The McKinsey Way - Ethan Rasiel

Read this book to try to learn a little more about management consulting and to see if there could perhaps be some skills that I could adopt. Overall, this was not a superb book - many of the ideas that the author presented were not of sufficient detail but just broad concepts. However, the interesting thing was that I found a great many similarities between the concepts and what I have been learning during my civil service stints so far. For example, basic ideas (or archetypes that can be used to solve problems) such as the 80/20 rule, dealing with the low-hanging fruits first, not boiling the ocean, etc.

Nonetheless, as with any book, there will always be learning points. Here are some of them:

1. MECE. First time I'm hearing this term - Mutually Exclusive and Completely Exhaustive, but it makes immediate sense and I can relate this to what I've been doing all these while in my work when breaking down complex issues into its components. However, this short phrase succinctly captures what it usually takes me paragraphs to explain to people.
   
2. Issue tree. I had been using mind-maps to perform a similar function. For any problem, use an issue tree to drill the issue down at increasingly detailed levels, which will help identify the possible facts to validate a particular course of action or unearth what are the other possibilities that one might not have considered. At each tree branch, apply MECE to make sure that all the bases are covered.
   
3. Understanding about the management consulting world. I learnt a little more about how the management consulting world operates, and this is similarly rather akin to the civil service in some way. Teams are built to solve problems, and everyone on the team are knowledge workers.
   
4. The book also shared some guidelines for what are considered good interview skills. This include: listen and don't lead the interview, prepare significantly in advance, paraphrase the person's response. The author also introduced the "Colombo technique" (after a movie character), which I think can be quite useful! Essentially, the suggestion is to only ask the interviewee a question after the interview is formally over and the interviewee more relaxed. This can be done as a "by the way" kind of question just as the interviewer is about to leave the room.
   
5. The last thing I learnt is on how to sell ideas to clients. The trick is always to "pre-wire" all the different stakeholders through earlier meetings or presentations so that when all of them eventually come to the meeting room, your presentation faces less chances of catching people off-guard and being rejected.