14. Start Analysis with MECE: Who Would Make a Better Girlfriend, Mulan or Lin Daiyu? 35 Lessons in Critical Thinking: Think Like a Debater

35 Lessons in Critical Thinking: Think Like a Debater

Pang Ying

Transcript

Hello, I’m Pang Ying. Welcome to Episode 14 of Think Like a Debater.

After thirteen episodes devoted to taking arguments apart, today we enter Part Two:building them.。

Many people ask how to make their thought and expression more organized.

Many wonder how to improve their ability to analyze and solve problems.

Consider a series of problems:

Who would make a better leader, Liu Bei or Cao Cao?
Who would make a better girlfriend, Hua Mulan or Lin Daiyu?
After three smooth years, Telecom Company A’s profit suddenly falls. What should it do?
How can colleagues build trust internally and encourage information sharing?
Should the retirement age be raised?

These very different questions can all use a structural framework called MECE: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive.

The categories do not overlap, making them mutually exclusive; together they cover the analysis completely, making them collectively exhaustive.

This is one of the most fundamental methods in management consulting.

Miss Nothing, Find the Core, Divide the Factors, Identify the Problem

I will explain MECE with a final-round BCG case interview I personally encountered.

The full case was: a country has three major telecom companies, A, B, and C. All were doing well, but this year A’s profit suddenly declined. Why, and what should it do?

In a case interview, after hearing the prompt, you write a structural framework on an A4 sheet, present it, and ask the interviewer for more information. The diagram resembles a tree, so we call it a logic tree.

The first level of this tree—the issue to analyze—isprofit.。

What determines profit? Revenue minus cost equals profit, so the second level isrevenueandcost.。

Revenue and cost do not overlap, yet together leave nothing out of profit analysis. This division satisfies MECE.

At the third level, revenue can be divided into unit price and quantity, because revenue equals price times quantity. If revenue fell, was the cause a lower price, fewer units sold, or both? That is why we divide it this way.

Cost can be divided into fixed and variable costs.

Fixed costs might include celebrity endorsements, R&D, rent and equipment, and other fixed costs. Variable costs include sales commissions and other variable expenses.

2021.12.14

Audio in Chinese