I've just finished reading The McKinsey Way, an insider's perspective on how McKinsey & Co, the world's most respected management consulting firm, manage their engagements (what we call accounts). I'm not going to review the book (you can find that elsewhere) more than saying it's rather useful for those handling large advertising accounts and brand consulting projects.
One of the core concepts of the firm, according to the author Ethan M. Rasiel as well as many former McKinsites is MECE. MECE (pronounced 'mee-cee') means Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive and is the core of everything that's communicated between employees and to clients - in presentations, emails, phone calls, dialogues, etc.
Collectively exhaustive means "no stone unturned". In other words, nothing is forgotten or overlooked. Mutually exclusive means that there are no overlaps in the messages, arguments or recommendations that are given.
Here's an example in branding that's MECE:
"The new brand strategy of company X will entail a new brand positioning, brand architecture and a new advertising campaign."
Nice and simple. Positioning, architecture and advertising are part of a problem-solving strategy, yet they are separate phenomena in terms of objective and projects.
An example of non-MECE:
"The new advertising campaign will create loyalty and increase sales"
This argument is clearly not mutually exclusive, because loyalty is related to sales to current customers. It's not collectively exhausive either, because sales can include sales to new customers. Hence, awareness etc has not been mentioned.
I think the concept of MECE is very useful in our line of work, because it requires us to think more specific and broader about the problems that we want to solve, and it makes communication clearer and therefore more efficient.
Recent Comments