McKinsey PEI - Drive vs Growth

They feel similar because both involve hard situations

Drive
What we look for:

• Sustained effort under pressure
• Personal ownership when quitting or lowering the bar was an option
• Endurance and discipline over time

Signal:

• The situation stays hard
• You do not fundamentally change skills or approach
• Success comes from persistence, not insight

Litmus test:

• Remove the learning and the outcome still happens → Drive

Growth
What we look for:

• A real initial gap in skill, knowledge, or mindset
• Fast learning under stakes
• Clear change in behaviour or approach

Signal:

• You start unprepared
• You adapt meaningfully mid-stream
• Success comes because you learned, not because you worked harder

Litmus test:

• Remove the learning and the outcome collapses → Growth

Why candidates get downgraded

• Drive stories with a one-time insight
• Growth stories that are just brute force effort

Bottom line:

• Drive = endurance
• Growth = self-upgrade

Hey there,

Here are some notes that might help:

1. Drive: You can think of Drive as more of an entrepreneurship story, a story about something you drove and the challenges you went through when doing that (e.g., when you started/led a new initiative/project)
2. Growth: This is more about a time when you have to change yourself (i.e., grow) to adapt to new circumstances (e.g., you were suddenly put in a new role you were not familiar with and had to quickly adapt, something suddenly changed in your life/job and you had to learn new skills to adapt to that change)

Best,

Maria