How to use MECE on 'out of the box' cases?

Let me just highlight the following, to add to Sidi and Ian's answers:

“To solve that case well, you needed to use your own MECE analysis rather than frameworks from victor cheng/case in point etc. ”

Here's the thing: to solve well any case, that is exactly what you need to do. If you are just fitting the frameworks from victor cheng/case in point, then you are also NOT approaching correctly the other cases. 

It's a good thing that you've come across this case, because you actually need to re-think how you approach cases.

Strategy Consulting is NOT about using pre-made frameworks and as such Case Interviewing is NOT about how well you fit in some pre-made frameworks that you learned in a couple of books. 

Interviewers are not trying to hire people who do a good job memorizing Victor Cheng, but INDEPENDENT THINKERS. Independent thinker means that you can solve a problem on your own (break it down into parts, designing tests to understand the situation… or test hypothesis). Trying to force-fit the same “approach” that 80% of the other candidates are using… won't get you the job.

Hi there,

This is literally the root of good casing and it's not something that can be answered just with a simple Q&A! Quite honestly, I work with my candidates across weeks and weeks to get this mindset across.

The short answer is you need to think about the problem on its own, independent of rigid frameworks you've seen before. Try to approach the problem like it's a real project and you are creating the project plan, or like it's an essay and you're figuring out your key paragraphs.

That's the short answer, but feel free to message me to truly learn how to do this!

Great replies from the others on this topic. I will just add a little pro tip based on personal experience: try structuring anything in your daily life MECE as a little game for practice. 

For example:

• How would you break down potential improvements in your apartment?
• How would you decide on what to eat?
• What movie should you watch tonight (none of course because you’re casing (-:)?
• Or just simple categorization e.g what groups of people are there? What types of vehicles are there?

So many possible solutions for each one - try and explore them. Sounds silly but gets you away from those even sillier pre-made frameworks. 

To really get good at this you need to get a little “obsessed“ with structuring and practicing with the above is fun, easy, and ultimately powerful.

By the way, I did this not for preparation but actually started it at McKinsey. Really helps in the real world, too (as opposed to pre-made frameworks)…

(edited)

Dear A,

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