There is a catchy acronym in the consulting world, “MECE,” which stands for “mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.” A MECE breakdown takes something—say, customers—and segments it into a series of categories that do not overlap, but together cover everything. Customers might be divided into “paying customers” and “nonpaying customers.” Every customer will fall into one of these categories, and no customer will be in more than one place. There is something very satisfying about the way a MECE framework clicks together. It is a tidy, effective way to organize categories. But it is not
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