what is Mesi and how does it apply to your case interviews you'll find out in this video before we begin I would like to introduce myself and explain why I'm the right person to teach you about misi my name is Davis and I'm a former Bain Management Consultant and a founder of my Consulting offer where I've helped thousands of aspiring Consultants master misi and a case interview on their way to learning their dream Consulting offer misi is a strategy for organizing or dividing things such as ideas people and objects into groups that are both distinct and comprehensive but what exactly does this mean let's actually simplify it with an example imagine that you and I had a jar of marbles and all the marbles came in one of three colors red yellow or blue and each marble is one of three sizes we'll call them big medium and small and let's say that we wanted to sort the marbles how would we do it let's use misi to help us stay organized the me in me C stands for a mutually exclusive which means that when you sort everything every item should belong to exactly one group or one category that means that no item can fit into multiple categories if we're sorting out our jar for example we could sort the jars is by color we do a group for red a group for yellows and a group for blues and each marble will belong to one category but cannot belong to more than one category not mutually exclusive would be if we had categories like red yellow blue and big that is because a marble can then belong into two groups for example we've had a big red marble then it would belong to both the red marble group and the big group thus when we're counting the marbles we might double count the big red marble because we count it once in a red category and once in a big category thus it's not mutually exclusive why Consultants care so much that groupings are mutually exclusive is that you don't want to double count anything and does skew your analysis for example one of the cases I worked at Bain involved understanding the revenues of a tire company and where we can improve it so if I was not mutually exclusive the categories might have been revenue from the United States revenue from Canada and revenue from truck tires while having United States revenue and Canada Revenue is distinctive because a tire can be sold in the United States or in Canada but not both having truck tires would double count since a truck tire could be sold in both the US and under the truck tire how to category if I did this and I came to my client with the revenues they've been like wow your revenues are way off and not trust me that's why Consultants want to be mutually exclusive but being mutually exclusive isn't enough you also want to be collectively exhaustive which means that every item is sorted and none are left out in our jar example that would be making sure that all the marbles are sorted into a group for example not being collectively exhaustive would be having a group for red marbles and one for yellow marbles but no other groups that's because we still have blue marbles that are not accounted for so we want to have a group for red a group for yellow and a group for blue and of course you can further break it down for example if we wanted to combine the groups and make the groups even smaller and combine more characteristics we might break the marbles down both by size and color so we would have big red marbles medium red marbles small red marbles big yellow marbles medium yellow marbles small yellow marbles big blue marbles medium blue marbles and small blue marbles so now you can see the power being collectively exhaustive but let's actually think about why it's so important when looking at a case so you can see here that being collectively exhaustive is how for Consultants because it means that nothing is left out our thinking is comprehensive for example there was a case at Bane where I had to figure out how to create a bonus structure for the employees at a certain company and so I had to break down the employees to make sure that every Department had a bonus structure which was the Mandate from the CEO let's say that for example I've grouped into marketing and sales but I forgot the engineering team then the engineering team will come back and think hey why are we left out of the bonus so you want to make sure you're collectively exhaustive so in short being mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive is like organizing a jar of items into particular groups in such a way that every item belongs to one group and all items are accounted for but of course in Consulting you aren't going to be sorting marbles all day so why is misi so important to Consulting to demonstrate a point I want to share with you a story of a Consulting project where I was putting together a delivery plan for how to get life-saving medicines to locals in Nigeria to make sure we were able to get the medicine to the right people I had to group The Local population in a way that was messy because for example if I wasn't mutually exclusive it means that some people would be able to get more medicine which leaves less medicine for everyone else so for example let's say that I was bucketing by age then if I had overlapping age just as 0 to 20 20 to 40 40 to 60 60 to 80. you can kind of see here that certain people will fall into multiple groups so for example if someone's 20 years old they would fall into both the 0 to 20 and the 20 to 40. same with the 40 would fall into both groups and 16 to 12 groups they might end up getting double the medicine and that leaves less medicine for everyone else so in order to make sure that everyone only falls into one category and would only get the medicine they need I would have to change the bucketing to make sure that it's mutually exclusive so I might do 0 to 20 21 to 40 41 to 60 61 to 80. so that's mutually exclusive but you also have to be collectively exhaustive and you might have noticed that this grouping is mutually exclusive but it's not collectively exhaustive because it doesn't include everyone who might be older than 80. so I actually have to add another bucket which I'll call the 81 plus eventually though this is the plan that we went out with and everyone was able to get the medicine and we were able to save lives so with this example I hope you see how powerful Mesi is when it comes to being able to think like a consultant and because consulting firms know how powerful misi is and Missy thinking is they expect their candidates to also be able to think in misi so even before you become a consultant misi is going to come up in the interview process in particular in your case interviews so let's talk about where you can expect it so let's imagine that you're in a case interview and the prompt is that a tech company with three products hired you and your team to increase their profits after you receive the prompt the interviewer is going to expect you to structure the case this is where you have to make a structure and your structure needs to be messy so for example in our case you might have noticed that we have three products so you might break up your framework into those three products product a product B and product C in order to know where to increase profits you might have to understand each of their revenues and each of their costs if you notice here that we're being messy here with each product and what we're looking at in terms of profit now let's head at the interviewer likes your framework and they say hey you know what the costs are actually pretty low already for all these products we actually think the area that we need to improve is the revenue which product has the biggest Revenue potential so now you have to do some math impact as it's called a market sizing where you have to estimate the total revenue that each of the product could bring well how would you do this there's a lot of ways that you can do it for example you might look at each product a product B and product C in order to calculate the revenue you might break down the customer types so for example let's say that this particular Company sell to Consumers sold the businesses sold the governments and non-profit organizations you might break it down to each of these because you might realize that a consumer might only buy one of these a year businesses might buy two a year government might buy three a year and non-profits might buy one every 10 years so you can kind of see that the their purchase behavior is going to be different but you want to be able to break it down into a messy way so you can apply numbers and Analysis to figure out what the revenue could be and let's say that you do this an interviewer is really impressed and they say you know what product B looks like it has the most Revenue that we aren't earning currently and let's say that you do this and then the interviewer comes back and says you know what product B seems like it has the highest revenue potential I think one of the things that the client told us is that the marketing for product B isn't as good as it could be could you brainstorm ways in order for us to improve our marketing now this goes into another analysis called the brainstorming and here you could be Missy by breaking down your brainstorming into categories so for example you might do offline marketing such as going to stores having posters having trade shows and you might do online such as social media or Google search so you can kind of see here you can break down your brainstorming into BC by having two buckets offline and online so now you see how messy would apply in your case interviews and if you're new to casing or want a quick way to think like a consultant and be messy here's a technique that I like to use I call it the X non-x method which is when I divide categories I pick one grouping that becomes my X and I create another grouping called non-x which is everything not X we'll actually practice one together so let's imagine that you and I went to the zoo and we wanted to sort out all the animals in the zoo I might pick X to be Birds which means that non-x becomes non-birds so every bird I would put under the bird category and every other animal I would put under non-bird so I want to ask you this what other X non-x can you come up with with sorting animals at a zoo and I promise you if you practice this you're gonna get better at being messy in fact if you comment below with how you would sort out animals I'll reply back so leave a comment below and say something other than bird non-bird how would you sort an animal that had to do use the X on x method and you'll see how powerful it is I'm excited to read through all your replies and in addition if you're serious about Landing a job in management consulting I'd love to help you here on my Consulting offer my team is made up of former interviewers and recruiters from the top consulting firms and we've helped thousands of people get interviews and land offers at top consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain and I'd love for you to be our next success story all you have to do to see if working with us is a good idea is to click the link below and book a free strategy session with my team but you don't take my award for it hear from Catherine who joined our program and then three weeks later landed her job at BCG