Staying up late to catch up with the plan is still dead? McKinsey teaches people how to solve quickly and efficiently, a must-see for professionals

01 : It is a nightmare for many working people to have the plan rejected by the leaders.

In order to make a perfect plan, Xiao Jiang worked overtime day and night. In order to make the plan stand up to scrutiny, he conducted a detailed analysis of the massive data. In order to make the plan perfect, he carefully designed all the PPTs.

A thick stack of plans. Xiao Jiang is full of confidence.

On the day of the report, people kept asking questions about the data. This move disrupted Xiao Jiang's rhythm.

The original reporting time was stretched by more than ten minutes.

However, the plan did not pass.

Xiao Jiang was very depressed and didn't know the reason. It is obvious that his plan has been done in great detail, but why was it rejected?

Staying up late to catch up with the plan is still dead? McKinsey teaches people how to solve quickly and efficiently, a must-see for professionals

In fact, the reason is precisely because Xiaojiang's plan is too detailed!

For the boss, what he wants is not data or analysis, but solutions. However, without these data and analysis, how to prove the plan?

02: Structured thought process

In Minimal Thinking, a method is given: structured thinking process.

This is a different, but very efficient way of working. It is also a working method that McKinsey & Company highly respects. Simple and efficient.

Structured thought process, first positing a feasible scenario, then backing it up with factual data to justify that scenario. That is, the argument is the core to build the overall plan. Straightforwardly articulates ideas and leads the argumentation process.

Staying up late to catch up with the plan is still dead? McKinsey teaches people how to solve quickly and efficiently, a must-see for professionals

This makes the plan clear from the outset and to the point. When reporting, the results are clear and the process is concise.

03: How to do it?

So how to do it?

First, put forward the core recommendations of the program. This is equivalent to our straight to the point, showing him the results that the boss cares about most. Only by grabbing his attention is it possible to make him interested in listening to our plan.

What are the core recommendations?

The core proposal is also known as "elevator lobbying". In 30 seconds, the proposal point of view is expressed in the simplest way.

It's like if you and your boss happen to meet in an elevator and the boss asks how your plan is going. The core advice will allow you to get your boss to support your plan in only 30 seconds at most.

The core proposal should include two parts, the goal and the trigger point.

Of course, the goal cannot be vague, it needs to have a specific content that you want to achieve. The more detailed the expression, the better. The purpose is to prevent ambiguity. For example, our goal should be written: to test the new marketing model on the current IT system. Instead: we want to improve the utilization of IT systems.

The touch point is the focus of the boss or stakeholders. For example, for sales goals, the boss's trigger point is the increase in sales.

Staying up late to catch up with the plan is still dead? McKinsey teaches people how to solve quickly and efficiently, a must-see for professionals

Second, build a framework to structure the information.

The purpose of this is to make our solution structured, simple and convenient to justify the necessity of the core recommendations.

At the top of the information frame are the core recommendations. The foundation of the framework is all the arguments underpinning the proposal.

We can argue from two aspects of "background introduction" and "form change".

Background introduction, that is, the overall background of the existing program.

And the change in form refers to the crisis we face and how to use the core advice to defuse this crisis.

Finally, use story thinking to make the plan more convincing.

The characteristics of the story are coherence, a main line, some details and omissions, a beginning and a tail, and a main line runs through it.

How do we use story thinking to explain plans? How about making our plan sound like the story we heard as a child, easy to understand and accept?

For example, once upon a time... (background introduction)

Then, something happened... (form change)

Finally, a hero emerges and he does... (core advice)

It's as simple as that, we can draw a gourd to make the plan smooth and organized, instead of cutting the plan into pieces, like prose, with eyebrows and beards.

Using a structured thought process at work helps us simplify the planning process. Let's get rid of hundreds of thousands of data, no need for complex analysis, and no need to make a lot of tables and PPT. As long as "precise efforts", everything revolves around the ultimate goal of the program. Let's shift our ability from analyzing problems to actually solving real problems.