Page 145 - The McKinsey Mind

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120 The McKinsey Mind

mines were. Then, rather than just taking it to the president
directly, I went to all the heads of First Union’s business units
and told them what I was going to tell them, and got their
feedback. I got a lot of buy-in because of this.
I structured my business case just like a McKinsey pre-
sentation. People were struck by how organized, how
thoughtful, and how forceful it was. We had scheduled a
two-hour meeting, we finished it up in an hour and a half,
and I had my acceptance by the end of the first hour—and
it was a substantial investment. I think I’m still famous at
First Union for being the guy who got money from John
Georgius on the first try. Nobody had ever done that before.

Even if you can’t get full agreement beforehand, prewiring will
help you make your case, as Paul Kenny found when he was
involved in a “battle of the presentations” at GlaxoSmithKline:

I was killing a controversial product, and I had to make a
very clear case to terminate it to some very senior champions
for this particular project. Fortunately, I had done the
groundwork beforehand. There was still resistance, but at
least I knew where it was coming from. The key people knew
the conclusions already. Some of them agreed, some of them
disagreed, but at least we knew where we stood. In my pre-
sentation, I managed to bring together the key issues and get
my recommendation across.

In a situation such as Paul describes, prewiring is especially
helpful, because it forestalls wrangling over the facts of each indi-
vidual point. Your audience already knows where you are coming
from and can debate your ideas, rather than your facts.
Contrast Naras’s and Paul’s successes with someone who didn’t
take the time to prewire. In this case, a McKinsey alumnus was on
the receiving end of a presentation that was full of surprises: