WHY or HOW

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Hi,

It depends on the case and you should clarify the objective clearly.

• In 80% of the cases, there will be some problem and first, you have to find the root cause of the problem (WHY), and then think HOW to fix it
• Some cases start with HOW question - mostly non-profit and non-conventional cases. (E.g. How you can increase the revenues from tourism in the city?) This situation is very typical with interviewer-led cases at McKinsey. In that case, you can start directly with HOW

Even if you start with HOW question, you still need to challenge the existing situation. e.g. if we are hired to develop a new bankruptcy law, and the question is how you would approach it, your first step will be to do the diagnostics of the current law.

Best!

How can you fix a problem without knowing why it occurs? So your structure should be to 1) understand the problem(s) 2) find approaches to fix it and go beyond 

Hope this helps ;)

Hi,

In fact, you need to do WHY and HOW respectively. So to continue your example, you need to first diagnose the problem (and understand the root cause), thus you should first ask WHY the education is bad. Following this, you need to move on to HOW to fix the problem.

Best,

Deniz