One method, many roles
The five moves are the same whether you advise a company, run its product, invest in it, operate it, start it or serve the public. What changes is the number at the top, the facts you can get and who must agree. One problem seen through three roles.
Key takeaways
- The five moves do not change from role to role. Three things do change.
- The number at the top. A consultant and a strategy team start from profit or value.
- The facts you can get. An insider has data and history but also opinions about them.
- Who must agree. A consultant convinces a client.
Most cases on this site are written the way consulting firms interview. That is a format, not the point. Many other people do the same work: a strategy team inside a company, a product manager, an investor, a plant manager, a founder and a civil servant. Each one takes a messy question and turns it into numbers. Each one uses what they know about the business and finds the facts that decide the question. Then each one says what to do. If you are aiming at one of those roles, everything you learn here still counts. This module shows you how the same thinking looks in each role.
Key idea
The five moves do not change from role to role. Three things do change. The first is the number at the top of your tree: profit, a user measure, a fund's return, cash, or people helped. The second is the facts you can actually get. The third is who must agree before anything happens.
| Role | The number at the top | What hiring often includes | The extra test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate and in-house strategy | Value for the whole group: profit and return on capital across its businesses | A case or a take-home analysis, often presented, plus questions on working with business units | Can you get an answer adopted inside the company? |
| Product management | A user or business measure that the product moves | Product design questions, measures and analysis questions, estimates, and questions about your past work | Do you understand users and trade offs? |
| Private equity and venture capital | The return on the money invested | A simple model, a written or spoken view on whether to invest, and questions on markets and deals | Would you put money in, and at what price? |
| Operations and general management | The unit profit and loss, plus service and safety | Problems drawn from running a site or a team, and questions about leading people | Can you run it week after week, through people? |
| Founders and startup operators | Cash: what each customer earns and how long the money lasts | For founders, investor meetings; for operator roles, often a take-home problem | Can you decide with very little data? |
| Public sector, development and nonprofit | Outcomes for the money: people helped per unit of budget | Questions on behaviours and experience, written exercises, sometimes a case | Can you weigh many stakeholders and a fixed budget? |
| Experienced hires and career switchers | The same as the role you are moving into | The same as that role, plus "why this move, and why now" | Does your background make you faster? |
So-what
Find your row. Then notice that the first column changes and the method does not.
Worked case
One problem, three roles: online grocery orders that lose money
The prompt
Fictional and illustrative. A supermarket chain in the Netherlands takes 20,000 online orders a week. The average basket is EUR 60 and the chain keeps 25 percent of it as gross margin (what is left after paying for the goods). Each order costs EUR 7 to pick in the store, EUR 9 to deliver and EUR 1 in payment fees. There is no delivery fee today. A consultant, the chain's product manager for the app, and an investor looking at the chain each meet this problem. What does each of them conclude?
The structure
- Weekly contribution from online orders = orders x (margin per order minus cost to serve per order)
- Margin per order
- Basket size x gross margin
- Any delivery fee
- Cost to serve per order
- Picking
- Delivery
- Payment
- Orders a week, and how they react to a fee
Working it through
1. Margin per order
A EUR 60 basket at a 25 percent gross margin.
Gross margin per order (EUR):60 × 0.25 = 152. Cost to serve per order
Add picking at EUR 7, delivery at EUR 9 and payment at EUR 1.
Cost to serve per order (EUR):7 + 9 + 1 = 173. Contribution per order
Margin per order minus the cost to serve it.
Contribution per order (EUR):15 - 17 = -24. Contribution per week
Contribution per order across 20,000 orders a week.
Weekly contribution (EUR):-2 × 20,000 = -40,0005. Test one fix: a EUR 3 delivery fee
Suppose a EUR 3 fee is added and one order in ten is lost. Work out the new weekly contribution on the orders that remain.
Weekly contribution with the fee (EUR):(15 + 3 - 17) × 20,000 × 0.9 = 18,000
The recommendation
Online orders lose about EUR 40,000 a week because each order costs EUR 17 to serve and earns EUR 15 of margin. All three roles agree on that number, but each draws a different so what. The consultant says: test a EUR 3 fee before cutting the service. The reason is that the fee would turn the loss into a gain of about EUR 18,000 a week, even if one order in ten is lost. The product manager says: I will test the fee on a share of customers and watch order numbers and basket size. I will also try a minimum basket, because a bigger basket spreads about the same EUR 17 over more margin. The investor says: pricing can fix this, so the online losses should not lower what I would pay for the chain. I will still ask whether rivals can afford free delivery for longer than the chain can.
Risks: If more than one order in ten is lost, the gain shrinks; Delivery cost per order may fall as volume grows, which changes the answer.
Next steps: Test the fee on a sample of customers for four weeks; Measure how many lost orders move to the physical stores instead.
What changes from role to role, and what does not
- The number at the top. A consultant and a strategy team start from profit or value. A product manager starts from a user measure. An investor starts from the return on money invested. A founder starts from cash. A public servant starts from outcomes per unit of budget.
- The facts you can get. An insider has data and history but also opinions about them. An investor gets a data room for a few weeks: a shared online folder of the company's documents. A founder has almost no data and must run small tests.
- Who must agree. A consultant convinces a client. A strategy team must convince the people who run the businesses. A product manager needs engineers, designers and leaders to agree. A public servant answers to ministers (the politicians who lead government departments), staff and citizens.
- What never changes: pin the question, write the maths of the goal, use what you know about the business, find the facts that decide it, and say so what.
Each role lesson in this module assumes you know the five moves. If you have not met them yet, start with the lesson that teaches them with two full examples, then come back to the lesson for your role.
Crack any case in five movesWhat changes most when you move the five moves from a consulting case to a product manager interview?
In the grocery example, why does a minimum basket help as well as a fee?
Sources for this lesson (1)
- Recognized public explanations of case-interview concepts and terms
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It builds on what you just read, in The same acumen in other roles.
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