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84 The McKinsey Mind

those facts to generate insights that will add value to your organi-
zation. All the multimegabyte spreadsheets and three-dimensional
animated pie charts in the world don’t mean anything unless some-
one can figure out the actions implied by these analyses and their
value to the organization. McKinsey’s consultants realize that
clients don’t, at the end of the day, pay for fancy documents and
pretty slide shows. They pay for advice that will add value to their
businesses; this is the end product of the consulting process and, by
extension, of business problem solving in general. As Jeff Sak-
aguchi, who has moved from McKinsey to rival consulting firm
Accenture, recalls:

It’s not just about research and analysis; it’s research, analy-
sis, and insight development. McKinsey focused on generat-
ing insights, specifically insights that had great client impact.
I take pride, since I’ve joined Accenture, in having restruc-
tured some of our training for strategy consultants to drive
home that mentality in our teams and really make it an
explicit part of our performance evaluation process for
consultants.

In this chapter, we will show you how McKinsey-ites draw
conclusions from their analyses and turn them into useful recom-
mendations for their clients, and how you can do the same in your
company. We divide analysis interpretation into two parts. First
comes the process of understanding the data: piecing together (in
your own mind or within the confines of your team) the story the
data are telling you and the steps you should take based on that
story. Second comes assembling your findings into an externally
directed end product: a course of action for your organization or
client.