The McKinsey Mind

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Book Review -- The McKinsey Mind (by danavan.net)

When I'm able to get through a business book, I consider it a major achievement. Not for me, but for the authors who wrote it. I have more business books that I'll admit to where I got 1/3 of the way through and decided that they were crap. Why? Because nothing that the authors had presented could be used in my daily business life.

Not so with The McKinsey Mind. Everyone needs a framework for solving problems and delivering and executing solutions. If you follow the guidelines in The McKinsey Mind, you'll get just that an more.

The authors segue nicely from their former book, The McKinsey Way, which I also read with interest. The McKinsey Mind has the same chapters as the former, and with those chapters delves deeper in how employees of "the firm" actually go about getting the job of consulting done, at one of the most highly respected firms in the world.

For me, someone in search of ever-better problem solving frameworks and context, The McKinsey Mind provided a wealth of resources for me to apply immediately. Here are a few that I've used just this week:

Let you hypothesis determine your analysis - for every problem, you need an angle to approach from. This can be considered your hypothesis, which also goes to defining scope. Once you have this, you can decide what work needs to be done to reach resolution

Gathering the data - This wasn't so much a new discipline, especially for those of you that do a lot of research already, but I mention it because they have an impressive appendix called "Data-Gathering Resources" which lists nearly every business-related database and website that you could possibly need to do the due diligence on whatever problem you're working on.

Interviewing - To me, this was the most important, especially because I'm now in a company where there are a lot of veterans that know more than I, and I need to know as much from them about the business as possible. I've never had more productive meet & greets with leadership as I have since I started applying some of the McKinsey interview techniques.

"What's the So What?" - Ask yourself, in every analysis, "What's the So What?" This essentially means asking yourself what value have you generated for your client/stakeholders through your findings. Is there a nugget there that's worth your time? Do you need to adjust your hypothesis because the facts tell otherwise?

Managing Your Team, Client, and Self - Great advice, but nothing you haven't read before. It's interesting to see though how consultants that routinely work 80 hour weeks recommend your reclaiming some of your personal time. I found one quote "If the place isn't falling apart, go home at 5, enjoy the time and reenergize." I find myself using that every day. We could all stay well into the evening, but then what would we be?

The book adds additional value in that it summarizes the 'lessons' in appendices at the end, along with the data-gathering appendix I already mentioned. This alone was worth the price of the book because it gives me a reference that I can turn to until I get some of the better ideas committed to memory.

Great book - great framework for problem solving - a great addition to your business library!