How to be MECE?

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Neue Antwort am 31. Aug. 2022
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Floyd fragte am 16. Sept. 2020

Hello people from PrepLounge,

I'm a little bit confused about MECE structures, if I have the following structure:

1. Taxi driver

  • Schedule
  • Average price
  • Expected income per day

2. New York City

  • Population density
  • Distance
  • Average price per trip

3. Airport

  • Popularion density
  • Time
  • Average price per trip

Regarding to this structure I'm not sure if it is completely MECE since "Population density and average price per trip" are in both buckets inside New York City and Airport.

I would appreciate if you could guide me through this confusion and tell me if this sctructure is MECE.

Thank you very much.

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Henning
Experte
antwortete am 16. Sept. 2020
Bain | passed >15 MBB interviews as a candidate

Generally, the first level of your framework should be MECE, So if some of the bullets underneath are not, that woudln't be an issue.

A structure itself cannot be MECE without the question. To understand whether a structure is MECE, you'll need to give the question as well. In your specific case, I struggle to see how Taxi Driver / NYC / Airport would be a MECE structure to begin with. But if you can post the question, it will be easier to judge that.

Once that structure fits, the bullet points underneath are usually just some initial thought to help the interviewer understand what you will be looking at. It is usually impossible to plan out the case down to this level within the 60-120 seconds upfront.

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Floyd am 17. Sept. 2020

Hello Henning :) Thank you for your answer. The case was about a Taxi driver who needed to decide whether stay in the airport and wait 2 hours to get a passenger or go back to NYC. The questions was: What would you explore to help them to decide? :)

Vlad
Experte
antwortete am 16. Sept. 2020
McKinsey / Accenture Alum / Got all BIG3 offers / Harvard Business School

Hi,

Frankly speaking, you are overthinking. Not all structures can be MECE and what's more important not all structures should be MECE. Only pure 100% mathematical structures can be 100% MECE, but you can't solve the case using only math

Best

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Ian
Experte
Content Creator
antwortete am 16. Sept. 2020
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate

Hi there,

The most important thing with structures is:

1) Does the look at the major areas that could influence my decision/analysis?

2) Can I investigate each of these areas independently?

Some structures may not be perfectly mutually exclusive. However, what's important is, can I look at each seperately?

The reason so this is, when you are on a project, you'll need to tackle one topic at a time and/or different people will need to tackle multiple topics at the same time

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Simon
Experte
Content Creator
antwortete am 31. Aug. 2022
50+ successful coachings / Ex-Mckinsey JEM & Interviewer / Industry + Engineering background

Dear Floyd,

in general a good structure can be evaluated by a certain depth and breadth. The “depth” should be at least 3-4 levels while the “breadth” should cover the entire solution space. You can cross-check this with the MECE principles (For details see respective article on Preplounge), but the CE (collectively exhaustive) part is basically defining your breadth.

Finally, make sure to check for inter-linkages in your structure and point them out.

Simon

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Henning gab die beste Antwort

Henning

Bain | passed >15 MBB interviews as a candidate
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