McKinsey Magic
The best consulting firms use behavioral tools, other than hard toolkits, for the best performance
There are many amazing people in the consulting business. It’s an industry that has also evolved a great deal in the last 100 years, not in the least thanks to James “Mac” McKinsey, the University of Chicago professor that founded McKinsey & Company in 1926.
In the 90+ years since, McKinsey has grown to become one of the most successful strategic consulting firms in the world. It has instilled a very structured approach to consulting and has an almost militaristic discipline in its strong culture.
Key to McKinsey (and those that have copied its methods) is team problem solving supported by proprietary tools, or toolkits. The analytical methods improve effectiveness and efficiency in project management with excellence at the heart of its execution.
What few people realize is that besides the hard tools, the balance is made of behavioral approaches and techniques that enable successful team problem solving.
Read on to find out more about
Consultant’s Tool Kit
Many books have been written about McKinsey, including The McKinsey Way and The McKinsey Mind, which this article does not draw from.
I have in the past reviewed many ‘Consultant’s Tool Kit’-style books with exercises and field guides that give specific advice for tactical implementation of ideas, with illustrations and concepts on team problem-solving projects.
Firms like PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and KPMG, where I worked in the past, and many other firms have copied the McKinsey model of “Analysis, Management, and Presentation” and its team problem-solving project management.
Most analytical steps in the ‘hard’ toolkit approach describe 5 components that form the analysis, management, and presentation pillars. They involve (1) framing the problem, (2) organizing the content hypotheses, (3) collecting data, (4) understanding the relationships, and (5) synthesizing the insights into a compelling story.
Correlation, issue trees, as well as using the Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive (MECE) technique are key exercises in generating and analyzing hypotheses.
But a good chunk of the effort goes into interpersonal organization and concentrates on behavioral aspects. This is often largely overlooked.
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Behavioral Tool Kit
There are rules of engagement and standard operating procedures that deal with behavioral aspects in team problem solving. Many focus on communication, motivation, and (peer) reviews.
This is because when interpersonal relationships and communication are not perfected, things get lost in translation, there will be evidence of redundant work or rework, and people tend to get stuck to a particular perspective too long.
So, how is this done?
By focusing on:
Talk
Assessment
Assist
Motivate
Ad 1.: Talk
A lot of time is spent on (informally) getting to know each other, personally, and each person’s working style, strengths and comfort zones. A team charter is created.
Communication is constant, structured, and redundant work streams are avoided. People are trained on how to be a better listener, too, as well as how to let go of your agenda. One of the key rules is further to separate issues from people.
Ad 2.: Assessment
This focuses on reviewing team members’ styles, personalities, and establishing how the team members will get along, but also frequently assesses how everyone is doing.
Feedback is considered a ‘gift’ and each member gets a lot of it. It is meant to help you grow, but the rules are for it to be (a) open, (b) explicit, and (c) agreed upon in terms of the objectives of the assessment.
Team dynamics are openly discussed, expectations are constantly voiced, and personal plans are adapted to the personalities and work progress.
People learn about how well they listen, how stuck they are to their own ideas, whether they can get their points across in a nonconfrontational way, and whether they can effectively separate issues and ideas from people.
Ad 3.: Assist
Typical issues arise in key areas where assistance in a team problem-solving project is needed. There is either (a) confusion over roles, (b) lack of feedback all around, and (c) an overfocus on own assignments to the detriment of helping a colleague.
A confusion over roles can also be related to lack of skills. But consulting firms do this in a very scientific way, using databases to provide data on skills and availability that are useful in creating deployment strategies. And using feedback and on-the-job cross training.
In each team project, people get assigned a process role (e.g. a deliverables driver or devil’s advocate) and a content role (e.g. functional expert, or relationship guru).
Everything is aimed at creating a cohesive, effective team.
Ad 4.: Motivate
Not only personalities are mapped out, but also people’s types of motivation from whether it is money, promotion, recognition, or appreciation.
But that is at a high level. The personality profiling tools that are used range from MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance), to the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism - OCEAN).
People discuss their MBTI profiles, working styles, and personal preferences. In combination with assessment, even mood swings and their impact on team problem solving is discussed.
Finally, one incremental influence method is the social approach. This style relies on a personal connection with the members of the team. This helps in motivating each other to do something for one another and the wider team.
However, this does not mean that there is no competitive spirit. In fact, competition is considered an additional strategy in motivating team members, but not to the detriment of the team problem-solving effectiveness.
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With effective behavioral tools used in practice, this compliments the analytical tools that have proven to work in the thousands of consulting engagements that have been delivered using team problem solving so far. Yet, it maintains an industry in change and new tools keep being developed.
Stay tuned for more on that.
Wishing you all a wonderful day, and greetings from Montréal.
Ricardo
Montreal, Tuesday, 17 October 2023
Feel free to contact me for questions, comments, or a chat:
ricardo(at)pomonaadvisors(dot)com
my general email has changed to: info(at)ricardopilon(dot)com