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36 The McKinsey Mind

have the skills to implement the new program? Is it legal?). You
will have formed initial hypotheses as to what the answers are;
now you must support or refute those hypotheses with fact-based
analyses.
Another way to focus your analysis is, as Jeff Sakaguchi at
Accenture recommends, starting with the end in mind:

The process that we go through of issue, subissue, hypothe-
sis, analysis, data collection, end product makes you under-
stand what the end product is likely to look like. It keeps you
from doing a bunch of analysis that is interesting, intellec-
tually stimulating, but not very relevant. If you start doing
that, you can get beat up in a hurry.

Jeff points out a real danger for those of us who actually enjoy
analysis: getting caught up in analysis for its own sake. There’s a
lot of data out there, and it can be a lot of fun to play around with
it in all sorts of new and different ways. Unfortunately, if these
analyses aren’t working to prove or disprove your hypothesis, then
they are just that: playing around.
Get your analytical priorities straight. When you have limited
time to reach a conclusion and limited resources to attack the
problem, you have to figure out which analyses are indispensable
and which are simply gravy. As one of your first steps in design-
ing your analysis, you should therefore figure out what not to do.
This is the corollary of letting your hypothesis determine your
analysis: avoiding analyses that don’t relate to your hypothesis.
This holds especially true for small businesses with limited
resources. They can’t afford to boil the ocean, as Bob Buchsbaum,
CEO of art supplies retailer Dick Blick Holdings, attests in describ-
ing his decision-making process:

Look for the path of least resistance by being hypothesis dri-
ven; make assumptions and get answers that are “direction-