Secondly, we might price our products too high. Third, we need to use the right distribution channels. For instance, we might sell in brick-and-mortars stores when consumers buy their computers in e-stores like Amazon. Finally, I think of our marketing expenses. There may be too low or not used strategically.

Candidate: I see these products as commodities where consumers use price as the main buying decision criteria. That’s why I’d like to explore how our client prices their products. Do you have information about how our prices compare to competitors’?

Interviewer: this is a valid point. Here is the data you want to analyze.

Note how this candidate explains what she/he wants to analyze first (prices) and why (computers are commodities).

In this case interview, the hypothesis-driven approach looks like this:

This is a commodity industry —> consumers buying behavior is driven by pricing —> our client’s prices are too high.

Again, note how the candidate first listed the potential root causes for this situation and did not use an answer-first approach.

Want to learn more?

In this free training , I explain in detail how to use data or your business acumen to prioritize the issues to analyze and “crack the case.”

Also, you’ll learn what to do if you don’t have data or can’t use your business acumen.

Form a hypothesis in these two critical moments of your case interviews

After you’ve presented your initial structure.

The first moment to form a hypothesis in your case interview?

In the beginning, after you’ve presented your structure.

When you’ve presented your issue tree, mention which issue you want to analyze first.

Also, explain why you want to investigate this first issue.

Make clear how the outcome of the analysis of this issue will help you solve the problem.

After an analysis

The second moment to form a hypothesis in your case interview?

After you’ve derived an insight from data analysis.

This insight has proved (or disproved) your hypothesis.

Either way, after you have developed an insight, you must form a new hypothesis.

This can be the issue you want to analyze next.

Or what a solution to the problem is.

Hypothesis-driven approach in case interviews: a conclusion

Having spent about 10 years coaching candidates through the consulting recruitment process , one commonality of successful candidates is that they truly understand how to be hypothesis-driven and demonstrate efficient problem-solving.

Plus, per my experience in coaching candidates , not being able to use a hypothesis is the second cause of rejection in case interviews (the first being the lack of MECEness ).

This means you can’t afford NOT to master this concept in a case study.

So, sign up now for this free course to learn how to use a hypothesis-driven approach in your case interviews and land your dream consulting job.

More than 7,000 people have already signed up.

Don’t waste one more minute!

See you there.

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3 things to seek in a consulting solution.

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Ryan Arshad, Chief Strategy Officer, Emergn .

As the world becomes more complex, leaders in volatile businesses need a combination of expertise and implementation skills that are not readily available in their organizations, which is why so many opt to leverage the assistance of outside consultants to come in and deliver results. As a disclosure, my company Emergn is one provider of consulting and digital transformation solutions.

In 2022, the consulting services industry generated a total of approximately $329 billion in the U.S. alone. Leaders around the world know that hiring consultants can be an incredibly effective way to remain competitive, and for decades, the adage “you can’t get fired for hiring BIG NAME PLAYER” has abounded.

However, bringing on the wrong consultants can actually do more harm than good. When considering hiring a consulting group, organizations typically look for a partner who can provide solid strategic advice grounded in the context of their organization. The failure to dig into whether a group can successfully implement this advice, equipping teams with the competencies to own their transformation, is where plans often start to fall apart.

To that end, business leaders should make sure that their consulting partner has an exit strategy. A strong consulting solution should include a clear pathway that will eventually allow your organization to end the partnership and continue thriving on your own—not beholden to a dependency upon the consulting organization.

How can companies identify the right transformation partner for their organization?

Business transformation of any kind can be a strenuous lift for a company, especially when most businesses have little to no internal transformation capability. Many organizations seek help from outside consulting partners for that very reason. Worldwide spending on IT services in 2022 totaled almost $71.7 billion —and this figure is projected to increase to almost $76.5 billion in 2023.

Many companies know that it is time to evolve when a new competitor or technology enters the market and begins to rapidly scale in a way they cannot keep up with—just look at what’s happening with generative AI right now.

To solve this, executives typically hire external consultants to pinpoint exact areas that require improvement. When collaborating with an external partner, leaders should seek partnerships capable of providing fresh ideas, new perspectives and out-of-category experience that helps steer them in a fit-for-purpose direction.

This is why identifying the right partner and team for transformation is vital. It also means, however, that if decisions made are not implemented properly across your people, processes and technology, your company can be placed at risk.

Here are three ways to ensure a consulting solution is the right match for your organization.

1. A strong solution will offer industry-specific insights.

While industry buzzwords make any consulting firms sound appealing on paper, organizations need to be mindful of expertise, experience and culture to find the right fit. These matter because consultancies, in their desire to grow "end-to-end," typically enter areas that are not part of their core competencies—meaning they are offering advice and developing strategies outside of their wheelhouse of expertise. This not only risks the quality of the strategy developed and advice given but puts the implementation at risk.

2. It should both carry a data-based, proven track record and be capable of illustrating clear objectives.

To avoid this scenario, organizations must identify consultants that can tangibly highlight how they have delivered meaningful outcomes and have a proven track record. Additionally, consultants should work with business leaders to define the business objectives they hope to achieve for their customers and be clear in communicating their ability to deliver.

This, in turn, will help the company and its partners better understand the problems they are trying to solve and help to align processes with business goals and customer outcomes. Although it may seem obvious, organizations should communicate why they engaged with a consultancy to the relevant teams and business units. This is crucial because if no one knows why they are there, it will only create problems, and the team won’t be able to deliver on their promises.

3. A defined exit strategy is crucial.

Like Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee, the right transformation partners—albeit without all the magic, whimsy or song—will know when their work is done and move on. The best consultants, truly invested in a company’s long-term success, should start any engagement with an exit strategy. Without an exit plan, organizations lack a clear path for unlocking true value from their transformation.

Transformation partners should leave behind the core competencies the organization needs to move forward, allowing for continuous improvement and goal development after they are gone.

While a complete digital transformation can be complex and ever-evolving, the right consulting partner will win hearts and minds across the organization, shift mindsets and embed new skills. That is why it is imperative to seek out partners who focus on empowering employees by equipping them with the right mindset and technical competencies they need to own and accelerate transformation. There is no point in teaching people a skill if they can’t apply it in their work environment. A quality consulting partner will want to set teams and businesses up for success in the long term—leaving the business with the right tools to flourish.

Understanding warning signs can allow decision makers to avoid unnecessary spending—or the potential of an unsuccessful phase of their digital transformation, which can cost their company time, money and customers. The best partners will want businesses to flourish independently, showing them the way and educating them on tools and best practices.

Nobody wants to hire the wrong digital transformation partner.

It's crucial to make sure you seek out those who are as invested in your success as you are, and that will enable you to develop the ability to grow and scale on your own. I hope this article provides some valuable strategies for leaders on what to seek in order to ensure they find the right digital transformation partner for their own operations.

*I make no guarantees a good consultant won’t burst into song.

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COMMENTS

Problem Solving: Essential Consulting Skills
Problem solving is at the root of what management consultants do. Clients hire consultants to help overcome or eliminate obstacles to the clients' goals - that is, to solve problems. Sometimes the work of a consultant involves "solving" problems that haven't even materialized yet.
McKinsey Problem Solving: Six Steps To Think Like A McKinsey Consultant
Step 4: Dive in, make hypotheses and try to figure out how to "solve" the problem. Now the fun starts! There are generally two approaches to thinking about information in a structured way and going back and forth between the two modes is what the consulting process is founded on. First is top-down.
How to master the seven-step problem-solving process
To discuss the art of problem solving, I sat down in California with McKinsey senior partner Hugo Sarrazin and also with Charles Conn. Charles is a former McKinsey partner, entrepreneur, executive, and coauthor of the book Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything [John Wiley & Sons, 2018].
The McKinsey Problem Solving Approach to Consulting: A Comprehensive Guide
Fostering Innovation. McKinsey's approach to problem-solving fosters innovation by encouraging consultants to think creatively and challenge conventional wisdom. The firm's focus on developing hypotheses and testing them systematically promotes a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement.
Consulting Approach to Problem Solving
Module 1 • 1 hour to complete. Problem definition may sound abstract or boring, but it's incredibly important to solve the RIGHT PROBLEM. Like a detective at a crime scene, a consultant needs to stay open-minded; think broadly about the problem and "look around" for obvious (and missing) clues.
The McKinsey guide to problem solving
The McKinsey guide to problem solving. Become a better problem solver with insights and advice from leaders around the world on topics including developing a problem-solving mindset, solving problems in uncertain times, problem solving with AI, and much more.
Four Steps to Use Problem-Solving Skills as a Consultant
1. Understand the problem. 2. Explore the options. 3. Evaluate the solutions. 4. Implement the plan. Be the first to add your personal experience.
The McKinsey Approach to Problem Solving
1. Problem definition. A thorough understanding and crisp definition of the problem. 2. The problem-solving process. Structuring the problem, prioritizing the issues, planning analyses, conducting analyses, synthesizing findings, and developing recommendations. 3. Distinctiveness practices.
The 6 Essential Consulting Skills (Clients Want These)
The best way to improve your problem-solving skills as a consultant is by solving your client's problems through project work, reading and studying deeply to understand different situations, cause and effect, and gain new perspectives. The bigger the problem you solve for your clients, the better you'll get at problem-solving. There are no ...
How to Problem-Solve Like a Management Consultant
Traditionally, the art of problem-solving has been the professional domain of management consultants. However, you don't have to be pursuing a management consulting career in order to be an adept problem-solver. Below are four mental models for effectively solving business problems like a consultant. 1. Start with a hypothesis.
8-Step Framework to Problem-Solving from McKinsey
8 Steps to Problem-Solving from McKinsey. Solve at the first meeting with a hypothesis. Intuition is as important as facts. Do your research but don't reinvent the wheel. Tell the story behind ...
Solve Problems Like a Consultant
The 80-20 rule, or the Pareto principle, was first adopted as a problem solving technique by a management consultant who coined the phrase after Vilfredo Pareto's 1906 research in which he observed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced 80% of the peas. This principle has since become known as the 80-20 rule, and simply states that ...
Issue Tree in Consulting: A Complete Guide (With Examples)
It can be presented vertically (top-to-bottom), or horizontally (left-to-right). An issue tree systematically isolates the root causes and ensures impactful solutions to the given problem. The issue tree is most well-known in management consulting, where consultants use it within the "hypothesis-driven problem-solving approach" - repeatedly ...
Solving Problems in Consulting: A Step-by-Step Guide
The first step in the problem solving process is to identify the issue. This involves gathering data, analyzing it, and determining the root cause of the problem. Once the issue has been identified, the consultant can then develop a plan of action to address it. This plan should include specific goals, objectives, and strategies for achieving them.
HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS
How to solve tough problems? How do consulting firms work? How does hypothesis-based problem solving work? What methodology do consulting firms use on their ...
Problem Statements by Ex-Mckinsey
Includes best practices, examples, and a free problem statement template at the bottom. "A problem well stated is a problem half solved.". - Charles Kettering, Early 1900s American Inventor. I remember my first day on my first project at McKinsey, the partner got the team in a room for us to spend a few hours "defining the problem ...
The Ultimate Guide To "Scoping": How Consultants Define Problems and Shape
Other times, clients haven't accepted or admitted to themselves. This is why consulting can feel more like therapy than business problem-solving. This is the value of a consultant, the ability to continue to search for the problem behind the problem. One of the biggest skills of the consultant is the ability to remain curious.
How to Solve Problems Effectively as a Consultant
1. Define the problem. Be the first to add your personal experience. 2. Gather and analyze data. Be the first to add your personal experience. 3. Generate and evaluate alternatives. 4.
Problem-Solving for Consultants
Here's the right way: 1. Brainstorm possible solutions. The first step in the problem-solving process is to take the data and brainstorm possible solutions to the problems that the data raises. Although you could brainstorm by yourself, you get a much wider variety of options if you include your clients in your brainstorming sessions, and you ...
Hypothesis-driven approach: the definitive guide
Hypothesis-driven thinking is a problem-solving method whereby you start with the answer and work back to prove or disprove that answer through fact-finding. Concretely, here is how consultants use a hypothesis-driven approach to solve their clients' problems: Form an initial hypothesis, which is what they think the answer to the problem is.
Master Problem-Solving in Healthcare Consulting Careers
Healthcare consulting is a dynamic field that demands robust problem-solving skills to navigate complex challenges and deliver effective solutions. Excelling in this arena requires a strategic ...
Hypothesis-Driven Approach: Crack Your Case Like a Consultant
Consultants formulate a hypothesis for the solution to a business problem, then gather data to support or disprove it. Cracking a case interview can be a daunting task, with a wide range of potential solutions and approaches to consider. However, using a hypothesis-driven approach is a systematic and effective problem-solving method.
3 Things To Seek In A Consulting Solution
The best consultants, truly invested in a company's long-term success, should start any engagement with an exit strategy. Without an exit plan, organizations lack a clear path for unlocking true ...
Case Interview Prep
Case interviews help you experience the type of work we do and show off your problem-solving skills. Explore BCG's case interview preparation tools today.
Problem Solving Consultants
Criminal Justice Issues and federal sentencing guidelines. Federal Jobs. Then contact Dr. Swisher and let her work with you to find a lasting solution to your problems. Questions? If you would like to talk with Dr. Swisher, then dial 203.668.0262 (her direct line).
(Livestream Replay) The Power of SVGs in Power BI
Many of us learn through action and playfulness. This session will discuss how creating games with DAX and SVG can improve skills, increase knowledge and stimulate creative problem solving. We will take a look at SVG as a building block of data visualisation, how it can be applied, along with some unusual and practical use cases.
Long-Term Care Service Sheet
The consulting services offered by FTI Consulting's Global Insurance Services (GIS) helps solve the many complex and challenging problems facing the long-term care, life and health insurance industry clients, including insurers, reinsurers, captives, risk retention groups, brokers, banks, regulators, investors, and corporations.