Improving Marketing Effectiveness through Structured Logical Thinking & -Communication with MECE-Principle

MECE was developed by McKinsey and is widely used by (big) consultancies to organize information in a logical and structured way to then present it effectively to the client.

MECE stands for:

Mutually Exclusive

Collectively Exhaustive

Mutually Exclusive means that the analyzed sub-parts of the entire problem only fits within one category.

For instance, age group versus geographical location. These two categories are not Mutually Exclusive because no matter what age, it also belongs to a particular geography. This means overlap will occur.

Collectively Exhaustive means all analyzed fit within one of the categories defined in the first step.

Examples:

There are many models that have the MECE principle underlying, think of market studies, Porter Five Forces model, but more day to day: formula's. The underlying thinking is the following structure:

Source: StrategyU

If you are presented with the problem of improving sales you can apply different approaches:

B2C vs B2B

Amount of yearly revenue

Amount of employees

etc etc

or

Profit = Revenue - Costs where then Revenue and Cost are split up to Price per Unit and Quantity and Variable and Fixed Costs per Unit (be it product or service).

Another part I like is how to structure the problem:

Situation -> Complication -> Question -> Answer

Example just to show the flow

Situation: client/company is an ecommerce player in 4 countries.

Complication: has diminishing revenues (YoY) in 2 out of 4 countries.

Question: how can the ecommerce player increase revenues?

Answer: this is where all the analytical work comes in play and you provide a solution or a solution direction to the (internal/external) client.

No matter if you are on agency- or client-side, dissecting the abstract problem of decreasing revenues comes across often and of course (agency side right now) I am asked if it has to do with our marketing executions or not.

I am not in a strategy consultancy, so we don't have to fix any business strategy problems, but still it can be very relevant, effective, time-efficient to use.

This is where I like MECE because I can quickly start break down the potential problems (hypotheses) and then understand if it is something we caused/we can fix (circle of control) or it is in the circle of influence. This will cost-efficiently analyse a solution direction which can be done by me or is outside of me. If outside of me, I will discuss/point out to the client my findings and help getting more clarity.

Benefits I experienced:

*It is structured, logical and therefore clear.

*Less or no risk to miss a potential rootcause

Check out the book Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto (McKinsey) or the many sources online for much more information.

If you did not know about MECE, hope pointing out to MECE helps your work, becoming more effective and having more fun at it.

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