6 Things I Learned From 6 Months of McKinsey Management Accelerator
Key lessons and applications of management principles from one of the world’s best management consulting firms.
Being promoted to a manager position for anyone can be quite overwhelming. First because many prior employees are so used to their day to day focusing on executing and doing the tasks & projects they are assigned. Managing is a different skillset and many new managers are simply thrown into the fire with it, not having any sort of past experience or education on what to do.
Last year I was fortunate to be promoted to manager with one direct report. A few months in, I was actively seeking books, videos, or other educational materials on what I needed to develop when it comes to becoming a great manager. Luckily, there could not have been better timing with receiving an invitation through the NBA to participate in a McKinsey Hispanic and Latino Management Accelerator Program. The 6-month program was broken up into 3 main 2-month modules consisting of problem solving, business strategy, and business fundamentals.
The content of the program consisted of regular check-ins, group work, self learning modules full of McKinsey partner led videos and lots of resources and content to digest.
Here are my six main takeaways:
- Spend the time to define the problem. Slow down and question the instincts of what you are solving for.
- Develop a synthesis vs. a summary of the analysis. Get to the “so what” to get to a good recommendation.
- A strategy method should have seven building blocks:
- Frame- make a list of decisions
- Diagnose- how does the organization create value?
- Forecast- Monitor trends, uncertainty, and scenarios
- Search- Expanding the solution space
- Choose- big moves that matter the most
- Commit- reallocate resources
- Evolve- what needs to change
4. Five habits of strategic thinkers are to think beat the market, myth busting, where to play, future back, and change leadership.
5. Nine Key Areas to Understand About A Business Through the Management Lens — -Operations, Marketing & Sales, Pricing, External Spend, Risk, Talent, Strategy, Finance, and Technology
6. What’s the best way to continually keep these management principles in mind? Use, teach, talk. Apply and use the frameworks and systematic ways of effective management. Teach these to peers to develop a uniform way of managing. And continually talk through and communicate the how, what, and why of these methods.
Overall, I found this program to be valuable to have extensive learnings and material on key business management considerations. A more formulaic approach that McKinsey teaches I think can be useful to approach bigger, complex business problems you may face. One thing I do wish the program also focused on was the soft skills side of management and best practices for instance on how to have hard conversations with an employee, conducting 1:1’s,etc.
