everyone thinks they know how to use conceptual frameworks in cases interviews but very few candidates even know what in traverse observing when do you look at them as they spit out the business situation framework or something like that conceptual frameworks are the hardest type of structure to master but they're the most important one as well when you're dealing with strategy and you're always dealing with strategy and consulting conceptual frameworks are the only tool that will help you think about long term qualitative problems my name is Bruno I'm an ex McKinsey consultant and the co-founder of crafting cases where we teach you how to stand out in your case interviews by thinking like a top management consultants and in this video I'm gonna show you the third way to be missing conceptual frameworks I'm gonna show you what they are how to use them and what to be aware of when using them such as should I use a premade framework and adapt it or should I build one up from scratch now this video is part of a longer series of videos called the five ways to be missing so if you just happen to want to know more about conceptual frameworks keep watching this video but if you want to know about all the five ways to be missing I highly recommend you you start at the beginning of the playlist which I'm gonna put it up here so without further ado let's jump right into conceptual frameworks so first things first let's see what our conceptual frameworks and let's see some examples of them later I'm going to show you how to use them and what are some things that you should be aware when using them so what are conceptual frameworks basically it's when you categorize a bunch of different qualitative drivers so you get a bunch of drivers to something qualitative ones generally and you categorize them into conceptual structures so broader words describe in more precise words so just one example of that if you get Porter's five forces it's a framework on and long-term industry profitability so how profitable is the airline industry or the retail industry and so on and the way Porter builds that is he got some drivers of industry profitability for example barriers to entry switching costs of customers concentration of suppliers and so on and he categorized that into five forces so you have the threat of new entrants you have the threat of substitutes you have the the bargaining power of customers and suppliers and you have the competitiveness of your own part of the value chain so he categorized a bunch of drivers of profitability into five concepts or five forces in his case now he could have described industry profitability as the industry's revenues minus the industry's costs this would be an algebra structure for the same problem you wouldn't be as insightful as doing a conceptual framework for that because mr. Porter was worried about strategy about long term effects and you can't have numbers for the far future so that's the first example of a conceptual framework then there's also other examples for example you get the three C's customers company and competition if you want to understand how likely is a company to perform well in a competitive environment you have to for piece of marketing if you want to understand your tactical options when marketing a new product or a product portfolio if you want to solve a simple organizational problem for example an interface between two departments of a company you can use the people process and systems framework well I used to use that all the time at McKinsey but you can also create your own conceptual frameworks for different problems for different case interview problems and the key is to break down the system for example the competitive market or industry's profitability or whatever system you're working with you break it down into smaller parts into smaller players for example so let's get some examples of conceptual framers you could build in your case interviews for specific case questions suppose you get a question what should Tesla do to increase sales of electric cars and you want to solve that with a conceptual framework after all it's a strategic problem you can't say that sales is quantitative but it's hard to get data on the future of the electric car market or anything so here's how I would break down this problem what are customers looking for when deciding to buy a car so I have a customers category here which is important because I can only increase sales if they if I know what they want what is the competition doing and what's their strategy so that I can retain high market share what is within Tesla's reach to do so of all the options what can we actually do probably not every single option of them how are Tesla's current products versus their competition and I'd probably also look at the pipeline of products and finally what infrastructure changes would impact demand for electric cars so for example charging stations or homes with roofs that generates electricity an idea for Elon Musk here anyway I just used the three C's I added the product category which is something that a lot of people do but I've also added an infrastructure category in this case why did I use the three C's because it's a competitive problem why did I add the other two categories products because selling cars is a lot more about products than about the company itself in most cases and infrastructure because this is an industry that still doesn't have the infrastructure developed so maybe the key to develop this industry is on infrastructure let's check another case for which I would not find a framework in the case interview book how can a law firm increase the quality of its staff so personal developments in a law firm I can't find a framework for that in the case interview book but I can make my own I can get a system which is the quality of a worker of a knowledge worker and break it down into its parts so they can get smarter people so that's one way to do it they can get more experienced people so it's not only about how smart you are it's also about how experienced you you are they can get better educated people so maybe people who studied at better law firms or that got more advanced degrees they can get more motivated people it's not just about intelligence or experience or education it's also about how motivated you are they can train these people better so maybe it's not about getting better people it's about training them to be better or they can also expose these people to projects that give them more experience and just notice the type of there but anyway I broke down into these six factors which are the ones that I found relevant hey Bruno but it's also important that they're collaborative great if you think that add that to your own structure I'm not saying that it's not important I'm just saying that this is the framework that I built that with self that I find relevant and actually I think collaboration is pretty important as well let's check another case how would you improve a business school education so here's how I would break it down we can get better professors we can get better students we learn a lot from each other we can get better books and materials maybe we're using books from outer that are not really good for example or we could be using more cases or whatever we can improve our curriculum and I know the other type of as well we can improve our extra curriculars so this is just an example I got an educational system of one business when I broke it down into its elements now you might also be thinking oh but there's also the technology or whatever the internships and one thing that may be crossing your mind now is it's hard to make these structures exhaustive we're gonna get there later hold onto your chair but these are just some examples of conceptual frameworks for specific case interview problems you might face in your case interviews now we do have a step-by-step process on how to get a system and break it down into its parts in our free course on case interview fundamentals but at a high level it's that simple and just find out what are the parts that constitute your system now now that we understand what are conceptual frameworks and can see how a few of them look like and how they're different from each other let's take a look at how to use them in your case interviews the first step to use the conceptual framework is of course to understand if you actually want to use one or not so if you have a problem that's not numerical or in which you have very few numbers or if you can't trust the numbers for example in a long term problem equal sexual framework might be a great choice because you don't need numbers to use it you just need to work with conceptual information and obviously can put some numbers in it and you can use numbers together with it but you don't need the numbers also if you have a problem in which you want to understand the whole context of the situation a conceptual framework might also be a great choice because in a conceptual framework you're getting a system and you're breaking it down into the parts of the system so you're looking at the whole problem from the and angles now if you have a problem in which you want to eliminate the parts that are not part of the problem as quickly as possible so you want to get to a root cause you want to get you want to get a big problem and reduce it to something small then the conceptual framework is not the best choice because it forces you to look at the whole problem from different angles and you can't really eliminate parts of it based on number so if you if you want to eliminate parts of the problem if you want to get to a root cause it's better to make an issue tree out of algebra structures process structures segmentations or a combination of those however if you want to look at the problem as a whole which is less efficient but brings more context then a conceptual framework might be and probably will be a great choice now the second step to use a conceptual framework is to choose if you're going to create your own framework from scratch for that case or if you're gonna pick one that you've learned somewhere or that you've memorized from somewhere now I always recommend to Advanced candidates that they create their own frameworks from scratch but I get that when you're starting out that's kind of a tall order so what I recommend in case you're starting out in case you don't know how to create your own frameworks from scratch yet or you don't feel confident doing it what I recommend is two things first make a framework that actually makes sense to use when solving that case if you're using the three C's which is a competitive strategy framework for our public sector case it won't make sense and second adapt this framework intuitive fits very neatly with the problem that you have it's amazing but so many candidates just pick a framework that does not have to do anything with the problem to start the case and that's kind of like picking physics equation to solve a physics problem even if the equation has nothing to do with the problem just because it's physics you know now even the candidates who do pick a framework that have something to do with the problem they usually don't adapt it well enough so that it really really fits the problem now I've made a whole video on adapting your framework so that they fit the problem I'm gonna put the video up here but what you need to have in mind is that adapting the framework well involve is adding and subtracting categories and it involves making your issues and hypotheses more specific to the problem which leads us to our third step on how to use conceptual frameworks which is to fill each of your buckets each of her categories with specific issues specific hypotheses now when you're using a conceptual framework you using it because you're looking for insight for context so conceptual frameworks more than other types of structures need a lot of substance in them otherwise they're not going to be insightful enough you're not gonna get an offer if you're just saying I want to analyze customers tell me what your customers think you need a lot more substance specificity and specific issues and hypotheses now this is true for every kind of framework but it is especially true for conceptual frameworks now one thing that everyone asked me when I wrote the original five ways to be missing article was okay but how can they make sure that my concepts of framers are missing glad you asked that so in a sense you can't make sure that your conceptual frameworks are missing and that's what causes it to be the hardest type of framework to use however you can get very close to Missy or as close as humanly possible or as close as need to be missing and here's how to be mutually exclusive to have no overlaps you need one unifying criteria that is the same for every bucket so for example in the three C's this criteria is what are the players in a competitive marketplace so each player is different from the other and the three buckets are players there's the customers the company and the competition same criteria for all buckets in the 4-piece this criteria is what are the key tactical marketing decisions you can make so one decision is different from the other you have product decisions you have pricing decisions who have placement decisions and because the criteria is the same there's no overlap in the partners Five Forces the criteria is work and profitability leak into so you can lose profitability because your customers are getting more value or your suppliers are raising their prices or you're avoiding new entrants and so on so same criteria that makes it have no overlaps and a lot of frameworks that candidates make they don't obey the same criterion that causes that their frameworks not to be mutually exclusive now this can get pretty too radical very quickly so to teach people how to build their own frameworks in our course we actually teach them to use the same set of criteria for every case for every framework it's a set of criteria that works every time and well I'm not going to go over this here because it will take too long so more on that in our free course but the thing is you need to have a criteria it doesn't matter which one but by having a criteria you make sure that all your buckets are different from each other being different from each other within the same criteria makes them have no overlaps which means they're mutually exclusive which means your structure is going to be cleared so now we have a criteria to make our categories but we still need to be collectively exhaustive so we must have no gaps and this is the hardest part even if it's the most important one so you're looking for every relevant category according to your criteria so you must you certainly have heard of the four piece of marketing but it might have heard also of the 7ps of marketing or the eight piece of marketing and when I was in business school I always thought well why do they keep adding this piece and what stands the proof of time is the four piece of marketing but what about the other piece does that mean that the four piece is not exhaustive well the answer is no even though there are other piece of marketing the important piece the relevant piece are the four piece so you can't be fully exhaustive in a conceptual structure otherwise you're not being relevant you're not being synthetical enough so you must find all the relevant buckets now how to know if a bucket is relevant or not that involves a bit of business judgments and also some practice practice which you can get in our free course so running the risk of being repetitive here just if you want to learn how to structure from scratch just go to crafting cases calm slash free course and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised once you get there it's free so I'm not doing this to promote myself it's just it's there's a lot of things and a lot of practice involved so if you're interested on that just go there now a few things that you should be aware of when using your conceptual frameworks first make sure that using the initial tree wouldn't be better if you have a short term numerical problem a problem where you wants to eliminate stuff and just focus your problem-solving and you should tree is probably a better choice just use a conceptual framework when you want to get the whole context of the things and analyze the problem from every direction the second thing you need to be aware of is that the quality of your hypothesis matter a lot in fact your level of machinist or your perceived level of misenus is more related to if you've raised all or most of the relevant issues and hypotheses to either your buckets are missing or not and your intervals gonna judge if you've raised all the important hypotheses based on their experience and because this is experience and intuition based practice matters a lot so if you want to get that right you will need to practice your frameworks a lot which is why we focus so much on examples and practice examples in everything we do in this YouTube channel in our courses and so on getting the buckets right or the categories right is maybe 10% of the problem and getting the hypotheses right is 90% of the problem and this contrasts with for example algebraic structures where getting the formula right is actually the most important thing the third thing to be aware of when using conceptual framework is that you're in traverse perception of how good your framework was how good your structuring abilities were has nothing to do with your ability to pick the right framework instead it has a lot to do with our ability to adapt this framework or to create one from scratch in case you've chosen to do so same thing you don't judge a tailor's ability by his ability to pick the right suit from the store instead you judge his ability by see if we can get a pretty good suit and then adapt it so that it perfectly fits you or else bye-bye fabric and making a suit for you from scratch so it's the same thing the more important part is how you adapt your framework or built it from scratch obviously it's important to pick one that's good enough that you can adapt but if you just pick a framework and use it forget it so these are the basics of conceptual frameworks the third way to be miss now I have to say that there's a lot more to learn in this topic and I'm sorry if that disappoints you but I don't want to be the guy who tells you that you know just learn my two frameworks or my five frameworks or the craft encases framework back or anything like that because I'd be lying if that worked it doesn't work the only way out is to learn how to actually structure your cases and for that there's a ton of resources there's a playlist just for how to improve your frameworks in this channel as I've said a few times in this video alone that is a ton of stuff in our free course so that it can actually learn to structure your own cases and to create your framings in the next video I'm gonna show you the fourth way to be messy which are segmentations now these types of structures are ideal to put on top of your issue trees or on top of your conceptual frameworks I'm gonna show you how to use them so that you can spice up your structures and make them more similar to what a real consultant would do with their structures I'm also gonna show you when not to use them and when you need to use them so keep watching as it's the next video on this playlist so I hope you've liked this video and if you did hit the like button and subscribe to this channel so you can get notified when I put out a new video and actually have to hit the alarm button for that so you can get notified as well also tell me in the comments if you're willing to learn how to create your own frameworks from scratch or not and why because I'd love to know you what types of barriers or obstacles are there for candidates to create their own strip I hope you've liked this videos I've said and I'll see you in the next one [Music] [Music]