Quotes from Ethan M. Rasiel

In another case, a McKinsey team went in to evaluate expansion opportunities for a division of a manufacturing company. After a few weeks of gathering and analyzing data, the team realized that what the division needed was not expansion; it was closure or sell-off.

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.

Critics of McKinsey (and management consulting in general) say that the Firm bases its solutions on the most current management fad—the favorite tool in its intellectual toolbox.

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.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, when academic ideals meet business realities, business realities usually win. Businesses are full of real people, with real strengths and weaknesses and limitations. These people can do only so much with the finite resources available in their organizations. Some things they just cannot do, whether for political reasons, lack of resources or inability.

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),

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.

The moral of this story is that an initial hypothesis is not a prerequisite for successful problem solving. Having one will help organize and forward your thinking, but if you can't come up with one, don't despair. Any McKinsey-ite will tell you that no business problem is immune to the power of fact-based analysis. Put together enough facts, combine them with some creative thinking, and you will come up with a solution.

Factions within the client's senior management prevented us from doing our job. Data we asked for arrived late, or in an unusable form or not at all. People we needed to interview refused to speak with us. The members of the client team vigorously pursued their own agendas at the expense of reaching a solution. We spent several uncomfortable months on this study and, in the end, had to make what recommendations we could, "declare victory," and get out.

took several years of gaining perspective before I understood the wisdom of the CEO's words. There are three reasons he was right: • It's impossible to do everything yourself all the time. • If you manage it once, you raise unrealistic expectations from those around you. • Once you fail to meet expectations, it is very difficult to regain credibility.

others will see McKinsey as an invading army to either flee or drive out, depending on their power in the organization. As one former McKinsey-ite put it, "It was a rare engagement when there wasn't at least one sector of the client organization that did not want us there and did not want us to come up with a real answer.

LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE Every now and then, take a mental step back from whatever you're doing. Ask yourself some basic questions: How does what you're doing solve the problem? How does it advance your thinking? Is it the most important thing you could be doing right now? If it's not helping, why are you doing it?

will be either converted to McKinsey's cause or bypassed. Sometimes, however, one powerful faction in an organization calls in McKinsey against the wishes of another powerful faction. That's when trouble arises, as we found out.