With regard to frameworks, speaking particularly for McKinsey, is it important to cover the ENTIRE case (i.e. how I would go about solving it) or just state the FACTORS / SOULTIONS I would look to solve a question.
Example - Client wants to increase profitability over the next 5 years
A solutions / factors apporach would be revenue & cost and their component parts such as price, mix, quantity, variable, and fixed. All ofcourse explained in more detail with custom sub-elements for the case.
An overall approach I would suspect would be:
1. Market Dynamic - Size/GR + Competition + Customer Segments + Macro Changes
2. Profitability Solutions - Revenue (current avenues + new avenues) and Costs
3. Risks / Implications
I was under the impression that when asked for factors (usually the first question in McKinsey cases) I would do the former, however, it does make more sense to state the overall approach.
Any feedback?
Thank you so much for the response.
First, thank you so much for a detailed reply. With my interview, I presented a Revenue - Cost framework since it was a profitability concern. The client wanted to know how they could improve 5 years into the future so I took the time period into consideration. The company was also fully integrated so that impacted my costs a great deal. All in all, I had around 14 ideas of revenue increase and cost decrease at a high level, e.g. change price based on associated price sensitivity of our target customer segments (these are the sort of statements I was saying) and in some cases where I felt major impact could have been brought I expanded further e.g. Product innovation, the tech products industry is fast on innovation, our client over the next 5 years will likely need to stay ahead of the market by innovating on existing products or introducing new products all together. My interviewers concern was that I jumped into stating the ideas but did not tell him how I am validating them e.g. he wanted me to say I would like to first look at market dynamics and segment geographically (world wide company) and then based on key locations I would do XYZ (this is just as an example). Really he wanted me to solve the overall problem not just give him good ideas, although he did pressure test me there by asking what else maybe 4-5 times. Because of this I'm a little confused, should my structure be one to solve the OVERALL problem or just state the solutions / factors, and secondly, how long can I really take to go though this because 25+ ideas overall will take more than a minute or two for sure?
+1