How to Write Key Takeaway Slides (with Examples and Free Template)
This guide, written by an ex-McKinsey consultant, teaches you how to create best-practice key takeaway slides based on a proven framework.
Sep 2, 2024
If you have been around strategy consultants, you've probably heard someone ask...
Is this MECE?
MECE stands for "Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive" and is one of the most foundational concepts in consulting.
In this post, we cover the MECE framework and how you can apply it to sharpen your thinking and simplify complex ideas into something that can easily be understood.
MECE is a problem-structuring framework that organizes data into simple and logical categories. The concept was developed by Barbara Minto at McKinsey back in the 1960s, but it is still widely used across consulting firms today.
The MECE framework consists of two rules:
Together, these two rules can help you translate complex information into simple and logical categories.
By following these steps, you can apply MECE and ensure that all possible options for solving a problem are considered in a logical way.
Consultants are often faced with big hairy problems like:
To answer these kinds of questions, it often helps to break up the problem into smaller buckets of issues that can be analyzed in a structured way - allowing you to identify key drivers that lead to maximum impact.
The MECE principle can help structure complex information into simple and logical buckets that can be analyzed one by one without missing anything.
To illustrate the MECE principle, consider a simple example.
Imagine a library where books need to be categorized into different genres. You cannot have too many genres or it will be impossible for users to find what they are looking for. At the same time, you want to have enough so the books are grouped in logical buckets helping your users find ones of interest and not have to sift through too many non-relevant titles.
Applying the MECE principle to this problem:
This way, the library's categorization system avoids any overlaps between genres (mutually exclusive) while ensuring that every book is included in one of the categories (collectively exhaustive). The balance of how many genres to include depend on that specific library and their collection size and content.
Let's look at some more real-life examples of applying the MECE framework to get a sense of how it works in practice.
You are working with a large theme park tasked with finding ways to increase revenue.
As a start, you want to get an overall picture of revenue sources and development. Your colleague (unfamiliar with the MECE framework) works on this question and comes back with this slide:
Let's analyze this from the perspective of the MECE framework.
Finally, the number of charts, each with a different Y-axis, makes the slide a bit overwhelming.
Now, let's simplify and improve the slide by applying the MECE framework:
The different revenue streams have now been divided into three mutually exclusive categories. It is also clear that the three buckets are collectively exhaustive as they account for 100% of revenue.
It is easy to see that most revenue comes from Park admissions and Food and Merchandise. Hence, focusing the initial analysis on the areas might make sense.
Imagine you have been tasked with identifying operating cost savings for a struggling airline.
An airline's cost structure comprises hundreds of unique cost categories, so how do you translate this complex picture into simple and logical buckets covering all possible options without any gaps?
One way of doing this is by combining the MECE framework with a so-called issue-three, a tool that consultants use to break down big problems into smaller manageable ones.
Visually, it can look like this:
As you can see, operating costs are broken down into more and more granular cost categories for each step to the right. Using MECE, there should be no overlap between the categories in each column (mutually exclusive) and each column sum to 100% of total operating costs (collectively exhaustive).
You can use the MECE principle whenever you are faced with a complex problem or need to sort a lengthy PowerPoint presentation into clear and distinct sections.
Here are concrete scenarios where you can apply the MECE principle:
The 80/20 rule, states that roughly 80% of the effects of something come from 20% of the causes. Finding a solution to an overall problem doesn't mean solving every little problem. Being MECE does not mean every stone must be turned and analyzed.
For instance, if your company has an urgent cost issue, one starting point could be to group costs into some MECE buckets. Let's say one bucket contains "warehousing expenses," but this only accounts for 0.5% of total costs. Now that you've identified that warehousing is not a key driver of costs, it would likely be okay for you to focus your analysis on other areas.
If you enjoyed this post, then make sure to check our extensive library of consulting presentation templates and resources – all of them created by ex-consultants from BCG, McKinsey, and Bain.