What does Outside-In mean?

Hey there,

Usually, this means looking into a company or a situation without insider information or data.

What I often did at McKinsey is to look at competitors and compare their financials to the client's financials. 

For instance, for competitors, you get their PnL, which is not always very detailed so you have to work with the limited information you have to make some meaningful comparisons (often using a lot of assumptions to bridge the blank spots, which you test with experts on the matter).

Cheers,

Florian

Hi there,

Florian is exactly right. This means you have to look at it from the outside. This can be either as a “non-insider” meaning you don't have the info, or as a non-insider as in without bais. It could also mean from a high-level view.

Context here is important, as is knowing the Principal. Importantly you should ask when you don't know! If you're uncomfortable asking the principal, just ask one of your pals on the projects (the other consultants) to see what it really means!

Could mean one of the following depending on the context/situation:

• Customer focus- Consider various different possibilities (expectations, behaviours, trends, innovation etc) outside of the internal setup of a business to create better customer experience of value
• Benchmarking/Learning from others- sometimes clients or businesses like to see how others (not just competitors) from different industries have successfully implemented various different strategies in product innovation, supply chain, customer experience etc

Hello!

Without having all the context, seems that you are looking at it from in inside perspective (with data or insights that you have from inside, etc.) and instead he wants to look at it from the outside (w/o all of that)

Cheers, 

Clara

It means that you have to analyze as if you didn't have any data provided internally by the company itself. I.e., as if if you had no access to management or any internal data.