Hi!
I am prepping for McKinsey first round and struggle with building a framework that is MECE. To me, there always seems to either 1) be an overlap between buckets - so not mutually exclusive 2) something missing - so not collectively exhaustive (there are endless factors to consider for any problem, no?)
Could you give me feedback based on this Case and my framework and let me know if I am misunderstanding something about MECE?
The case:
Shops Corporation is a US-based retail company that is committed to ensuring that its own employees—especially those at their corporate headquarters—represent its customers. The majority of Shops Corporation’s customers are women, while only about a quarter of their executive team is women. The CEO has shared the following with your team:
• Companies in the top-quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are more likely to outperform on profitability.
• Companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity on executive teams are more likely to have industry-leading profitability.
For these and other reasons, Shops Corporation would like to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout their organization. In particular, they are dedicated to enhancing the representation of women and other minority employees within senior leadership.
Shops Corporation has recently created full-time, director-level roles to lead a number of inclusive affinity groups and has engaged McKinsey to help Shops Corporation with their diversity and inclusion goals.
What types of factors would you want to explore to understand how Shops Corporation might improve its diversity within senior leadership?
My framework:
Hiring
- % of men and women who apply, per role, per region (demand)
- % of men and women we accept, per role, per region (supply)
- average qualifications of those who apply, per gender, per role, per region
- what are these numbers for our competitors?
Retention
- % of men and women who quit, per role, per timeframe (demand)
- here, where do post people go after they quit? why?
- % of men and women we lay off, per role, per timeframe (supply)
- what are these numbers for our competitors?
Promotion
- % of men and women who we actually end up promoting per role (those who accept the offer) (demand)
- % of men and women we offer to promote per role (supply)
- what are these numbers for our competitors?
Working conditions
- salaries per gender per role
- maternity and paternity leave conditions
- here, how does our maternity/paternity policy compare to competitors and the norm in the region?
- employee satisfaction per gender
- what are these numbers for our competitors?
- these were all internal, assuming the problem is the client. What if this is the norm in the region or industry? So I'd look at one last bucket: external-
External
- men to women employee ratios in the region per position
- men to women employee ratios in the industry per position
To me, this framework seems messy because there are overlaps.
- For example, my "External" bucket partially overlaps with my "Hiring" bucket bullet point 1. This is because, perhaps, more men than women apply to OUR company because more men than women apply to MOST companies.
- Also, "Retention" and "Working conditions" are connected too. Perhaps we do not retain women as much as men because women experience worse working conditions and, therefore, quit.
- Lastly, my bucket "External" is too big\general compared to my other buckets that are more precise.
If I do use "External", perhaps a more organized approach would be to have two huge buckets: External (here, my "External" bucket would be included) and Internal (here, "Hiring", "Retention", "Promotion", "Working conditions" would be included)
However, this would make my framework 3-tiered and imbalanced (only one bucket in External, but four buckets in Internal)
What am I misunderstanding about frameworks and MECE? How can I change this specific framework to be a good solution?
