How to Think Well (Critical Thinking)
Most MBB consultants think their problem is slides or speed, but the real issue is how they think. This post is for consultants who want to dramatically improve their problem-solving.
MBB consultants experience dozens of issues: slide-making, communication, modeling, ownership, staffing, sponsorships, promotions, and many others.
But all these issues are almost always rooted in one underlying issue:
Problem-solving.
It’s a core skill in MBB consulting.
But many consultants underestimate how much rigor and structure they must have to operate at this high level.
In this post, I reflect on how you can learn to think well.
These reflections are based on years of working at McKinsey and coaching dozens of MBB consultants.
Bear with me. This post can get a little bit dry and conceptual. But it can be the most important skill you need to learn that will have a ripple effect on everything you do.
I strongly encourage you to understand, implement, and operate these concepts in your day-to-day consulting job.
The first question I want to pose:
Why are some people better at problem-solving?
Well, some consultants get it with talent. It’s natural for them. They work intuitively, and it just works. They don’t know why and how. Around 5-10% of people get it without much struggle. Good for them.
But what if you are like me, and these things don’t come naturally to you?
You know, I was never the smartest guy in the room. I had to acquire problem-solving skills through hard work and trial and error.
I didn’t like it when people said that it’s a purely intrinsic trait. You either have it or you don’t.
I believe problem-solving can be taught and learned.
But first, let’s better understand the problem we are facing.
Consultants often don’t know how to think in a structured way.
They operate under huge pressure to deliver. Managers breathe down their necks to produce slides. Everything must be done fast.
As a result, consultants mistakenly think that their job is to produce slides. And the speed is somehow more important than the substance and quality.
It is not!
That’s how they get to produce shallow-level outputs, frustrating managers and partners.
That’s why you must always carve out time to think. That’s what makes you valuable.
But sometimes, the situation can be a bit more difficult.
Even if consultants try to think hard, they don’t know how to do it well. Good ideas just don’t come to their minds.
Or worse, they come up with incorrect or incomplete ideas that do not solve the actual problems. Or their ideas are just too trivial, not getting to the right level of depth and insight.
This is when partners will provide feedback on poor problem-solving. Often, it’s a code word for not being smart.
Problem-solving gaps are often invisible because their symptoms always manifest in random ways somewhere downstream of their work, often in slides. And partners always react to outputs, the real root causes go unnoticed for months and years.
As a result,
Consultants blame their poor slide-making.
But at some point, you’ll realize that it doesn’t matter how much you work on improving your slide-making skills. You still get stuck in the average bunch.
The solution hides in a different place.
Because you often deal with symptoms, you do not see the real root causes.
In my coaching program, we solve this problem by doing a detailed diagnosis through practical exercises, and then I show consultants what specific root causes and bottlenecks they have.
These root causes often take different shapes and forms, for example, not understanding the problem well, making implicit assumptions, deriving incorrect conclusions, and coming up with incorrect solutions. Each of them requires its own set of actions and techniques.
Now, I hope you appreciate the importance of the problem of thinking. Let’s discuss some practical techniques.
What does good thinking look like?
Inner Dialog
The first concept I want you to understand is that a good thinking process should go like an inner dialogue.
The key here is to ask yourself the right questions.
Here’s what I often see in my coaching program.
When we discuss problems with consultants, if I ask them leading questions, they typically answer them correctly. That tells me that they are smart and can think logically.
But when they solve problems on their own, they miss lots of obvious ideas and don’t come up with the right answers.
Basically, they don’t ask themselves the right questions.
If you think about it, in essence,
Good problem-solving is asking yourself the right questions.
Because if you ask yourself the right questions, answering them is much easier, almost intuitive, and obvious. But asking the right questions, this is what’s really hard.
But this is good news for us.
You can learn this skill. Yes, it takes a bit of practice and discipline. But it’s not some mysterious or intrinsic trait. It’s a technical and acquirable skill.
Logical flow
The second concept I want you to understand is that your thinking must go in logical flow, like a process or an algorithm.
Often, I see how consultants don’t have any structured process or flow.
They jump from one thing to another in a haphazard way. They often skip multiple steps. They throw in random ideas without knowing why.
Then, they can’t track back where they made a mistake or what steps need stress testing. They create blind spots for themselves that bite them later in the process.
Let me be more precise here. You can think haphazardly. Nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, that’s how our brains are wired to think.
But then, you must structure your thoughts in a logical flow, with each new thought derived from previous ones.
And you must stress test the logical integrity of your thinking because every logical step is important. If you make a mistake in any of these steps, then the whole solution becomes wrong and useless.
Basically, you must activate your System 2 thinking (according to the book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman).
Logical entities
On top of that, you must have full cognitive awareness and control of your own thinking. I know it sounds obvious, but in reality its’s extremely hard to achieve.
In your logical flow, you must operate with certain logical entities or objects.
At the very basic level, we can define the following entities: issues, assumptions, conclusions, hypotheses, and solutions.
I remember when I was a consultant, I was practicing to label every thought I had in my mind. This is an issue, this is an assumption, this is a piece of data. I forbid myself from using thoughts without clearly labeling them.
Yes, it’s hard intellectual work. Sometimes you have this good thought, you know it’s valuable. But you don’t know what it is. Is it a fact, issue, assumption, or hypothesis?
But if you don’t have that level of control in your thinking, it’s hard to expect your problem-solving to be sharp and deep.
Additionally, if you want, you can go even deeper into the theory of critical thinking. There, you can stress test the soundness of your premises and arguments. If you want to do that, ping me an email, and I will share great video lectures you can watch.
To further illustrate my point, let me give you a few examples of typical mistakes.
Unclear issues
Consultants often don’t define the issues very well.
They don’t break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces. And even if they do it, they don’t dig deeper to understand these issues. How do they work? Why are they broken? What are the underlying reasons?
But I would claim that the main problem-solving happens at this level.
The deeper you understand the issues you are solving, the sharper and more groundbreaking solutions you can develop.
Implicit assumptions
Another very common mistake is making implicit assumptions without even knowing it.
It’s a dangerous habit because you don’t even know where the problem is. If those assumptions are incorrect, the whole solution will crumble.
This is why many consultants get caught off guard by their partners.
They come to the problem-solving session with this supposedly brilliant solution, only to be slaughtered by a seemingly simple question about their underlying assumptions.
Illogical conclusions
Quite often, consultants make mistakes in deriving logical conclusions.
Sometimes it’s because they rush it and think carelessly. Sometimes it’s because they don’t have good thinking discipline.
But I want you to feel the pain of these mistakes and the damage they create.
Often, one simple logical mistake can render your whole solution useless. And all your hard work is wasted. Instead of scoring a good win, you damage your reputation.
Suboptimal solutions
One of the most invisible problems is when consultants develop suboptimal or trivial solutions. They look fine on the surface, but they don’t pass the quality bar of partners.
Why does it happen?
Often, consultants choose the first idea that comes to their mind and rush to execute it without checking for better alternative solutions. Then, when a partner asks why you haven’t considered another more effective idea, consultants get caught completely off guard.
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Here, I shared only the most common mistakes consultants make in the thinking process.
But the main point I want to make is that when you go through your logical flow, you must stress test your thoughts. Otherwise, your partners will do it for you.
Writing is a superpower
Here’s a super hack you can use to improve your thinking.
Write your thoughts in a document.
This way, you make your thinking process more transparent, and you can examine if your logic is sound.
If you think about it, our minds are not really wired to think in a logical and sequential way. Your thoughts swirl around in your mind, jumping from one to another. It’s really easy to make mistakes this way.
But it’s really hard to bullshit on paper. You’ll expose your own thinking. You can challenge and stress-test your own ideas. You will see where your mistakes originate.
Yes, it’s a much slower process. But it can be a super effective tool for solving complex and high-profile problems.
The moment of truth
Here’s another useful mindset trick I used in my problem-solving process.
At the end of the problem-solving process, I define a moment of truth.
It’s the time when I commit to the final solution.
Because I knew that if my solution was wrong, and I made a mistake in my logical thinking, everything I do beyond that point will be a complete waste of time and often will lead to serious negative repercussions like rework, stress, and reputational damage.
But I had to make that commitment, because if I don’t do it, I won’t be able to complete my task at all. And that would be even more damaging for me.
That was an important moment in my problem-solving.
That’s where I would make the final checks and stress tests, before proceeding any further.
My two main fears
When I was making that commitment, I had two major fears.
Years of experience taught me that there are two typical and most damaging mistakes I can make at this stage.
The first one is that making any logical mistake would render my whole solution wrong. That’s why I would retrace my whole logical flow and stress test every element, making sure it’s solid.
The second one is coming up with a trivial solution.
I was afraid that I got tunnel vision and didn’t notice something obvious lying on the surface, for example, a much more effective solution. And then when I show it to my partner, he would notice it right away, and I would feel embarrassed.
That’s why I would really push myself to find a better alternative solution. Or think about if someone wants to attack me, how would they do it?
How to learn to think well
You know, learning to think well is not easy.
I, as a coach, am genuinely challenged by this problem myself. How to teach to think well all my coaching clients.
Think about it for a second. How would you teach anyone how to think well? It’s a very complex problem.
Here’s the hack I use in my coaching practice.
We know that people learn best while doing things, through practice.
That’s why consultants in my program do practical exercises. This way, we can find the real root causes of their problem-solving and thinking process.
And here’s the catch.
Different people have different problems. What is obvious for you is not obvious for others. If you try to learn all possible mistakes and how to avoid them, it becomes an impossible task. It’s not effective.
That’s why a personalized approach is very important to diagnose what specific mistakes and bottlenecks you have. And fix them through actionable feedback and effective techniques.
Let me give you an example.
I really like one particular exercise.
I ask consultants to solve a problem by writing their thoughts in a structured way: issues → insights → assumptions → conclusions → hypotheses → solutions.
No need to make slides. Just pure thinking.
This way, we bootstrap the learning process. We remove unnecessary work on slide-making. Because if your solutions are wrong, you’ll make the wrong slides. But if your solutions are right, the slides will be much easier to make. We leave only the essence of thinking and problem-solving.
This exercise is super effective and insightful.
It helps us to make your mistakes visible. We can see how and when exactly they originate, and how they affect solutions.
Then, it becomes super obvious how to fix them, and at what steps of the logical thinking process they must pay more attention and apply more rigor.
That’s how you learn to think well.
If you found this helpful, read two of my deep-dive posts on the topic of critical thinking:
Are you struggling with deciphering your development feedback?
If you read until the very end, it means you really want to improve your performance as a consultant. And I know, one of your key challenges your grappling with is deciphering your development feedback you receive from your partners.
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