{"id":7602,"date":"2019-08-02T15:21:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T14:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brainlabsdigital.com\/?p=7602"},"modified":"2025-06-20T19:50:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:50:25","slug":"what-is-the-mece-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brainlabsdigital.com\/what-is-the-mece-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is the MECE Principle?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagine starting a job as Director of Growth for a SaaS startup. The company measures your success by growth in revenue for your subscription product line. It\u2019s a big task, the pressure is high, your mind reels as it grasps for a starting point. After mulling it over you take your trusty whiteboard marker, and on the nearest board you write:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How might we increase revenue?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. How might we increase signups?<\/li>
  2. How might we decrease churn?<\/li>
  3. How might we increase subscription fees?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    These issues cover all relevant ideas, and none of them overlap. This simple example shows the essence of MECE. Examining each of these problems will be more straightforward than the original \u201cincrease revenue\u201d prompt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    MECE definition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    MECE stands for mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive. It is a framework for solving complicated problems. When you apply it to a problem, you break that problem into subproblems that are mutually exclusive (they don\u2019t overlap) and comprehensively exhaustive (they cover all possibilities).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When to use MECE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    There are two kinds of problems \u2013 the complex, and the complicated<\/a>. Complex problems have many overlapping pieces with crosstalk and feedback among them. Complicated problems have lots of parts that ultimately, you can reconcile, even if it requires supporting tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Designing a top-down social welfare program that impoverished rural communities will accept is a complex problem. Deciding whether to sell a business you own is a complicated problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When you have a complicated problem, that\u2019s when MECE will be most helpful. Partitioning the problem into smaller problems makes it easier to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How to use MECE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    There are two ways to structure a MECE analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    First, you can take a hard question, and break it down into sub-questions. The introductory example at the top of this article uses that approach. You take a wide field of possible investigations and partition that into smaller areas. It\u2019s useful when we\u2019re trying to discover more approaches to solving a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Second, you can take an assertion, and break it down into sub-assertions. This approach is useful if we\u2019re trying to use our knowledge of a problem to make an informed decision. We\u2019ll illustrate this use in the example of the following sections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Once you\u2019ve chosen a flavor, there are only three steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n