One of the most important ideas in consulting problem solving is “MECE.”
If you’ve been around current or former strategy consultants, you probably heard someone say this. It’s typically pronounced, “mee-see.”
MECE is an acronym for the phrase Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive.
In short, it is a principle that helps you simplify complex ideas into something that can be easily understood.
MECE is made up of two parts.
Part 1: Mutually Exclusive
“Mutually exclusive” is a concept from probability theory that says two events cannot occur at the same time.
For example, if you roll a six-sided die, all six of the outcomes are mutually exclusive. They are equally probable and independent from each other.
Part 2: Collectively Exhaustive
In order to be “collectively exhaustive” your set of information needs to cover all possible options. Sticking with the dice example, the set {1,2,3,4,5,6} is mutually exclusive AND collectively exhaustive.
This sounds a bit weird at first but stick with me.
Simple Example: Remembering Fruits
Let’s go back to fruits. What if I asked you to name all the fruits? How would you do that?
You might list some out.
- Apple
- Orange
- Banana
- Grapes
- Strawberry
- Cantaloupe
- Mango
- Pineapple
You quickly realize this is an impossible exercise. If you’ve traveled or lived in a country with good fruit selection (sadly I didn’t realize what I was missing until I moved out of the US!) you stumble upon new fruits every year.
A different approach might be to use the MECE principle, and this is where things get more interesting and useful.
Instead of trying to organize ALL the fruits, you identify higher-level groupings that might cover all of the fruits.
Your first attempt might be to sort them by season. Summer, spring, fall, and winter fruits. But then you realize that there might be overlap. Some fruits grow year-round. They are not mutually exclusive.
You do a bit more research and find that scientists have three distinct groups for fruit: Simple fruits, aggregate fruits, and multiple fruits.
Not the easiest things to remember but it appears they have created a unique group for every single group
✔ MECE confirmed
From Information to Ideas: Synthesis
The process of grouping pieces of information into easier-to-understand ideas or concepts is called synthesis and it’s one of the most important things that consultants do.
What is the point of doing all of this anyway? Why not just make a big list of fruits? Who cares if you leave some out?
The answer is that most of the things you are responsible for creating are consumed or read by other people and those people don’t have access to your thought process.
By grouping ideas, simplifying them, and ensuring that you are fully presenting them (through MECE) they will be much more memorable.
When things are more memorable you get the results, you want more often.
If you walked into your CEO with a long list of 25 things the company should do better, they would not take you seriously.
Instead, if you told the CEO that the company needs to “increase sales conversion rates and lower attrition,” it might be the start of a more interesting conversation.
👉 Hit Reply: Have you ever heard of MECE before? Can you think of a way you might be able to apply it this week at work? Have any questions about the framework for me?
Sneak Peak of the Course 🍿
If you want to learn this stuff in a structured way, the course might be for you. We’ll cover four ways you can start using MECE in your work today and go deep with specific examples. Watch a free lesson preview here.
Get access to project checklists, MECE practice examples, detailed walkthroughs, best practices, a simple method for using the pyramid principle, and McKinsey slide design principles
Do you have a toolkit for business problem solving? I created Think Like a Strategy Consultant as an online course to make the tools of strategy consultants accessible to driven professionals, executives, and consultants. This course teaches you how to synthesize information into compelling insights, structure your information in ways that help you solve problems, and develop presentations that resonate at the C-Level. Click here to learn more or if you are interested in getting started now.
