Reference · Firm lenses

Firm Lenses — McKinsey / Bain / BCG idioms

Load when **Firm idioms**.

Part of the Strategy Toolkit skill · loaded on demand from SKILL.md

The 21 moves are written in the richest (Bain-grade) form. This glossary lets you re-flavor any move in a house idiom — useful when matching a client's expected vocabulary, or when a particular framework sharpens a particular move. The method of a move rarely changes; the frameworks and language layered onto it do. Pick the lens, then apply the named frameworks where the move's method calls for an environment read, a positioning cut, a value anchor, a decision-rights call, or a change model.

McKinsey lens — structure and rigor

The McKinsey idiom emphasizes airtight logical structure and hypothesis-driven problem solving. Apply it when the audience values defensibility and the issue is analytically complex.

  • MECE issue trees — decompose every question into mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive branches (the backbone of the 8-stage workflow's "map the logic"). Use in: situation-assessment, growth-barriers, strategic-options.
  • Pyramid Principle (Minto) — governing thought on top, MECE supporting arguments below, evidence beneath; answer-first. Use in: narrative-builder, decision-memo, and packaging any deliverable.
  • SCQA — Situation, Complication, Question, Answer as the opening frame. Use across framing, narrative, and any board document.
  • Porter's Five Forces — rivalry, entry barriers, supplier/buyer power, substitution — the structural profit-pressure backdrop. Use in: competitive-intel, market-mapping, situation-assessment.
  • Theory of Constraints — find the single binding constraint that caps the system; relieving anything else is wasted motion. Use in: growth-barriers (the five-whys to the binding constraint), operating-model-design.
  • Hypothesis-driven / 80-20 — write the hypothesis before the analysis; spend effort only on branches that can change the answer. The whole workflow.
  • Pre-mortem — assume failure and work back to the cause. Use in: assumption-audit, risk-mitigation, stakeholder-alignment.

Where it's strongest: diagnosis and the analytical spine. The McKinsey-analysis subset covers situation-assessment, competitive-intel, market-mapping, assumption-audit, growth-barriers (diagnosis) and initiative-prioritizer, stakeholder-alignment, narrative-builder, kpi-architect, war-gaming (execution) in exactly this idiom.

Bain lens — value and results

The Bain idiom anchors everything to value creation and to actually delivering it. Apply it when the engagement is about results, ownership, and closing a performance gap. (This is the default idiom the 21 moves are written in.)

  • Gap to full potential — the value frame: the distance between today's performance and what the business could achieve with its binding constraints relieved (not a forecast or stretch target). Anchor every diagnosis, case, and KPI to it. Use in: situation-assessment, growth-barriers, business-case-builder, kpi-architect, value-realization.
  • Founder's Mentality — insurgent vs incumbent; the three crises (loss of insurgent mission, of frontline obsession, of owner mindset). Predicts how a business — or a rival — behaves. Use in: situation-assessment, competitive-intel, operating-model-design.
  • Net Promoter System / loyalty economics — promoters vs detractors and the retention/repeat/referral economics they drive; a strong margin on a weak NPS warns the value base is eroding. Use in: situation-assessment, customer-segmentation, growth-barriers, kpi-architect.
  • Elements of Value — functional / emotional / life-changing elements that drive choice and willingness to pay. Use in: customer-segmentation, pricing-strategy.
  • Profit from the Core — Engine 1 / Engine 2 — strengthen the defended core; expand into earnable adjacencies; build the next core. The structure for option generation and portfolio choice. Use in: strategic-options, market-mapping, profit-pool-analysis, portfolio-review.
  • RAPID decision roles — Recommend, Agree, Input, Decide (one accountable D), Perform. Use in: operating-model-design, stakeholder-alignment, decision-memo, assumption-audit, risk-mitigation.
  • Microbattles — a small set of specific, winnable fights with owners and near-term results, instead of a vague program. Use in: initiative-prioritizer, transformation-roadmap.
  • DICE — Duration, Integrity, Commitment, Effort — execution-risk scoring. Use in: initiative-prioritizer, transformation-roadmap, stakeholder-alignment (commitment risk).
  • Results Delivery Office + stage gates — measured benefits to the bottom line, phases that release funding only on proven value. Use in: transformation-roadmap, value-realization, risk-mitigation.
  • Value ledger — every benefit with size, owner, baseline, and assumption, reconciled to the case and the full-potential prize. Use in: value-realization.
  • Head-Heart-Hands — the change model (understand / believe / be able). Use in: transformation-roadmap, stakeholder-alignment.

Where it's strongest: execution and value capture — the "make it actually happen and prove it" half.

BCG lens — advantage and adaptation

The BCG idiom emphasizes the economics of advantage and matching strategy to the environment. Apply it when the question is about competitive economics, portfolio shape, or how to compete under a particular kind of uncertainty.

  • Strategy Palette — classify the environment before choosing an approach: classical (predictable, build position), adaptive (unpredictable, experiment fast), visionary (shape a new market you can predict), shaping (orchestrate an ecosystem), renewal (restore viability under pressure). The environment read that gates option generation. Use in: strategic-options, situation-assessment, assumption-audit.
  • Growth-Share Matrix — star / cash cow / question mark / dog; the signature portfolio lens and its cash-flow logic (cows fund stars and selected question marks; divest dogs). Use in: portfolio-review.
  • Experience curve — unit cost falls predictably with cumulative volume, so scale and share drive cost position. Underpins competitive and pricing economics. Use in: competitive-intel, pricing-strategy, growth-barriers (cost-position constraint), profit-pool-analysis.
  • Advantage Matrix — classify a business by the number of ways to gain advantage × the size of advantage (fragmented / specialized / stalemate / volume). Use in: competitive-intel.
  • TSR decomposition — total shareholder return split into profit growth, multiple change, and cash returns; the value-creation yardstick. Use in: business-case-builder, kpi-architect, portfolio-review, value-realization, narrative-builder (the value-creation so-what).
  • Value migration — profit moving from one business design to another as customer priorities shift; map the vector, not the snapshot. Use in: profit-pool-analysis, market-mapping.
  • De-averaging — break blended figures apart to find where the real economics live (the BCG name for the de-blending discipline). Use across diagnosis.
  • Three horizons — defend/extend the core (H1), build emerging businesses (H2), create viable options (H3). Use in: strategic-options, transformation-roadmap.
  • Smart Simplicity — design the organization around the cooperation that actually produces value, not boxes and rules (six smart rules). Use in: operating-model-design.
  • Resilience: anticipate / absorb / adapt — the classes of response to risk and shock. Use in: risk-mitigation, war-gaming.
  • Head-Heart-Hands / change model — BCG shares this change vocabulary. Use in: transformation-roadmap, stakeholder-alignment.

Where it's strongest: competitive economics, portfolio shape, and reading the kind of uncertainty you face.

Choosing a lens

  • Match the client's vocabulary — if they're a McKinsey-trained shop, lead with issue trees and the Pyramid; if Bain, with full potential and RAPID; if BCG, with the Strategy Palette and TSR. The analysis is the same; the framing earns trust.
  • Match the framework to the move — some frameworks are simply the best tool regardless of house: the Growth-Share Matrix for a portfolio review, the Strategy Palette for reading the environment before generating options, NPS/loyalty economics wherever durable value is at stake, RAPID wherever a decision is stalling on ownership.
  • Don't stack three idioms on one slide — pick one lens per deliverable so the language is coherent. The generic (firm-agnostic) version of any move is the right default when no idiom is called for.