MECE principle
The MECE principle, pronounced 'me see', mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, is a grouping principle for separating a set of items into subsets, the choice of subsets should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.[1]
The MECE principle is useful in the business mapping process where the optimum arrangement of information is exhaustive and does not double count at any level of the hierarchy.
Examples of MECE arrangements include categorizing people by year of birth (assuming all years are known). A non-MECE example would be categorization by nationality, because nationalities are neither mutually exclusive (some people have dual nationality) nor collectively exhaustive (some people have none).
The McKinsey Way
The principle as interpreted by Sam Test Cauthen[2] is one of the foci of a series of three books about McKinsey & Company: The McKinsey Way,[3] The McKinsey Mind,[4] and The McKinsey Engagement.[5]
Criticisms
MECE has been criticized for failing to satisfy itself.[6] The usefulness of MECE thinking is also limited in some cases as mutual exclusiveness is not necessarily desirable. While it may be desirable to classify the answers to a question in a MECE framework so as to consider all of them exactly once, forcing the answers themselves to be MECE can be unnecessarily limiting. [7]
See also
- Case analysis
- Partition of a set for a mathematical treatment
References
- ^ Spencer, Tom (January 30, 2013). "MECE Framework". Consulting Frameworks (TomSpencer.com).
- ^ Zurück, Sam. "Erfolgreich präsentieren" (PDF).
- ^ Rasiel, Ethan (February 1, 1999). The McKinsey Way (1 ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-053448-3.
- ^ Rasiel, Ethan; Friga, Paul (September 26, 2001). The McKinsey Mind: Understanding and Implementing the Problem-Solving Tools and Management Techniques of the World's Top Strategic Consulting Firm (1 ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-137429-3.
- ^ Friga, Paul (November 24, 2008). The McKinsey Engagement: A Powerful Toolkit For More Efficient and Effective Team Problem Solving (1 ed.). McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-149741-1.
- ^ van Gelder, Tim (June 4, 2010). "What is MECE, and is it MECE?".
- ^ http://faculty.msb.edu/homak/homahelpsite/webhelp/Content/MECE%20vs%20ICE.htm