The McKinsey Mind

Problem-Solving Tools and Management Techniques of the World's Top Strategic Consulting Firm

The groundbreaking follow-up to the international bestseller­­a hands-on guide to putting McKinsey techniques to work in your organization

McKinsey & Company is the most respected and most secretive consulting firm in the world, and business readers just can't seem to get enough of all things McKinsey. Now, hot on the heels of his acclaimed international bestseller The McKinsey Way, Ethan Rasiel brings readers a powerful new guide to putting McKinsey concepts and skills into action­­The McKinsey Mind. While the first book used case studies and anecdotes from former and current McKinseyites to describe how "the firm" solves the thorniest business problems of their A-list clients, The McKinsey Mind goes a giant step further. It explains, step-by-step, how to use McKinsey tools, techniques and strategies to solve an array of core business problems and to make any business venture more successful.

Designed to work as a stand-alone guide or together with The McKinsey Way, The McKinsey Mind follows the same critically acclaimed style and format as its predecessor. In this book authors Rasiel and Friga expand upon the lessons found in The McKinsey Way with real-world examples, parables, and easy-to-do exercises designed to get readers up and running.

This is the first step-by-step manual for achieving McKinsey-style solutions and success. International bestseller "The McKinsey Way" provided a through-the-keyhole look at McKinsey & Co., history's most prestigious consulting firm. Now, the follow-up implementation manual, "The McKinsey Mind", reveals the hands-on secrets behind the powerhouse firm's success and discusses how executives from any field or industry can use those tactics to be more proactive and successful in their day-to-day decision-making. Structured around interviews and frontline anecdotes from former McKinsey consultants as well as the authors, themselves McKinsey alumni The McKinsey Mind explores how McKinsey tools and techniques can be applied to virtually any business problem in any setting.

Immensely valuable in today's crisis-a-minute workplace, it discusses: techniques for framing problems and designing analyses; methods for interpreting results and presenting solutions; and, keys for managing teams, managing clients, and managing yourself. The ability to think in a rigorous, structured manner a McKinsey manner is not a birthright. It can, however, be a learned behavior. Let "The McKinsey Mind" show you how to approach and solve problems with the skill of a McKinsey consultant and obtain the positive results that have been delivered to McKinsey clients for over a century.

McKinsey & Co. is renowned throughout the world for its ability to arrive at sharp, insightful analyses of its clients' situations then provide solutions that are as ingenious as they are effective.McKinsey succeeds almost as well as shielding its revolutionary methods from competitors' scrutiny. Now, "The McKinsey Mind" pulls back the curtain to reveal the ways in which McKinsey consultants consistently deliver their magic and how those methods can be used to achieve exceptional results in companies from 10 employees to 10,000. Packed with insights and brainstorming exercises for establishing the McKinsey mind-set, this book is an in-depth guidebook for applying McKinsey methods in any industry and organizational environment.

Taking a step-by-step approach, "The McKinsey Mind" looks at the McKinsey mystique from every angle.Owners, executives, consultants, and team leaders can look to this comprehensive treatment for ways to: follow McKinsey's MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) line of attack; frame business problems to make them susceptible to rigorous fact-based analysis; use the same fact-based analysis in conjunction with gut instinct to make strategic decisions; conduct meaningful interviews and effectively summarize the content of those interviews; analyze the data to find out the 'so what'; clearly communicate fact-based solutions to all pertinent decision makers; and, capture and manage the knowledge in any organization to maximize its value. Because organizational problems rarely exist in a vacuum, "The McKinsey Mind" discusses these approaches and more to help you arrive at usable and sensible solutions.

It goes straight to the source former McKinsey consultants now in leadership positions in organizations throughout the world to give you today's only implementation-based, solution-driven look at the celebrated McKinsey problem-solving method."'The McKinsey Mind" provides a fascinating peek at the tools, practices, and philosophies that have helped this much-admired firm develop generations of bright young MBAs into trusted corporate advisors. But the book's practical, down-to-earth advice is not just for consultants.

The disciplined way in which McKinsey consultants frame issues, analyze problems, and present solutions offers valuable lessons for any practicing or aspiring manager' - Christopher A. Bartlett, Daewoo Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School. McKinsey and Co. rescues the biggest companies from disaster by addressing every problem with its own mixture of logic-driven, hypothesis-tested analysis. "The McKinsey Mind" helps everyone learn how to think with the same discipline and devotion to creating business success. According to the maxim, giving a man a fish may feed him for a day, but teaching him to fish will feed him for a lifetime.

Paying McKinsey to solve your problem may help you for a day, but learning how they do it should help you for a lifetime' - Peter Wayner, Author of "Free For All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut The High-Tech Titans". '"The McKinsey Mind unlocks the techniques of the world's preeminent consulting firm and presents them in a format that is easy to understand and even easier to implement' - Dan Nagy, Associate Dean, The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.

About the Author

Ethan M. Rasiel, P.hD was a consultant in McKinsey & Co. s New York office. His clients included major companies in finance, telecommunications, computing, and consumer goods sectors. Prior to joining McKinsey, Rasiel, who earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, was an equity fund manager at Mercury Asset Management in London, as well as an investment banker.

Paul Friga, Ph.D researches strategic problem solving and project management in consulting, personalized knowledge transfer, intuition and entrepreneurship. He teaches courses in management consulting and strategy. He is  the former director of Student Teams Achieving Results (STAR) and now serves in corporate program development for STAR. Dr. Friga is the author "The McKinsey Mind" (McGraw-Hill, 2001) and "The McKinsey Engagement" (McGraw-Hill, 2008), and his work has been published in top journals. He previously worked as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and McKinsey & Company. He has consulted for Fortune 100, mid-size and entrepreneurial companies, universities and not-for-profit organizations. Clients have included ABG Consulting, Bloomington Economic Development Corporation, Boeing, Boston Scientific, J.D. Power & Associates, Kimball Office Furniture, Microsoft, PwC, Scientific Atlanta (now part of Cisco), Technomic Consulting, the Greater Indianapolis Hospitality & Lodging Association, U.S. Navy and Walker Information. Dr. Friga previously served on the Indiana University faculty where he received the Trustee Teaching Award and the Kelley School of Business Innovative Teaching Award. He received the PhD teaching award when he was a doctoral student at UNC Kenan-Flagler. In 2008, the Strategic Management Society appointed him to its task force on teaching strategy. He received his PhD and MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler. He graduated from Saint Francis University magna cum laude with a double degree in management and accounting. He has earned CPA and CMA designations.