Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

Welcome to an interview with the CEO of Fireflies.ai, Krish Rameni. In this episode, Krish took us back to the early days of starting their company, Fireflies.ai, and how they stayed motivated despite the challenges. He shared valuable advice from the lessons he learned throughout his career that will be useful for individuals who are starting their careers or planning to transition into the world...

Welcome to an interview with the author of Solving for Why: A Surgeon's Journey to Discover the Transformative Power of Purpose , Dr. Mark G. Shrime.  Solving for Why  is an inspiring memoir about finding the answer to life's biggest question—"Why?"—and about following that answer through remarkable, unlikely places on the road to fulfillment, purpose, and joy.   "Turning your heart toward the poo...

Welcome to an interview with the author of Better Decisions Faster: Unshakable Confidence When You Need It Most,  Paul Epstein. In Better Decisions Faster, Paul draws from the green-light wisdom of Fortune 500 CEOs, Olympians, Shark Tank entrepreneurs, world-record holders, Ivy League professors, and Navy SEALs to reveal a revolutionary new system for maximally efficient and confident decision-mak...

Welcome to an interview with the author of Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life,  Justin Bookey. In this book, Justin distills lessons from a beloved global sport into 18 actionable and unforgettable "Pong Principles." Justin has spent decades as a competitive table tennis player, trained with national and world champions, and won medals at the...

Welcome to an interview with the author of  Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality , Benjamin Shestakofsky. This book draws on nineteen months of participant-observation research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup, and examines how the company was organized to meet the needs of the venture capital investors who funded it. Investors push startups to...

Welcome to an interview with the authors of  Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy , Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, and Nancy Levit. This book explains that the system that governs our economy—a winner-take-all economy—is the root cause of these myriad problems. The WTA economy self-selects for aggressive, cutthroat business tactics, which creates a feedback loop that sidelines women....

Welcome to an interview with the author of The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance , Ashley Goodall. Drawing on two decades spent leading HR organizations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall reveals in his book why change is not the same as improvement, and how, by prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), by using real words (rather than c...

Welcome to an interview with an award-winning marketer, TEDx speaker and authority in harnessing the instinctive mind to accelerate brand and business growth,  founder and CEO of Triggers, Leslie Zane. Leslie is the author of The Power of Instinct: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life. In her book, Leslie shows that to grow a brand, business, or even a social movement, traditional pers...

Welcome to an interview with the coauthor of The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth , Ilya Strebulaev. This book offers a transformative playbook for delivering results in a rapidly changing world from a top Stanford professor and a technology executive. Packed with entertaining stories and scientific precision, The Venture Mindset is a must-read for anyone...

Welcome to an interview with the coauthor of Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy (Acting with Technology) , Cristina Alaimo. In  Data Rules,  Cristina Alaimo and Jannis Kallinikos establish a social science framework for analyzing the unprecedented social and economic restructuring brought about by data. Working at the intersection of information systems and organizational studies, they dra...

Welcome to an interview with Martin Gonzalez and Josh Yellin. Martin is the creator of Google's Effective Founders Project and a frequent lecturer at Stanford, Wharton and INSEAD. Josh co-founded Google's first Startup Accelerator and is presently an organizational leader at Google DeepMind.   Josh and Martin are the authors of  The Bonfire Moment: Bring Your Team Together to Solve the Hardest Pro...

Welcome to an interview with the author of  The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning, AJ Jacobs. In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A.J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opi...

Welcome to an interview with the author of Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life,  Jeff Wetzler. In this book, Jeff offers a hands-on, surprisingly effective way to find out what others really think, know, and feel. Jeff brings you a powerful method called The Ask Approach™, based on a simple premise that tapping into what other pe...

Welcome to an interview with the author of  Leadership Shock: Using Authenticity to Navigate the Hidden Dangers of Career Success,  Pete Steinberg.  Leadership Shock  teaches readers to view leadership as an adaptive, continuous process rather than a fixed set of behaviors. By regularly re-evaluating their leadership models, professionals at any level can evolve their principles and actions to lea...

Welcome to an interview with the author of Burnout Immunity: How Emotional Intelligence Can Help You Build Resilience and Heal Your Relationship with Work ,  Kandi Wiens.  In her book, Kandi shares her research and discoveries about burnout immunity. After extreme stress caused a life-threatening health cri­sis in her own life, Dr. Kandi Wiens dedicated herself to understand why work was leaving m...

Welcome to an interview with the co-author of Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions , Andres Lares. This book deliver a concise and insightful take on how to transform your ability to persuade others regardless of the setting.  Persuade  is perfect for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, and other business leaders who negotiate or influence regularly. It is an invaluable...

Welcome to an interview with the author of The Illusion of Innovation: Escape "Efficiency" and Unleash Radical Progress,  Elliott Parker.  The Illusion of Innovation  tackles the problem with innovation inside big companies, having activities that feel like innovation but lead to value destruction, not progress. This book explains why meaningful innovation naturally emerges from deliberate ineffic...

Welcome to an interview with the author of Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing , Laura Mae Martin. In her book, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you're working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place.  Uptime  explains how to make technology work for you and make "feeling on top of it"...

Welcome to an interview with Claire Milligan, a Stanford graduate turned startup founder. Claire helps businesses grow by spending smarter and reducing their cloud costs. Her target market is PE firms. In this episode, we discuss what PE firms care about, how to approach them, the biggest challenges and potential solutions they encounter, as well as the sales process and lead time.    Whether she'...

99% of clients misunderstand learning and practicing. At its essence, you cannot practice McKinsey cases until you learn McKinsey cases. Most candidates start of their case interview preparation by reaching out to colleagues and consultants to practice cases, not having gone through the learning steps. Without a good strategy of separating learning from practicing you will simply absorb what you h...

Welcome to an interview with the co-author of the inspiring new Generative AI study, Jeremy Utley. This episode highlights the common mistakes and missed opportunities many corporate teams and individuals make when using AI. Too often, individuals treat AI as a mere search engine, leading to answers that fall short of actual solutions.    Jeremy Utley  is an adjunct professor specializing in creat...

In this podcast we have listed some of the most common and most significant networking mistakes made by candidates. Since many of these have been made by clients, we have had an opportunity to discuss the mistakes, their motivations, the fall out and their response. Therefore, we can provide a comprehensive discussion on the implications of these mistakes. In general, no matter how badly a McKinse...

Being a young business analyst or associate on the receiving end of blunt and harsh feedback from a partner is a very jarring experience. However, it is also somewhat of a compliment. I never understand this very, very important point until my mentor, a senior partner, pointed this out to me when the managing partner gave me a very time about an initiative I was running. In hindsight, this was one...

Storytelling is a very powerful technique to ensure someone remembers you after an interview. In fact, even when we screen people at Firmsconsulting today, we use this technique I applied as a partner. The rule is simple: if I can remember your key messages from the interview the next day, I would make you an offer. That, of course, assumes you had passed all the other hurdles well enough. One way...

Welcome to an interview with the coauthor of Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future,  Venkat Venkatraman. In  Fusion Strategy,  digital strategy expert Venkat Venkatraman and world-renowned innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan offer a first-of-its-kind playbook that will help industrial companies combine what they do best—create physical products—with what digita...