Book Summary: The Mckinsey Engagement

It has been a week since my last post. I am savouring the last day of my long break before I report back to work tomorrow. In the past one week, I had the opportunity to catch up with my reading.

If you are interesting in management consulting, you may be interested the book titled "The McKinsey Engagement: A Powerful Toolkit For More Efficient and Effective Team Problem Solving" by Paul N. Friga (http://snipurl.com/9ftfd)

The author uses TEAM FOCUS as the acronyms for the framework discussed in this book. While the contents make sense and will be usefule as reference for team problem solving, I am not sure if this is THE Mckinsey engagement approach. It seems rather generic. I should caveat to say that the author did point out that this book is not endorsed by Mckinsey.

In a nutshell, TEAM FOCUS refers to the following:

T: TALK
E: EVALUATE
A: Assist
M: Motivate

F: Frame
O: Organize
C: Collect
U: Understand
S: Synthesize

I will elaborate a little more on what the author means by each of these acronyms.

Talk (T): communicate constantly, listen attentively and separate issues from people
Evaluate (E): discuss group dynamics, set expectations and monitor results, develop and re-evaluate a personal plan
Assist (A): leverage expertise, keep teammates accountable, provide timely feedback
Motivate (M): identify unique motivators, positively reinformce teammates, celebrate achievements

Frame (F): idenfity the key issues, put into profitability issue tree, business issues, information tree, decision tree, articulate the hypothesis
Organize (O): develop process map, content map, story line
Collect (C)- collect ghost charts, interview guide, interview summary, secondary sources
Understand (U): undestand implications summary , insight -titled chart
Synthesize (S): obtain inputs from various stakeholders and ensure buy in from client and provide a final report

If you read enough of books on Mckinsey, you will remember that a key principle that all consultants must internalise is the MECE (mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive) framework. MECE means that when you break down an issue, you must consider be able to group the various underlying factors into distinct buckets. There must be no overlap of ideas across groupings and all the possible factors must be accounted for in one of the groupings.

If you are more into logic and thinking process, I would recommend you to read the book titled "The Pyramid Principles" by Babara Minto (http://snipurl.com/9fteb). If you read Japanese, you may wish to read the book "ビジネスカの磨き方" and "実戦!問題解決法" by Kenichi Ohmae. I have read almost all the books by Kenichi Ohmae. I first read his book "The Mind of the Strategist" more than 10 years ago. My key takeaway from his recent books is that what's important is the ability to harness your logic thinking skills for problem solving and develop your own thinking style.

Happy New Year!!!

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