Mindset Shift #1 Shifting From The "What" To The "How"

0:00The first mindset I want to introduce to you is a shift from thinking about the what to the how. In most organizations in today's business world, people mostly just think about what they should do. How do I do a certain task or some assignment in a certain way? Has to look like this, has to be formatted like this, it's done this way the same way every time. This is what I experienced in my first job at GE. But when I started at McKinsey a year later, I experienced a completely different way of approaching knowledge work, in a way which I think can be helpful and useful to anyone working with information, ideas and data.

0:48Where does this idea that we need to know what we're working on come from? This shift away from the do things a certain way is so hard because it's what we were taught in school. We were taught, okay, here's a two page assignment, do a double space, 12.5, don't work with anyone else and hidden it in exactly at this time, you're not going to get any feedback before you submit it. It's totally unnatural, that way of working, sort of supposes that we can conjure up this genius mode of creation and do things right the first time.

1:28And what I experienced that firms like BCG McKinsey was a much more iterative approach. And you were taught that there's a process you follow. And throughout the process you're constantly coming up with better ways to solve the problem. How could we organize the question better? How could we define the problem more clearly? How could we come up with better questions to test? Is there a better way of presenting this information such that our recommendations will be adopted? And you can apply this in any sort of job working with knowledge and information, just replace your client with the internal stakeholders or leadership or management. The consulting process we'll talk about throughout this course is very simple.

2:13It starts with one, defining a problem, two, asking questions or formulating hypotheses, three, doing the research and finding the answers to those questions. And then four, developing recommendations. And this last part, the recommendation only comes at the end. So instead of starting with solutions, we're starting with problems. And then trying to approach it in a scientific way of asking questions, formulating hypotheses. And when we get to the answers, we then think about how do we actually structure that answer, given all the research and analysis we did, in a way where we can persuade, inspire, or get people to take action.

2:59The other thing to know about this is that the consulting process doesn't always feel good, especially at first. When you first start doing this kind of work and doing the assignments in this course, you're going to be uncomfortable. You rather know exactly what you're supposed to do. What is the framework? How do we fill out this form? Approaching problems this way is really about embracing ambiguity and not knowing what the answers will be before you start. This is annoying. And I want you to know this going in. But when you feel that feeling, you need to tell yourself, OK, I'm on the right path.

3:41This is how it's supposed to feel. An example to bring this alive, shifting from the what to the how really abandons solution seeking. So instead of being in a conversation and listening to people, you know the single problem with X is this, people say this in the US all the time. The problem with healthcare is this one specific thing. You'll never do that again. Instead you'll say, well, first we don't actually know what problem we're solving. We need to define that and then ask questions and then either prove or disprove those questions.