MECE

MECE

When you analyze, you need to be logical and coherent. You also need to avoid becoming confused. A method used by the best management consultants to analyze a project logically is called MECE for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive.

This involves finding a way of listing all aspects in a project so that they do not overlap (do not become mutually exclusive). You must ensure that the aggregated list covers all possibilities (collectively exclusive).

You must break down the options even further by actions to be taken to assess the work properly. For example – “How do I assess the feasibility option of signing an agreement with local distributors?”

To achieve MECE, follow a step-by-step process:

•     Do a market screening of the distributors;
•     See which competitors are already in contact with them;
•     Contact the most relevant ones;
•     Understand if they would be interested in distributing your product.
•     You can even put a time at the end of each action, such as: Do a market screening… (two days)…

MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive. Picture by Elena

You if do the same for each action and total the time of all actions, you will come up with a timescale. It is very important that you understand which actions you fully control or that only you can influence. For example, the market screening of distributors may take more time or contacting the most relevant distributors may take one day. In fact, you don’t know how easy it will be to reach the good contacts in the organisation, or how fast will they respond to you. Actually, for those actions you do not fully control, you can raise the time allotted by 50% to get to a fair assessment of the time needed.

Then, you need to understand whether you want to under-promise and how to communicate it to your boss or client. When you communicate a deadline on the delivery of an agreed end product, you raise an expectation. You cannot move the deadline afterward. You may have good reasons, but this is not your boss’s or client’s problem.

Thus if you are afraid of not being able to deliver on time, do not hesitate to add 20 percent more time on the deadline before communicating it. However, be careful not to overly extend the deadline, as it would mean lowering you boss’s expectations – which could be a huge handicap if you are an ambitious person willing to grow fast in a company.