Brainstorming structure McK vs Bain/BCG

Hey there,

At the core, McKinsey wants to see creative ideas communicated in a structured manner, the more exhaustive the better.

Your goal should be to come up with a tailored and creative answer that fits the question. The framework should - broadly speaking - follow these three characteristics:

• EITHER broad (many top levels) OR
• deep (many ideas under the top-level - does not need to be in more buckets such as A.1, A.2., etc. but can be)
• insightful

 In a McKinsey interview, you can take up to 6-8 minutes to present your structure, your qualification, and hypotheses. This is due to the interviewer-led format that McK employs. The interviewer will only ask 'what else' if you

• haven't gone broad or deep enough
• did not explain your ideas well enough for them to stand out (again, you have time here)

The firm wants to see exhaustive and creative approaches to specific problems, which more often than not do not fit into the classic case interview frameworks that were en vogue 10 years ago...

Again, this only applies if everything you say

• adds value to the problem analysis
• is MECE
• is well qualified
• includes a detailed discussion of your hypotheses at the end

The difference in format and way of answering a question is the reason why I recommend preparing very differently for McK interviews vs. other consultancies.

Cheers,

Florian

In Brainstorming, there's technically no need for a structure and no difference between McKinsey and other firms on that point.

However, in order to really differentiate yourself, it always helps to be organized, so group your ideas (before, or at least, after you say them).

Furthermore, if you create the groups of ideas early in your thinking, you can use that push yourself to fill each group with a number of creative ideas.

Hope this helps!

Allen

Structuring is encouraged but not essential in the conceptual thinking section of a McKinsey case. I've never heard of the explicit need for levels.

Hi there,

I need to clear up a few critically wrong things here (crucial if you're going to successfully get the mindset shift you need to succeed at casing)

1. There should never be a "list of ideas". You are solving a problem. Everything you say should be objective-driven and have a why+how behind it...not just a random list
2. You should have structure where-ever possible - this includes sub-buckets! However, it is dependent on the bucket itself.
3. All strategy consulting companies care a lot about structuring at all levels. McKinsey does not have a monopoly on this!

No, you don't need sub-buckets. 

It rather depends on the scope of the question and how deep you want to go.

By default, there's not 1 way of doing it. 

Sharing with you also a resource on different brainstorming techniques for you to review:

• Expert Guide: Mastering Structuring & Brainstorming

Best,
Cristian