The McKinsey Way Quotes

“Part One describes how McKinsey thinks about business problems. It shows what it means to be fact-based, structured, and hypothesis-driven.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“The essence of the initial hypothesis is “Figure out the solution to the problem before you start.” This seems counterintuitive, yet you do it all the time.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Making your boss look good means two things. Firstly, it means doing your job to the best of your ability. Clearly, if you produce high-quality work, it will make your boss’s job easier. Second, make sure your boss knows everything you know when she needs to know it. Keep the information flowing. Make sure your boss knows where you are, what you are doing, and what problems you may be having. At the same time, don’t overload her with information. Think about what your boss needs or wants to know. Use a well-structured e-mail or voice mail to convey the information.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Take your team’s temperature. Talk to your teammates. Make sure they are happy with what they are doing. Find out if they have questions about what they are doing or why they are doing it, and answer them. If they are unhappy, take remedial action quickly. Steer a steady course. If you change your mind all the time about the team’s priorities or the analyses you’re doing, your team will quickly become confused and demoralized. Know where you’re going and stay your course. If you need an extra day to figure it out, take it. If you need to make a big change, let your team know, explain why, and let people contribute to, or at least see, your thought process.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“As an organization, McKinsey is extremely good at figuring out how much a team can do over the length of a typical study. The best EDs can balance the competing demands of client and team to a nicety; they tell the client, “We’re going to do X and Y. We could do Z, but it would kill the team,” while telling the team, “Look, we’ve already promised the client that we would do Z, so we’ve got to deliver.” They then work the team to its limit while simultaneously making the client feel that he is getting value for money and exceeding his expectations.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Ethan, it’s eleven o’clock. The client will love this. No one will be able to absorb more than you have here. Call it a day. Don’t boil the ocean.” We shared a cab home. “Don’t boil the ocean” means don’t try to analyze everything. Be selective; figure out the priorities of what you are doing. Know when you have done enough, then stop. Otherwise, you will spend a lot of time and effort for very little return, like boiling the ocean to get a handful of salt.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“When a client asks the question “How do I boost my profits?” the first thing McKinsey does is take a step back and ask the question “Where do your profits come from?” The answer to this is not always obvious, even to people who have been in their particular business for years.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Is each one a separate and distinct issue? If so, then your issue list is mutually exclusive.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Why is something done this way? Is this the best way it can be done?” You have to be fundamentally skeptical about everything.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“In Part One, we looked at the way McKinsey thinks about business problems and uses fact-based, hypothesis-driven, structured analysis to arrive at solutions for its clients.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Whatever you’re doing, chances are someone, somewhere has done something similar. Learn from others’ successes and mistakes. Leverage your valuable time and don’t reinvent the wheel!”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“There is a solution to this dilemma—the magical category “Other Issues.” If you can’t figure out where to put those two or three brilliant ideas, there is always Other Issues. There is a caveat, however. Avoid using Other Issues in your top-line list—it looks out of place. It’s fine lumped in among a bunch of subissues, but on the first slide of a big presentation, it sticks out. So try a little harder to fit those brilliant ideas into your top-line issues. Chances are you can. Still, if all else fails, Other Issues will help you stay MECE.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Suppose you add another item, say, “Reengineering our widget production process.” How does that fit with the three issues you already have? This is certainly an important issue, but it isn’t a fourth point alongside the others. It falls under “Reducing the unit cost,” along with other subissues such as “Leveraging our distribution system” and “Improving our inventory management.” Why? Because all these are ways to reduce the unit cost of widgets. Putting any (or all) of them with the other three issues on the list would cause an overlap. The items in the list would no longer be mutually exclusive. Overlap represents muddled thinking by the writer and leads to confusion for the reader. Once you”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“associate’s head from the moment of entering the Firm. Every document (including internal memos), every presentation, every e-mail and voice mail produced”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“The main thing to remember when trying to get information from other is that they need to feel you are listening and that you’re interested in what they have to say. Use positive body language and always take notes. One final trick: If you want people to say more than they have, if you think they have left out something important but you’re not sure what it is, say nothing. Let the silence hang. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do most people. Chances are they will start talking, just to fill the gap. If they have been giving you a prepared “script,” they will probably drop it, because the one thing they were not prepared for was silence. Try it and see. It’s surprisingly effective.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“We also learned to communicate our interest through body language. When the interviewee was speaking, we leaned toward her slightly. When she completed a sentence, we nodded. And we always took notes. Even if the interviewee was babbling (and this happened often enough),”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“When deciding on which questions to ask, you might want to include some to which you know the answer. This may sound counterintuitive, but it’s really very useful. On questions of fact, asking a “ringer” will give you some insights into the interviewee’s honesty and/or knowledge. For complex issues, you may think you “know” the answer, but there may be more than one; you should find out as many as possible.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“one of my jobs at the start of an engagement was to search PDNet for anything that would shed light on our current project: comparable industries, comparable problems. Inevitably, any PDNet query produced a mountain of documents that I then had to wade through to find the few that might be relevant. Still, this long day’s (and, as often as not, night’s) work usually yielded something to point us in the right direction.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL (PART 2) Whatever the problem, chances are that someone, somewhere, has worked on something similar. Maybe that person is in your organization and can answer all your questions in the course of a phone call. Maybe other people in your field, in another division or another company, have seen the same problem already—find out who they are and get to know them. Do your research and ask questions; you will save yourself a lot of time and effort. Your time is valuable, so don’t waste it by reinventing the wheel!”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“At the start of a McKinsey-ite’s career, most of his time is spent gathering data, whether from one of the Firm’s libraries, from McKinsey’s many databases, or from the Internet. Gathering, filtering, and analyzing data is the skill exercised most by new associates. As a result, McKinsey-ites have learned a number of tricks for jump-starting their research. You can use these tricks to find the answers to your business problem too.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“The McKinsey problem-solving process begins with research. Before a team can construct an initial hypothesis, before it can disaggregate a problem into its components and uncover the key drivers, it has to have information.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“When the going gets tough, take the Bill Clinton approach. Sometimes, as in my two bad experiences, you will be dealt a bad hand. The problem is difficult; the client is difficult. There’s not a lot you can do beyond telling your team, “I feel your pain.” At some point, you have to soldier on; that’s life. Spending months solving complex business problems is no bed of roses. If you follow the rules on maintaining morale, however, at least your team won’t feel like resigning when it’s all over.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Get to know your teammates as people. Are they married? Do they have kids? What are their hobbies? It will help you to understand them. Share a bit about yourself as well; that makes it more likely that your teammates will think of you as part of “us,” rather than “them.” This, incidentally, is a much better way of team bonding than taking your team out to the ball game.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Respect also means never asking someone to do something you wouldn’t do or haven’t done yourself. As an associate, I always felt a bit better knowing that if I was in the office at midnight, my EM was too.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“Let your teammates know why they are doing what they’re doing. People want to feel that what they are doing is adding value to the client. There are few things more demoralizing than doing something that you and your team leader know is valueless. No one on your team should ever feel, “I’ve just spent two weeks of my life for nothing.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“I’m not sure that team bonding is all that important. What’s important is that a team works together well, and that will come or not over the course of a project. It’s also important that individuals feel respected and that they feel that their ideas are respected. Team bonding is not, “Did you take your team to enough dinners? Did you go out to the movies? Did you go to the circus?” Most people, even very hard-working people, want to have a life, to be with their families. I think that’s more important than going out to the circus.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“As a team leader, the question for you is how much formal team bonding is enough. After talking with a number of former McKinsey-ites, and reflecting on my own experience, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the answer is not much. A little team bonding goes a long way. As a team leader, you have the far more important job of looking after team morale”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“if you have mountains of complex data that you need to decipher, then you want the two or three best number crunchers that you can find, regardless of whether they can simultaneously walk and chew gum. On the other hand, if you are managing a big reorganization during which many sensitive decisions will have to be made, you would prefer to have someone on your team with good people skills and experience in implementing change.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way

“To succeed as a business problem solver, you must choose your team carefully, getting the best mix of people from the resources you have available. McKinsey benefits from a global pool of talented, intelligent individuals whose strengths and weaknesses the Firm tracks closely. Even with this advantage, EMs and EDs must learn the art of team selection. Their experiences can help you, even if you can’t call on the same level of resources.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, The McKinsey Way