Page 94 - The McKinsey Mind

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Gathering the Data 69

was a bit more open-ended and allowed the interviewee to move
between the sections more freely. We tried, as much as possible,
to simplify our message to emphasize the key points we wanted to
cover. This made the interview go much more smoothly and kept
us focused as well.
Unless you actually want to catch your interviewee off guard,

you should share the interview guide with him ahead of time. Be
TEAMFLY
sure to take notes during the interview, and write them up legibly
afterward.
Interviewing is about listening. After leaving McKinsey in
1997, Dean Dorman spent a year working directly under Gary
Leiver at GE, then moved to an E-commerce start-up. Now he is
the president and chief operating officer of Silver Oak Partners,

providing strategic sourcing services to the leveraged-buyout
industry. Dean is one of the hardest-charging individuals you could
ever meet and is never at a loss for words, but even Dean appreci-
ates the importance of listening for today’s business leaders:

Before I took my position as president of Silver Oak, I served
on the advisory board for about a year. During that time, I
paid attention to management’s plans. I also developed my
own hypotheses of what needed to get done to take the com-

pany to the next level. My first task as president was to
launch what I call the “look, listen, and learn” tour to test
any hypotheses. Over the course of the first six weeks, I met
with all the functional and initiative leaders and interviewed
them for about two or three hours each. Taking the time
early on to listen to people has proved invaluable. It has
allowed me to have a real impact on the company.

When you are new to an organization, there are obvious ben-
efits to listening just as Dean did, but listening isn’t just for the new

guy in the office. Effective managers spend a majority of their time

®
Team-Fly