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Gathering the Data 65

upbringing, personalities, and training at McKinsey. Since we both
left the Firm, we have come to appreciate a little variety in our
working environments, particularly the difference in levels of for-
mality. Nevertheless, when it comes to interviewing, even in less
formal situations, we highly recommend sticking to the structure
and basic rules described earlier, beginning with interview guides.
One alumna now at a major financial institution emphatically
concurs:

I always have interview guides—always—whether I’m talk-
ing to people internally or meeting with people externally. I
usually refer to [my guide] for the four or five high-level
questions I want to explore. I think it’s very important to fig-
ure out what I am trying to get at before I go in.

Although the context of interviews (the relationship, objec-
tives, and tone) can vary considerably, certain elements remain the
same. McKinsey consultants absorb this message early and learn to
use the same format time after time (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it).
In truth, you don’t have to develop anything elaborate or time-
consuming.
We have included copies of the interview guides we used for
our data collection effort for this book. In our situation, we devel-
oped two interview guides, one for E-mail questionnaires that we
sent to thousands of McKinsey alumni and one for the dozens of
in-person interviews we conducted. Our primary goal for the E-
mail questionnaires (Figure 3-1, pages 66–67) was to guide the
respondents to hit the major areas of our outline and to share war
stories from their post-McKinsey experiences. Notice that it is a bit
longer and more specific than the in-person interview guide. We
also sent a nice cover letter introducing ourselves, describing the
project, and identifying our key objectives. The in-person interview
guide (Figure 3-2, page 68) followed the same general format but