Frameworks, as tools

When to use: Every case. It is how you turn a vague question into a clear plan.

Its limit: A tree is only as good as its first split. A messy top level breaks everything below it.

How to tailor it: Choose the split that fits this problem: by formula (profit = revenue minus cost), by stage in a process, by clear groups, or by a simple yes and no.

Origin: MECE is usually credited to Barbara Minto at McKinsey.

When to use: Every recommendation, summary and written answer, and the final synthesis of every case.

Its limit: It organizes your thinking but does not create it. A well-shaped answer with weak evidence is still weak.

How to tailor it: Open with the answer in one sentence, give the reasons in order of importance, and end with the next step and the main risk.

Origin: Barbara Minto, developed at McKinsey and set out in her book The Pyramid Principle.

When to use: Any profitability or profit and loss case. It is the default first split.

Its limit: It shows where the problem is, not why. You still need the business context and judgment to explain the driver.

How to tailor it: Use the numbers to decide quickly whether revenue or cost moved, then expand only that side, with drivers specific to the business.

When to use: When the problem is on the revenue side, or in growth cases.

Its limit: Pulling one lever can hurt another (raise price, lose volume), so check how they interact.

How to tailor it: Expand only the branch that is moving; do not size every branch for its own sake.

When to use: Cost-cutting and profitability cases where cost is the driver.

Its limit: Buckets vary by business; a generic cost tree misses the real drivers of this specific one.

How to tailor it: Build the buckets for this business, then attack the biggest cuttable one while protecting what drives revenue.

When to use: Growth, start-up, subscription and new-channel cases, and any time a business grows revenue but not profit.

Its limit: Averages hide spread: some customers or stores may be very profitable and others loss-making, and fixed costs sit outside the unit view.

How to tailor it: Choose the unit that matches the decision (per order for delivery, per store for retail, per customer for subscriptions), then split it by segment.

Origin: A general finance tool with no single author.

When to use: Market, entry and growth cases, as a quick checklist of angles you might be missing.

Its limit: Reciting it as your structure is a known way to fail; it is a source of ideas, not an answer. It also leaves out economics and the wider environment.

How to tailor it: Pull ideas from it silently, then present a structure built for this specific decision.

Origin: Kenichi Ohmae, a McKinsey partner, in The Mind of the Strategist.

When to use: Market study and industry-attractiveness questions, and the "is the market attractive?" branch of an entry case.

Its limit: It describes the industry, not one company, and it is a snapshot. It says little about complementary products, fast-changing digital markets, or why one firm beats another. Easy to recite without linking each force to the client.

How to tailor it: Focus on the one or two forces that shape this industry, say how they are changing, and state what each means for the client.

Origin: Michael E. Porter, "How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy", Harvard Business Review, 1979, and the book Competitive Strategy (1980).

When to use: Competitive strategy, positioning and turnaround cases, to test whether the client has a clear way to win.

Its limit: Some firms succeed with both low cost and differentiation, so treat it as a test of clarity, not a strict rule.

How to tailor it: Ask what the client is best at today and what customers pay for, then check whether costs, pricing and investment all support that one position.

Origin: Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy (1980).

When to use: To find where a cost or a problem sits, where the company creates value, and where an advantage comes from, especially in cost and operations cases.

Its limit: It can miss demand-side issues such as brand fit or willingness to pay, and it describes one firm. The wider chain across companies is the industry value chain.

How to tailor it: Walk it stage by stage for this business, size the cost at each stage, and stop at the stage where the problem clearly lives.

Origin: Michael E. Porter, Competitive Advantage (1985).

When to use: Portfolio questions: which businesses to invest in, keep for cash, fix or sell.

Its limit: Only two measures, both hard to define well. It ignores profitability differences, links between units, and markets where share does not bring lower cost.

How to tailor it: Use it as a first sort, then check each unit's actual profit, cash needs and fit with the group before recommending.

Origin: Bruce Henderson, Boston Consulting Group, around 1970.

When to use: Growth strategy cases, to make sure you have considered every route and their different risk levels.

Its limit: It lists routes but does not size or rank them, and it leaves out acquisitions as a way to take each route.

How to tailor it: Size the most promising option in each box, then rank by value and risk. Risk usually rises the further you move from the current business.

Origin: H. Igor Ansoff, "Strategies for Diversification", Harvard Business Review, 1957.

When to use: Growth and revenue cases, to replace an unranked brainstorm with a clean split.

Its limit: It tells you where growth can come from, not how much; you still must size and rank the levers.

How to tailor it: Size the top one or two levers and lead with a clear first move rather than listing everything.

When to use: Market entry and expansion cases.

Its limit: Each bucket still needs real numbers; the structure alone does not decide.

How to tailor it: Lead with the bucket you think decides the case (often whether the company can win), and finish with the entry mode: build, buy or partner.

When to use: Mergers, acquisitions and private-equity due diligence.

Its limit: Synergies are often overestimated and cost money to achieve, so treat them as claims to test, not facts.

How to tailor it: Separate the target's standalone value from synergies, and check whether the deal works without the synergies.

When to use: Organization, change and post-merger integration questions, to find what is out of line when a strategy is not being delivered.

Its limit: It is a checklist of fit, not a way to measure or rank the problems, and it says little about customers or competitors.

How to tailor it: Start from the strategy, then check which of the other six elements works against it, and focus on the one or two biggest gaps.

Origin: Tom Peters and Robert Waterman at McKinsey, with Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos, around 1980.

When to use: A quick first scan in strategy work, or to summarize findings for a client.

Its limit: It does not rank anything or lead to a decision on its own, so it is rarely a good case structure.

How to tailor it: Link each strength to an opportunity and each weakness to a threat, and turn those links into options you can size.

Origin: The origin is unclear; it is usually linked to business planning work in the 1960s.

When to use: Market studies, entry into a new country, and long-term strategy, to spot trends and risks outside the industry.

Its limit: It is easy to produce a long, unranked list. It does not say which factors matter or by how much.

How to tailor it: Keep only the two or three factors that change the decision, and say how each affects demand, cost or risk.

Origin: Grew out of Francis Aguilar's environmental scanning work, Scanning the Business Environment (1967).

When to use: Launch and marketing questions, to plan how to bring something to market.

Its limit: Useful for the how, not the whether. Do not lead a case with it.

How to tailor it: Apply it after you have decided the move is worth making, to plan the rollout.

Origin: E. Jerome McCarthy (1960), organizing Neil Borden's idea of the marketing mix. The three extra Ps for services come from Bernard Booms and Mary Jo Bitner (1981).

When to use: Any pricing question.

Its limit: Cost-based pricing ignores what customers will pay, and competitor prices can anchor you too low when your product is better. Value is the hardest to estimate and usually the most useful.

How to tailor it: Always reach the value lens: estimate what the product is worth to the customer in money, then capture a fair share of it, and check how volume will respond.

When to use: Launch, investment and pricing cases, to test whether a volume is realistic.

Its limit: A breakeven number means little without a sense of whether that volume is plausible.

How to tailor it: Always compare the breakeven with a realistic estimate of demand before drawing a conclusion.

When to use: Operations, capacity and supply-chain cases.

Its limit: Real processes have variability and queues that the simple view ignores.

How to tailor it: Find the step that limits output, fix it, then find the next constraint, rather than improving every step evenly.

Origin: Central to Eliyahu Goldratt's theory of constraints, set out in The Goal (1984).