Mckinsey Mind Paper

| The McKinsey Mind| Personal Paper 1| ENTR 668| Philip Thoms| 4/13/2012| Executive Overview The summary of The McKinsey Mind: Understanding and Implementing the Problem Solving Tools and Management Techniques of the World’s Top Strategic Consulting Firm by Rasiel and Friga does exactly what the title indicates. As stated in the summary it will show one how to: 1. Follow McKinsey’s MECE line of attack 2. Frame business problems to make them susceptible to rigorous, fact-based analysis 3. Use that same fact-based analysis, along with gut instinct, to make strategic decisions. 4. Conduct meaningful interviews. . Analyze the data to find the “So what. ” 6. Clearly communicate fact-based solutions to decision-makers Key Insights and Implications 1. Insight: MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) is separating problems into distinct, non-overlapping issues while making sure that no relevant issues have been overlooked. Implication: Recently, there were failures with the Code Blue team arriving to one of our clinics, I believe currently the team I am working with to strengthen up the process is not dividing up the issues distinctively enough and that some relevant issues are being overlooked. . Insight: Issue tree which is a type of logic tree in which each branch is an issue or question. Implication: While working with our client, I believe we would have been in a better place if we would have written down all the issues and formed them into an issue tree in order to better attack and solve the issues that arose instead of going rouge on each issue. 3. Insight: Develop a rapid response culture in that all employees must quickly respond to data request from fellow employees and all phone calls are returned within 24 hours (unwritten rule). Implication:

Our consulting engagement has (had) a very tight timeline in that certain aspects needed to be completed in a very short time period. Also, with work if my institution had this culture, questions would be able to be answered sooner allowing for more productivity. Recently, I had a simple question that when through 3 departments which took a little under 2 months. Personal Strengths 1. Personable: Being personable is a valuable resource which would directly benefit in managing a team and client. People like to work and do business with people they like. . Altruistic: A consultant cannot be wholly concerned with their own personal welfare, but it is important that they are looking out for others on their team, their project, and the company as a whole (both their firm and the company they are consulting with). 3. Not a Cowboy: I do not enjoy reinventing the wheel. My opinion is if someone else has an answer for a problem, I do not have to come up with the solution myself. I will search the web or whatever database is available for information on a particular problem.

Developmental Opportunities 1. Presenting Your Ideas: I need to become more articulate at presenting my ideas. Practice and preparation are the two primary ways that will help me to be better in this aspect. I naturally wait till the last minute to complete tasks that I know must be completed by a certain deadline which inhibits me from practicing the actual presentation part of the task/project. In order to do better, I need to create schedules of when certain aspects of a task need to be completed by and hold myself accountable.

I typically have always been able to “swing it”, but due to this mindset the work that I presented/completed has not been up to the level that I could deliver on. Improving in this area would help me with as an individual with personal projects that I want to complete and it would benefit my organization(work) in my deliverables would be of a higher quality. 2. Forget about absolute precision: I am a finance guy a number guy therefore when I think about business I think about the bottom line and typically I am fixated on worse case scenario’s based upon numbers only and not the x factor.

I need to remember that business is not math or physics and remember sometimes there is more than just the numbers and if Instagram can sell for a billion dollars, anything can happen. 3. Team Selection: I feel that I am not the greatest at team selection. Perhaps, I typically am but I feel that this time during this class our team did not ever quite mesh. We did good work but I don’t feel that we ever great work. Though, it is different in the business world.

I definitely think it is something I need to improve on. Final Comments The McKinsey Mind makes it look like if you follow the systems outlined the consulting will go smoothly and it the project will be successful. But from talking to my good friend who is a consultant for Accenture more often than not the customer is very hard to work with. It seems that the bulk of the issue is the customer not listening to the consulting firm which is odd since it was the customer who brought in the consultant firm in to begin.