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The Toothbrush Test - How To Measure How Insightful Your Structures Are - Crafting Cases
The Toothbrush Test - How To Measure How Insightful Your Structures Are - Crafting Cases
CRAFTING CASES
Most feedback wasn’t really useful. Just generic pieces of advice you
can read in any book out there, and that apply to pretty much any
candidate. “You should be more structured”, or “try to use more logic”,
“t b i i i htf l t ti ” I l th d th Th did ’t
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or “try being more insightful next time”. I loathed those. They didn’t
help me at all, and worse, got me super insecure with my
performance. Would my interviewer think that as well? I wasn’t sure.
And this type of feedback didn’t help me improve either, so it was a
lose-lose situation.
Take “try being more insightful on your structure”, for instance. What
does that even mean? How could I possibly improve that? I mean, if I
had more insight I would’ve done it already. Getting that type of
feedback would get both my levels of frustration and anxiety
skyrocketing.
I didn’t know it back then, but what I needed was a simple test. A test
that allowed me to know if my structure was insightful enough
regardless of how thoughtful the feedback I got from my case partner
was.
So you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself, I’ve done the heavy-
lifting for you. I’ve created a test for you to know how insightful your
structure is. Using the Toothbrush Test, you’ll take less than a minute
to know that and how to take them to the next level.
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q p y
you need to put into it.
Most structures err on the side of either not being MECE or not being
insightful enough. Those are the two most common mistakes. And
although most people understand there are techniques you can use
to ensure your structure is MECE, few candidates are aware you can
be systematic about being insightful as well.
There is both “art” and “science” to that. The “art” part is the unique
ideas and hypotheses you can generate throughout the case that
other candidates can’t. This is tough to develop and come from both
work and case experience. But the “science” part is as important and
much simpler: to have case-specificity built into your structure.
Generic structures are NEVER insightful, so your first step towards
business insight is to have as many specific (i.e. non-generic) issues in
your structure as possible.
The test itself is pretty simple: count how many issues (or “bullet
points”) are there in your structure and see how many of them could
be used to solve a case in another industry, for instance, a case in the
toothbrush industry. Your “Toothbrush Test Score” (TTS) is the % of
issues you’ve raised that are specific to your case and wouldn’t
function if the case were about selling toothbrushes. The higher the
number of specific issues you have, the higher the chances you’re
bringing a fair amount of insight in your case.
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Let me show you how structures with different TTS are different. I’ll
start with a structure with an obscenely low score.
(https://www.craftingcases.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image-
1.png)
Except for one issue (of 13), all others would help you solve a case on
a toothbrush manufacturer entering the african market. Or a case
about a car manufacturer entering Africa. Or a case about an airline
t i th i k t It d ’t tt Thi t t i
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Consider what I just said for a second. YOU HAVE NO WAY OF TELLING
IF THE CASE IS ABOUT INSURANCE OR TOOTHBRUSHES. Those are
two completely different industries and you still have no large
differences between both structures. That’s incredible, to say the least.
Especially considering how many candidates use structures like this
on interview day.
With a less than 10% Toothbrush Test Score, you have no chances of
surviving a consulting interview. You’ll get rejected no matter what
you do next.
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(https://www.craftingcases.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image-
2.png)This is a good structure, with an adequate volume of insight.
Generally, a TTS of about 40% is enough to show the interviewer you
are thinking about this specific case and not blindly using a generic
framework memorized from somewhere.
You’re gonna notice this structure for the private jet case is much
more specific than the one for the insurance case. And the reason it is
specific is that some of the issues are specific enough that they could
be used in this case, but not in others. These are the issues that get a
YES on the Toothbrush Test. Because they’re roughly 40% of the
issues, I gave this structure an approximate score of 40%.
A couple of the issues got a “MEH”, which means they’re almost there.
They couldn’t be used for a case in the toothbrush industry
specifically, but they could be used for plenty of other cases in other
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aren’t as relevant).
5. Can we adapt our operations to our customer’s schedules?: Every
airline’s nightmare is to have their aircrafts grounded. Poor
maintenance scheduling does just that. By raising this issue you
imply this understanding, which is pretty specific to this industry.
All of these issues are giving specific examples of how generic things
would play out in this industry or implying an understanding of how
this industry works. These are a couple of practical ways to make your
issues case-specific.
Two of the issues were just a bit short of making the cut (I called
them “MEH”). Let’s take a look at why they were better than generic,
and yet didn’t pass the test:
1. How do they contract this service and what drives their loyalty?:
This issue is much better than a generic one for two reasons.
First, it shows understanding that this service is contracted out,
not bought as a one-off (as toothbrushes are). Second, it implies
loyalty is important to this specific industry. So far so good, but
the problem is that plenty of industries work on a contract basis
and depend on customer loyalty. This specific issue wouldn’t
work in a toothbrush case, but it would in several other cases.
2. How can we have bargaining power over leader airlines?: Much
is implied here, which is good; but little is explicit, which is bad.
This issue could be highly relevant for this case because the
airline industry is concentrated, so it is possible big players
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But what if you aimed higher? What if your structure had an even
higher TTS?
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(https://www.craftingcases.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image-
3.png)
The first is that it’s obvious to anyone that this candidate has deeply
thought about the problem before presenting the structure. It
mentions so many things specific to selling high-end shampoo in Asia
th t thi ld ’t ibl h i d thi b i
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The second interesting thing is that the issues are longer. Each bullet
point has more words within it. This is logical: more specificity
requires more words. But you can’t write that much without wasting a
lot of time, can you? Well, you don’t need to. In a real case interview,
you can simply jot down a few words for each issue on paper, and be
specific when you speak. This means you’ll be talking through each
issue meticulously and your written structure will be shorter – jotted
down words to remind you about the topics at a glance.
The third thing I wanna point out is that the broad categories are not
customized at all. Even though this framework scores 90% of the
Toothbrush Test Score, it uses the classic 3C1P framework. I did this
on purpose to show that (i) the Test just considers the specificity of
the issues, and (ii) you can create pretty good structures using pretty
generic frameworks.
This third point also shows an opportunity for you to improve your
structures through other means besides making the issues more
specific. If your TTS is constantly around 60%, it may be wiser to try to
improve your structuring ability through other means besides pushing
this score to even higher levels. As we’ve seen, 40% is enough in most
cases, so the difference between a 50-60% and a 90% structure is
marginal.
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If you found this concept useful, you might be asking yourself “how
the hell do I apply this in practice?”
I have a suggestion that will take you 5-10 minutes and help you
determine your next steps in your preparation journey: grab whatever
notebook you use to practice your cases and take a look at the last 5
cases you’ve solved. Do more if you feel inspired, but 5 is enough. For
each framework/structure you created to start the case, try to find its
approximate TTS. You can do the same as I did with the structures in
this post (give each issue a YES, MEH or NO, and do the percentage of
YES/TOTAL).
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(https://www.craftingcases.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image-
4.png)
Would be glad to hear from you in the comments below. What is your
average TTS? What steps will you take to improve it? How will it help
your interview performance?
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