Mastering brainstorming is an extremely rare skill with candidates who interview at MBB. But if done right, showing strong brainstorming skills is an enormously powerful way to set yourself apart from practically all other applicants who interview with McKinsey et. al.! And by the way – it will also serve you massively during your career as a top strategy consultant!

Brainstorming questions usually come in the form of

Imagine we are discussing a situation where the Ministry of Education in a developing country has asked the question:

You have to realize that brainstorming is not just about the ideas themselves (in fact, it is not even primarily about the ideas!), but first and foremost about HOW you generate these ideas! You want to demonstrate the rigor of your thinking, as well as the ability to outline and articulate this thinking in a sharp way.

So here is how a very strong candidate develop his answer to this brainstorming question (please look at the diagram below!):

Step 1: Outline the precise question – “How can we improve primary education in country X?”

Note that this question is impossible to answer before having precisely defined, what “quality of primary education” actually means! It could be number of children going to school… Or number of graduates produced by the system… Or how good the pupils are… etc. A blurry question like “How to improve…” MUST be defined! And it is the candidate’s duty to nail down the interviewer on the definition of what we are solving for – the FOCUS METRIC! 

So let’s assume, the interviewer confirms that the focus metric is “number of children going to school”. Only now we can proceed!

Step 2: Disaggregate the question – build the logic tree and identify what drives the answer to the question. 

So we could imagine that the primary reasons for NOT sending children to school would be of financial nature, logistical nature, and potentially cultural nature. Then you develop the tree into a set of sub-branches which further disaggregate these three categories into sub-reasons. If we can do something about these sub-reasons, then they are “levers” which we can pull!

Step 3: Develop ideas – NOW is the time for the actual ideation! Outline concrete examples on the actual measures which could influence each lever into the desired direction.

THIS is how you brainstorm! Define the focal question, disaggregate this question into its constituting elements, and then outline concrete examples underneath each (sub-)element which could answer the main question.

We could address the following question in a similar way:

This showcases MUCH richer thinking than what 99% of candidates would be able to come up with in an MBB interview when following the advice from typical case preparation books!

If you, as an applicant at one of the big strategy consulting firms, would like to learn how to ensure success in your interviews with McKinsey, BCG, or Bain, then feel free to apply for a free initial consultation with us. In this free session we will find out whether we can help you, and if so, how we can help you to reach your goal of joining a firm like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain & Company. 

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