Adapting to a Highly Ambiguous Problem Statement

Question

BCG cases often start with: 'The client's profits are down; find out why.' Tell me about a time you were given a very vague problem and how you structured your approach to reach a concrete solution.

Accepted Answer

I was once asked to 'improve the efficiency' of a non-profit’s volunteer program. There were no metrics, no benchmarks, and no clear definition of 'efficiency.' I started by applying a first-principles framework. I broke 'efficiency' into three buckets: Recruitment Cost, Retention Rate, and Output per Volunteer. I then conducted 20 stakeholder interviews to gather qualitative data where quantitative data was missing. This revealed that the bottleneck wasn't recruitment, but a convoluted onboarding process that caused 50% of volunteers to drop out in week one. I designed a new digital onboarding journey that reduced 'time-to-first-impact' from 14 days to 2 days. We saw a 30% increase in volunteer hours within three months. This taught me that ambiguity is solved by 'MECE' (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) structuring. I learned to love the 'blank sheet' phase of a project because it allows for the most creative problem-solving, provided you have a rigorous logical framework to guide you.

Adapting to a Highly Ambiguous Problem Statement

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