The McKinsey Edge: Success Principles from the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm

INTRODUCTION

How It Came to Be

There are people in this world who are born gifted. They have photographic memory or they remember things for a lifetime after hearing them only once. These people may not need to rely on written principles. They absorb everything like sponges.

I am the opposite. I need to jot everything down. From general feedback sessions to pointers in meetings to keynote speech phrases to interesting frameworks, I write everything down. I also try to invent different diagrams to make the visualization and memorization easier. I keep two notebooks, in fact. One is a clean and tidy one—learning purpose. The other is more scribbly and disorganized—daily purpose. Generally speaking, people learn by studying. Then they put what they’ve ...