Structuring is the 80/20 of case performance
Have you ever wondered how a REAL consultant would prepare for case interviews, knowing all they know?
Imagine overnight they lost their case solving skills (through some act of wizardry) but kept the knowledge about the recruiting process and their "consulting intuitions".
What would they do?
I'll tell you what they WOULDN'T do.
- They wouldn't spend hundreds of hours doing random mock-cases with other candidates.
- They wouldn't care about "learning frameworks" for "common case types" like Market Entry, Profitability and M&A.
- They certainly wouldn't look for "tips and tricks", nor would they spend WEEKS looking for silver bullets (like trying to build "one framework that I can use to start any case").
No.
Their "consulting intuition" would tell them that this is all just a big waste of time.
What they'd do is to spend most of their time mastering the ONE KEY SKILL that would take his case solving skills to the top 1%.
And the ONE KEY SKILL for case performance is obvious...
It's Structuring.
"Underrated" doesn't mean neglected. It means something people should focus MORE on, even if they already spend plenty of time on it.
Structuring is the work you do before doing all the work.
It defines your odds of success and your time efficiency when solving a problem.
It's how you stop getting stuck in your cases.
It's how you SHOW your interviewer, in the first 5 minutes of your case, that you WILL get to the answer within the 30 minutes you have.
Strong structuring skills give you the assurance that you WILL perform well even if you get a weird case you've never seen before.
The weirdest case I even got was in a Bain 2nd round.
I bet you can't find a framework for this one...
If you're good at structuring, your interviewer will give you the benefit of the doubt.
About what, you ask?
About pretty much anything!
Missed an insight?
- "Haha, that's okay, you had many good ideas..."
Made a math mistake?
- "Oh, I also get nervous when doing math on the spot, no worries!"
They'll overlook all your weaknesses because you have the most valuable and hardest-to-find skill there is.
Structure poorly, though, and you'll have a doubtful interviewer that'll second guess everything you do. Every word you say.
Ask any real consultant what's the #1 skill you should master for your cases and they're all going to say the same thing:
"Structuring."
This experienced coach knows what he's talking about.
And yet, most people never really learn structuring
Yes, almost all candidates spend plenty of time on structures
But they never really learn structuring as a skill.
They never learn to structure problems from scratch.
Want proof?
Ask them to structure a weird, ambiguous problem.
Even better, ask them to structure a problem that's not really related to business at all.
They freeze.
They mumble and jumble a bunch of words.
They might even draw some cute boxes and write some questionable bullet points to have something that resembles a structure.
But it's gonna be nonsense.
It won't be MECE.
Or worse, it won't tackle the crux of the case.
It's just going to be a collection of words they hope might point them in the right direction.
And real consultants, who do this for a living, will see right through it.
Interviewers have a finely tuned BS detector. And they're looking for people who have the real skill.
There's a reason consulting firms have been using Public Sector cases and even "ecology cases" more recently.
Half the example cases in McKinsey's website are non-business cases
This wasn't common in the past.
Twenty years ago, almost all cases were business cases.
But with the rise of the case prep industry -- that LOVES teaching you frameworks you can "copy and paste" into your interviews -- they had no other choice.
They had to make their cases weirder and more ambiguous.
They do that because what they're looking for is not someone who can memorize and regurgitate frameworks.
They want to hire people who can solve the types of problems clients hire consulting firms for (paying MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the process).
Consulting firms are looking for professionals who can see a new, unique problem and, in real time, often during a client meeting, create a specific MECE structure for that client's problem.
You must be able to think FAST when solving case problems -- as you do in real life
A structure that brings insight. A structure that everyone in the room can SEE will get the problem solved.
And this is the main thing they're testing for through several cases in their interview process.
But most candidates never learn it.
They just "learn" a mirage of the real thing.
What being good at structuring can do for you
Before I go into the weeds of how gurus and coaches pretend to teach you structuring, and how most candidates pretend to learn it, we need to talk about something...
We need to talk about how being great at the skill of structuring will COMPLETELY TRANSFORM both your case preparation and your performance when interview day comes.
It will do so in six big ways:
WAY #1: No more blanking out
Being good at structuring means you can break down and create a plan to solve any type of problem.
This means no more "blanking out" or "getting stuck" in any case, or even throughout the case. Yes, even in "atypical" problems.
WAY #2: Risk reduction (or even elimination)
I once heard one candidate say that they feel like he was always "one bad structure" away from being rejected.
He was anxious. And I could've sugar coated it.
But you know what? It's true.
If you're actually good at structuring, however, you'll NEVER run this risk.
Real consultants aren't afraid of not being able to tackle a new client's problem, because they KNOW they can. And so should you.
WAY #3: No more overwhelm
Cases (and real projects) often feel like drinking from a firehose.
Too much data. Too many nuances. Too much information in very little time.
I too would love if there were some frameworks you could memorize that'd get the work done -- it would certainly make my life teaching this a whole lot easier!
A good structure gives you, well, structure to put all the pieces in the right place and to know which pieces of data are essential and which are minutiae.
When you suck at structuring, your cases often devolve into a spiral of chaos.
But when you master structured thinking, they're always ordered and under control, no matter how much stuff is thrown at you.
WAY #4: A great first impression
Structuring is almost always the first thing you do in a case.
When you're bad at structuring, you leave your interviewer anxious.
They feel like they're wasting their time.
Have you ever heard that interviewers make up their mind about a candidate in under 5 minutes?
Well, there's truth to it.
But guess what you're doing in the first 5 minutes of a case? That's right! You're structuring the damn case.
Yes, humans do have a bias towards keeping first impressions, but that's not what's magical about the first 5 minutes.
What makes these first 5 minutes so telling is that they know from experience that candidates who structure well can also solve the case well.
Start the case with an A+ structure and the case basically solves itself.
WAY #5: You'll solve your cases faster
Great structures aren't just MECE, they're also to-the-point.
They cut through all the bullshit and go straight to the crux of the matter.
So, no wonder you're spending 40 minutes "gathering information" and still haven't gotten to the end of the case.
YOU'RE ANALYZING 8 BUCKETS WITH 5 ISSUES EACH.
Sure you're exhaustive, but who has the time for that?
Every MBB coach knows that the key to speed is to learn structured thinking
A great structure puts the ONE KEY QUESTION of the case front and center.
You can solve that in 5-10 minutes while all other candidates are still talking about Issue #4 from Bucket #6.
Then the interviewer might give you a piece of math "just to check" or sell the firm to you (because they know you'll get other offers).
WAY #6: You'll break through your prep plateaus
Most candidates reach a "plateau" during their prep.
This is normal and expected, and it usually happens around their 30th mock-interview.
The problem is: you have to "break through" this performance plateau.
In 99% of situations, you'll plateau before you're ready.
But there is good news too...
I've coached HUNDREDS of candidates, and almost all plateaus have ONE ROOT CAUSE:
Poor structuring skills.
DUDE, 6 MONTHS?? What's that saying about madness again? About doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
The symptoms are different.
For some it manifests as poor communication skills.
For others, they don't know how to drive the case forward.
Some people never reach a recommendation (or just can't say it confidently). Others get too little information to conclude anything, or do too much math.
Well, all of these problems are downstream of structuring.
I can't say structuring is the cure-all, but it kinda is.
Mastering structuring solves the problems of almost all candidates who are stuck and simply can't seem to improve.
Yes, structuring IS a learnable skill
Believe it or not, back when I was preparing, I always felt like "maybe I just wasn't born with what it takes".
As you might already know, the first time I applied, I got multiple rejections (from 10+ firms, including MBB).
I felt like shit for a while, and then decided to reapply -- but to do it RIGHT this time around.
But I had one problem...
I had multiple rejections already.
I clearly wasn't a "natural", and traditional case prep wasn't working for me.
So I ditched the books and frameworks and decided to actually learn how consultants truly structure their problems.
From scratch, with no "case book frameworks".
It was a long process (too long to tell you today), but I basically had to reverse engineer how they talked and look for the hidden patterns.
Notes from the fabled "Red Moleskine" that I used to prep and get offers from McK and Bain after being rejected from 10+ firms the previous year. I later gave this notebook to a friend (who used it to get offers from Bain and BCG). He then gave it to Julio, who used to get into Bain and later became my partner at Crafting Cases.
But I learned it.
Well, I learned it well enough to have McKinsey and Bain partners calling me multiple times to ask me to drop their competitor's offer and go work with them.
And you can learn it too.
No one's born with the skill of structuring problems. And no school (not even top-tier MBAs) teaches this.
(Which is why this skill is so rare and coveted by companies, by the way.)
And this gets me to the crux of the problem:
Why do most candidates never learn structuring?
The answer is simple:
Very few people can teach it, and those who can have no incentive to do so.
Most people who have this skill are in high-paying jobs and with meteoric careers.
And then you have a few people in the case prep industry. Yes, the 5 or 10 people you've seen around who create prep materials for you.
Well, the dirty little secret of our business is that the money is in serving the very beginners and selling to universities.
The very beginners want frameworks to memorize. They want magic pills. I was this way back then, and you probably were too at some point.
(We all stop when we realize it doesn't work, but for most, it's too late.)
Universities, on the other hand, mean well, but they're mostly interested in buying lectures and workshops.
(You know those "Learn cases in 2 hours" workshops? Yeah, those.)
So it's easier (and more profitable) for everyone involved to give you a bunch of frameworks to "copy and paste" and maybe teach you a few isolated techniques.
But to actually learn structuring, you need a SYSTEM.
You need a system to identify the underlying logic (or structure) of the problem.
You need methods AND techniques to be able to create customized structures for each problem.
And you need a TON of in-depth exercises to see the system, methods and techniques in action and practice them yourself.
Back when Julio and I started Crafting Cases (in 2016), we saw this "gap" in the market and decided we wouldn't do like everyone else and cater to the lowest common denominator.
We would create the prep materials we wish we had back when we were preparing.
The prep materials that would help people who don't want to sound rehearsed like everyone else, but who want to learn to think and speak like consultants do.
For years, we had a program called Structuring Drills. It was a program to learn structuring through practice.
And people LOVED it. We had THOUSANDS of customers in it and 96% of our reviews were 5-star reviews.
But we had never actually shared the whole system. We saved that for a few coaching clients.
But now, we'll make it all available to you. And we held nothing back...
