Ethan M. Rasiel

Who they are

This page records the public professional record only. Nothing adverse is recorded and no motive is attributed.

According to the author page of his books as recorded in the vault, he joined McKinsey and Company's New York office in 1989 and worked there until 1992, at associate rank throughout, and wrote The McKinsey Way alone and The McKinsey Mind (2002) with Paul Friga. He is candid in the books about the limits of that vantage, and the book rests partly on interviews with alumni. The biography describes him as of 1999 and 2002, and nothing about his circumstances since is claimed.

Books

Key ideas

The weather example appears in the three-step structuring procedure at pages 10 and 11 of The McKinsey Way. The first step breaks the problem into its key drivers. The second makes an actionable recommendation about each driver, and Rasiel marks it as extremely important. His test case is a business whose quarterly profits depend mainly on the weather. "We have to pray for good weather" is not actionable. "We must reduce our vulnerability to changes in the weather" is, because it names something a manager can do something about.

A weather forecast is one such action, and a limited one: it reduces the exposure to surprise, not the weather. The question of how much exposure a forecast removes is the subject of What a Weather Forecast Does for Sales, which finds that the forecast is reliable, the sales response varies by store and product, good-weather gains are largely repaid within weeks, and the forecast helps a sales model inside about a week.

The book is a source for practice and never for outcome. The vault's reliability note records that none of its roughly sixty named rules is supported by an outcome measurement, a comparison group or a cited study, and that the weather example is a hypothetical. It is used here for what was said and not for any claim that the practice works.

How to read the example

The weather passage is a teaching device in a consulting handbook, and it is useful as one. Its three-step structuring procedure asks the reader to break a problem into its key drivers and make an actionable recommendation about each, which Rasiel marks as extremely important. "Pray for good weather" fails the test because no manager can do anything about it. "Reduce our vulnerability to changes in the weather" passes, because it names something a manager can do something about.

The article takes that last step seriously and asks what a forecast delivers. The answer is partial. The forecast is reliable, the sales response differs by store and product, good-weather gains are largely repaid within weeks, and the help to a sales model runs about a week ahead. The McKinsey passage supplies the question and the studies supply the answers.

The caution about the book is part of using it honestly. The vault's reliability note records that none of its roughly sixty named rules is supported by an outcome measurement, a comparison group or a cited study, and that the weather example is hypothetical. It is cited for what it said, which is a method for turning a worry into an action, not for any claim that the method improves results.

What the record does not show

The book dates from 1999 and the example sits on two pages, 10 and 11. Nothing here describes how the author's later work developed or how consultants use the structuring steps today. The page also does not say that the weather example was ever applied to a real client, since the book offers no evidence of that.

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