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32 The McKinsey Mind

uses in entry-level recruiting, analytical ability stands at or near the
top. Even partners and directors are judged on their ability to make
value-added recommendations based on the analyses performed by
their teams.
There’s a saying among small-aircraft pilots, “There are two
types of pilots: those who’ve landed with their landing gear
retracted and those who will.” The same relationship holds for
decision making: sooner or later every executive has to make a
major decision based on gut instinct. In many organizations exec-
utives make major strategic decisions based as much on gut instinct
as on fact-based analysis. Almost all the McKinsey alumni we
interviewed found this a radical change from their time at the Firm.
Not that this is necessarily bad. In many cases time and resource
constraints don’t allow for lots of analysis. Many successful man-
agers have developed highly accurate instincts that allow them to
reach good decisions quickly—that’s why they’re successful man-
agers. Still, if you are not that experienced or would just like to
have a second opinion (in addition to your gut), we recommend
that you avail yourself of as much fact-based analytical support for
your decisions as your situation allows. Who knows, sometime it
just might remind you to lower your landing gear.
Our discussion of analysis has two distinct parts. In this chap-
ter, we show you how to lay out the analytical tasks that you and
your team must perform to prove your initial hypothesis. In Chap-
ter 4, we will show you how to interpret the results of those analy-
ses in ways that maximize their impact on your client or
organization. In between, in Chapter 3, we will discuss the fine art
of data gathering, since you have to have something to analyze in
the first place, before you can get results.
What we call designing the analysis is referred to within
McKinsey as “work planning.” Work planning is usually the job of
the engagement manager (EM) running the day-to-day operation