Page 39 - The McKinsey Mind

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Framing the Problem 17

In a white room. Brainstorming is about generating new ideas.
Check your preconceptions at the door. Everyone in the meeting
must be able to speak his mind and share his knowledge. For your
brainstorming sessions to succeed, you should follow these rules:
First, there are no bad ideas. Second, there are no dumb questions.
Third, be prepared to “kill your babies” (i.e., to see your ideas get
shot down, and to pull the trigger yourself if necessary). Fourth,
know when to say when; don’t let brainstorming drag on past the
point of diminishing returns. Last and most important, get it down
on paper.
The problem is not always the problem. Every consultant faces
the temptation of taking the client’s diagnosis of his problem at
face value. Resist this temptation. Just as a patient is not always
aware of the meaning of his symptoms, so are managers sometimes
incorrect in their diagnoses of what ails their organizations.
The only way to determine whether the problem you have been
given is the real problem is to dig deeper, ask questions, and get the
facts. A little skepticism early on in the problem-solving process
could save you a lot of frustration further down the road. What’s
more, you will be doing your client a service by getting to the real
problem, even if, sometimes, your client doesn’t like it.

LESSONS LEARNED AND IMPLEMENTATION
ILLUSTRATIONS
For McKinsey alumni, hypothesis-based decision making has
proved extremely portable. It doesn’t require a lot of resources to
implement; it can be done in teams but, if need be, also on one’s
own; and it is applicable across a wide spectrum of problems. Our
questioning of former McKinsey-ites has produced two good rea-
sons why you should rely on an initial hypothesis in your own
problem-solving efforts: