Initial Framework

Framework, structure - I’m going to use these terms interchangeably. Whatever you call this roadmap, this is your time to shine.

What and Why?

What is a framework (in this context)? It’s nothing but a mind map to help your interviewer understand how you think. Since you can’t open up your cranium and show them how smart you are, you have to make do with conveying it in words. It’s cliche to say how difficult communication is, but communicating to demonstrate something is truly difficult - more so because, in moments like these, the speaker tends to focus more on saying everything they feel they need to say (to prove whatever it is they’re trying to prove), rather than what would make it easiest for their listener to hear what they want their listener to hear.

Actually, that’s a mouthful. I’ll try again.

There’s a pretty good chance you can ask a series of questions and find your way to the answer for this case, especially if you ask them one by one, which allows you to consider what you learn, pivot if you need to, ask additional questions about areas that remain unilluminated or new areas that emerge. Trouble is, that doesn’t give me confidence that you actually knew what you were doing, that your questions were considered, and that you didn’t just get lucky. I want to know you can solve ambiguous problems repeatedly. I want to know you have a process. I want to know what your plan is.

Everyone likes a plan. Plans make us feel safe. Gantt charts are such a big part of project plans because it gives everyone a feeling of organization and security - the little colored bars neatly denoting when different parts of a project will start and end. Here’s what few rarely acknowledge: it doesn’t matter if we stick to the plan or not; it just matters that we have a plan. (Side note: if Plan A falls apart and becomes useless, construct Plan B!)

The framework is your plan. You will proceed to attempt to further understand and solve this problem by asking questions, but we want you to dump out all the questions in your head first. We want to know your plan. And while you’re at it, we want you to organize it (and that will make it sound structured - see why that’s the term that gets used?).

The first goal of your structure is to impress the interviewer. Show them the breadth and depth of your thinking - how thorough you can be in considering all the nitty gritty details, how you can think of the unanticipated consequences that don’t seem immediately related, how you are keenly and always aware of what will impact the final objective. The famous acronym MECE is best demonstrated here: Mutually Exclusive, Comprehensively Exhaustive. Your framework needs to be MECE.

The reality is that your whole approach needs to be MECE, but it’s hard to always get around to the Comprehensively Exhaustive part because you’re under a time constraint, so you have to be efficient and follow the lede. In contrast, before you’ve started down any path of investigation, the framework is the best chance to showcase how MECE you can be.

The second goal of your structure is to help you stay on track. Not only does your structure need to look and sound organized, it will continue to keep you organized. As you descend into your explorations, you may hit dead ends, or get sidetracked, or get lost entirely. In those moments, instead of getting flustered, you can turn back to your structure. It’s the map you’ve drawn out for yourself prior to setting off on the expedition, so it’s the map you’ll refer to again to find out where else to explore (given that you can cross off a few paths). Keeping your composure in a high-stress moment is really difficult - you’d be remiss not to grab onto the lifeline you built for yourself!

Why do I call this your time to shine? Because if you can deliver a truly organized, comprehensive framework, my job as an evaluator is done. Also because nothing else has happened yet that should shake your confidence, so you can bring your best self (which is really your most prepared self) to the task and showcase all that you’ve got. After this moment, there’s way more uncertainty. This moment, and this moment only, everything is fully within your control - you’ve received the prompt, so you’re not waiting on anything from me, the interviewer. You have free reign and full control.

How? Part 1: Construction

Now to the mechanics of the structure.

Scores of case interview books offer common frameworks for students to memorize and regurgitate. The 3Cs: Customer, Company, Competition. The 4Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Placement, Promotion. Porter’s Five Forces. You don’t need any of it. To the uninitiated these frameworks sound both intimidating and lifesaving: intimidating because they seem to emphasize a business world full of jargon you’re an outsider to, and lifesaving because you be lured into the false security by believing you’ll sound like a part of the club if you talk the same talk.

What do the initiated do instead? They come up with their own frameworks. Countless case interview tutorials will also tell you that your framework shouldn’t sound too rigid, and that it should be tailored to the case at hand. What does that mean? Well, it means you need to actually demonstrate your thinking on this particular problem presented to you today, instead of relying on a one-size-fit-all tool you picked up some weeks ago that promises to solve most problems.

If you feel like you lack “business acumen” (whatever that means to you), you can reference the prefabricated frameworks while you learn. But here’s the nifty secret: they’re actually all the same. Or close enough. This is one of those cases when you have to learn the rules to break the rules…only to perhaps discover that your original creations will still resemble your foundational training quite a bit.

Why? Because at their cores, business problems are pretty much the same. The specifics change, but business is business at the super high level that 30-minute case interviews live at. Take Porter’s Five Forces as an example:

• Competitive Rivalry

• Supplier Power

• Buyer Power

• Threat of Substitution

• Threat of New Entry

Every business faces competition (very few monopolies around, though perhaps a growing number). A business needs inputs, and it needs customers. Whatever can substitute your offering is also your competition…and new entrants into your market are also your competition. So let’s pare it down a little, shall we? Now we’re looking at:

• Competition (Competitive Rivalry, Threat of Substitution, Threat of New Entry)

• Inputs

• Customers

Anything missing? How about how efficient the company is in its own operations? That could be a make-or-break factor in a number of cases. Whether it’s a company’s capabilities (soft skills in its labor force or hard assets as in factories or machinery) or finances (not going to get very far if you don’t have enough cash to make payroll) - sometimes it really does make sense to look at the company itself and see if it’s got the right stuff to do what it states it intends to do.

Now brace yourself for the magic trick. What are the 3Cs again? Customer, Company and Competition. Wait a minute, did we basically just distill the Five Forces into the 3Cs? You bet. You can consider inputs (or supplier power) as either under Company (as in, how well the company can negotiate with its suppliers) or under Market (for example, there is a general shortage of cacao worldwide, which drives up cacao prices, and the Company can’t do much about it).

In fact, after hundreds of case interviews and trying to “create my own” for months, I realized that pretty much every single case boiled down to some version of Customer, Company, Competition, Market / General Economy. In a healthcare case, customers are patients. In a hospitality setting, customers may be guests, or diners. In schools, customers are students or parents. These small language adaptations are simple tweaks to make your framework sound tailor-made to the case at hand. Is your case about real estate? Then the customers are homebuyers. Does your client’s company in this case sell commercial fishing equipment? Their customers are fishermen! Badaboom - you sound like you came up with this framework just for this case.

These should be the headers for your framework. Under each header, you should have a list of questions you’d like to ask. Using the same case from the Ross casebook as an example (recall that the client is a consumer products company that sells “premium products” considering if they should have a “low income strategy”), we may decide the pertinent areas to investigate are:

• Customers (and more specifically, low income consumers, because that’s who the client wants to be targeting)

• Competition (because those low income consumers are buying something, whether or not it’s the client’s “premium products”)

• Company (whether the client takes on a new strategy or decides to pivot from their existing strategy, changes within the company need to happen; furthermore, if you think you’ll want to explore anything financial - such as profitability - that’s definitely a company matter, and you can fit your “profitability framework” (which is really just an equation) neatly under this banner)

What do we want to know about Customers that may help give us a better sense of if this client should pursue a “low income strategy”? How about:

• How much do low income consumers spend on the types of products our client sells?

• What are the brands (or competitor companies) most frequently purchased by low income consumers?

• As a per product category level, what are low income consumers’ willingness to pay?

• What are some of the considerations low income consumers have when they shop and evaluate products? (Guessing price is a big factor, but it’s worth verifying if that’s true, and also finding out if they have other known priorities.)

• Where do low income consumers shop? (Is it the same as the client’s existing consumers?)

Similarly for the Company category, you may ask:

• Is the client interested in growing profits, or just revenue / market share? (Side note: it’s always strange to think that a company may not care about growing profits, but if that’s what you’re told in a case interview, stop asking about costs. The client doesn’t care about profitability, so there’s no need to investigate costs. End of story.)

• What products does the company produce and sell?

• Who do they currently target in the market?

• How are their products perceived in comparison to the competition? Do they have known brands, and if so, how strong are they? (Note: this could technically be a question you ask under the Competition category. Either is fine. Sometimes Mutually Exclusive is kind of murky - and that’s okay!)

Continue listing all the questions you can think of. I should mention at this point that either approach to constructing your framework is acceptable: you can start with the big “buckets” (categories, headers, themes, etc.) and then “drill down” into the list of questions under each one (this is sometimes referred to as the “top down” approach, but don’t bother remembering that); or you can start spilling out all your questions onto paper, and then try to group and reorganize them into coherent groups (“bottom up” approach). As long as you have a lot of questions you want to ask to help yourself figure out what’s going on with the stated problem your client wants you to solve, you’re good.

How? Part 2: Delivery

So now onto the part that your interviewer really evaluates you on: the delivery. Getting your thoughts sorted is half the battle. You want to have substance, but you have to deliver it in style. (And yes, sadly, great style can mask mediocre substance. Take note and make sure you don’t skip refining your style!)

Are you ready to show me how organized your thinking is, how effortlessly MECE you can be? This is the great illusion. No one actually thinks in flawlessly MECE categorical lists, but because you took a minute to scribble and dump out your thoughts in response to the case prompt, you now can pretend that you do. (And yes, that’s what I’m looking to buy into as the interviewer.)

The old adage in public speaking goes: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them what you’ve got to tell them, and then tell them what you told them.

What this looks like in the case interview (continuing with the same case as an example): “In order to see if it makes sense for our client to have a low income strategy, there are three main areas I’d like to investigate: Low Income Consumers, our client’s Company, and the Competition.” (Obviously, if you decide you wanted four, state four, etc. I really don’t recommend more than four areas of investigation though. Most times you’ll barely get through all four with equal thoroughness.)

“First, for Low Income Consumers, I’d like to know…” (Read off your list of questions one by one.)

“Next, for our client’s Company, I’d like to know…” (Again, read off your list of questions.)

“Lastly, for the Competition, I’d like to know…” (Rattle off the remaining questions.)

If that sounds formulaic, it’s meant to be. Here’s some sad truth: because it’s not the first time your interviewer has given this case to someone, they’re actually not all that interested in hearing every single question you’ve come up with. They just want to know you’re generally thinking about this the right way. Odds are, by signposting (clearly flagging verbally what the header is), you’re triggering their sense of familiarity - “ah yes, this sounds right, yep yep.” If you’re lucky, they’ll lightly tune out as you drone on - but wait, this is a good thing, because by glossing over what you say, they’ll also mentally fill in the blanks with anything you may actually have missed. Don’t worry - any of your original flashes of brilliance can show themselves later. Truth is, when you give the same case a dozen times (as one is wont to do when being assigned the role of a case interviewer), the odds of any candidate coming up with something completely unique but still spot-on relevant are very, very slim.

You actually want to build in these little mental breaks for your interviewer. Take pity - they are acutely aware of all the emails trickling into their inbox as they try to maintain eye contact with you, and their mind is frantically trying not to think about all the work they have to do once they get out of this interview (or this day of interviews). They don’t want to have to hang on to your every word; they want to get the reassurance that you get the big picture and are presentable. As much as the framework is an important first impression, the substance of the framework is also the part of the case interview that’s most likely to be similar across candidates. You differentiate yourself in how clearly you can deliver your framework: you sound effortlessly organized, your interviewer can follow along with your general direction without having to strain and parse every syllable.

Finished listing off the questions in your last category? Wait, just a little more.

First, recap your three categories (“tell them what you told them”) - this is also a good safeguard, in case your interviewer dozed off at the beginning, you can remind them what your main categories are (and still get brownie points for having the right structure): “With these three areas of Low Income Consumers, our client’s Company, and the Competition, I think I can get a good sense of what our client’s strategy should be.”

Then, to move the interview forward, pick the most pertinent category to start with, “I’d like to start with understanding more about Low Income Consumers. Does that sound good to you?”

I build in these semi-rhetorical questions at transition points for two purposes. They help with the flow of the interview in that the conversation sounds less contrived and more colloquial. They also help you by giving your interviewer convenient points to confirm your direction or redirect you. In the (hopefully rare) instances when you’re totally off course, this is when your interviewer can pipe up and interject, “Actually, our client is really interested in [some other area], let’s start there instead.” A common example of this is when a candidate builds a whole category of investigation off costs, but the client is not interested in either costs or profitability, and so the whole line of investigation is going to yield boring “sorry, I don’t have any information on that” responses from the interviewer.

Oh, one last word on physically showing your interviewer your structure: don’t bother. If you need to show them your columns to “walk them through it,” you’ve failed at coming across as clear and organized. You should be delivering your framework so well simply by speaking that it’s painting the exact table in your interviewer’s mind (or their notes). So whether you’re doing your interview in person or online, don’t bother flipping your notes over or holding them up to the camera. You should be making it unmistakably evident with your words what the “picture” of your structure looks like in my mind. If I walk away confused about what one of the headers were, or under which category this one question fell under, I’m not giving you the best score for the framework.