A McKinsey engagement starts around $500,000. Bain and BCG are in the same range. The Carlyle Group, when they evaluate an acquisition, deploys teams of analysts who spend weeks building models and interviewing stakeholders.
The frameworks those teams use aren't proprietary. They're taught in business schools. They're published in books. They've been documented online for decades. What you're paying for at MBB isn't the framework. It's the team's experience applying it, the access to their benchmarking data, and the credibility of the firm's name on the final deck.
An AI model can't give you the credibility or the proprietary data. But it can apply the frameworks to your specific business faster than you can do it yourself, and the analysis it produces is good enough to make better decisions than you'd make without it.
Here are the six frameworks that matter most, with the prompts that make each one useful.
1. MECE: the foundation
Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive. Developed at McKinsey in the 1960s by Barbara Minto. Every consulting analysis starts here. Break a problem into pieces where no piece overlaps another (mutually exclusive) and all pieces together cover the entire problem (collectively exhaustive).
The prompt:
"Break down this problem using the MECE framework. The problem is: [describe your business problem]. For each category, list the sub-issues. Verify that no category overlaps with another and that all categories together cover the full scope of the problem. If you find a gap, add a category. If you find overlap, merge or redefine."
When to use it: Any time you're facing a problem that feels too big to think about clearly. Market entry, cost reduction, product strategy, organizational redesign. MECE turns fog into a structured list.
What Carlyle would do: Private equity firms use MECE to decompose acquisition targets. Revenue by segment, cost by category, risk by type. The decomposition reveals where the value is hiding and where the risk is concentrated.
2. The Pyramid Principle: structure the answer
Also from Barbara Minto. Start with the answer, then support it with grouped arguments, then support each argument with evidence. Top-down communication. The reader gets the conclusion first and the detail only if they want it.
The prompt:
"I need to present this recommendation: [your recommendation]. Structure it using the Pyramid Principle. Start with the governing thought (the recommendation itself). Group the supporting arguments into 2-4 pillars. Under each pillar, provide the specific evidence. Write it so a busy executive can read only the first paragraph and understand the full recommendation."
When to use it: Board presentations, investment memos, strategy recommendations, email to your boss. Any time the reader has less time than you have material.
3. McKinsey 7S: diagnose organizational problems
Seven elements: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Style, Staff, Skills. The insight is that changing one element without aligning the others causes friction. A new strategy doesn't work if the structure, systems, and skills aren't realigned to support it.
The prompt:
"Analyze my organization using the McKinsey 7S Framework. Here's what I know about each element: [fill in what you know about strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff, skills]. Identify which elements are misaligned with each other. For each misalignment, explain the friction it creates and suggest a specific action to resolve it. Prioritize the misalignments by impact."
When to use it: Post-merger integration, organizational restructuring, "why isn't our strategy working" diagnostics. Particularly useful after you've hired or lost key people, because the Staff and Skills elements shift and the rest of the system may not have adjusted.
4. Porter's Five Forces: understand competitive pressure
Michael Porter's framework for analyzing industry competition: threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and competitive rivalry.
The prompt:
"Analyze the competitive landscape for [your industry or product] using Porter's Five Forces. For each force, rate the pressure as high, medium, or low with specific evidence. Identify which force creates the most risk for my business and suggest concrete actions to reduce that risk. Consider both current conditions and how each force is likely to change over the next 2 years."
When to use it: Before entering a new market. Before making a significant investment. When you feel competitive pressure but can't articulate where it's coming from. The framework forces you to look at all five sources of pressure, not just the most obvious one (usually competitive rivalry).
What Carlyle would do: Map the five forces for every potential acquisition target. A company that looks profitable but faces high supplier power and low barriers to entry is a worse investment than the numbers suggest.
5. BCG Growth-Share Matrix: allocate resources
Four quadrants based on market growth rate and relative market share: Stars (high growth, high share), Cash Cows (low growth, high share), Question Marks (high growth, low share), Dogs (low growth, low share). The framework tells you where to invest, where to harvest, and where to divest.
The prompt:
"Classify my products/services using the BCG Growth-Share Matrix. Here are my offerings with their revenue, growth rate, and market share relative to the largest competitor: [list]. Place each offering in the appropriate quadrant. For Stars, suggest investment strategies. For Cash Cows, suggest harvest strategies. For Question Marks, suggest criteria for deciding whether to invest or abandon. For Dogs, suggest exit timing."
When to use it: Annual planning. Portfolio review. When you have limited resources and too many initiatives competing for them. The matrix forces a cold-eyed assessment of which products deserve investment and which are consuming resources they'll never return.
6. The Ansoff Matrix: find growth
Four strategies for growth: Market Penetration (existing products, existing markets), Product Development (new products, existing markets), Market Development (existing products, new markets), Diversification (new products, new markets). Each cell has a different risk profile.
The prompt:
"Map my growth options using the Ansoff Matrix. My current products are: [list]. My current markets are: [list]. For each quadrant, suggest 2-3 specific growth initiatives. Rank them by expected effort, risk, and time to revenue. Identify which initiatives I could start this quarter with existing resources."
When to use it: When revenue is flat and you're trying to decide between deepening an existing market, launching a new product, or expanding to a new geography. The matrix makes the trade-offs visible.
Running all six as a strategy sprint
The most useful pattern is running these frameworks sequentially on the same business question. Start with MECE to decompose the problem. Use Porter's Five Forces and 7S to diagnose the competitive and organizational context. Use the BCG Matrix to assess your portfolio. Use the Ansoff Matrix to identify growth options. Use the Pyramid Principle to structure the final recommendation.
In Claude Code, you can run this as a single session with the context building across frameworks. In Codex, pipe each framework's output as context into the next prompt. The whole sequence takes about an hour and produces analysis that would take a consulting team a week.
It won't match what McKinsey produces. Their teams bring industry benchmarks, proprietary datasets, and decades of pattern recognition. But for a small business owner making a $50,000 decision, an hour of structured AI-assisted analysis is worth more than the gut feel that would have replaced it.
If you want the full playbook for running a small business with AI tools instead of expensive consultants and agencies, The $20 Dollar Agency covers the complete stack. Search "The $20 Dollar Agency" on Amazon Kindle.
Related reading
- Five AI agents that replace five hires — the agent roles that run these frameworks as ongoing operations
- The four questions I wish I'd asked before picking an AI project — why the right question matters more than the right tool
- Top AI CLIs and how to use them with our generators — the CLI tools for running framework analysis
- Build an AI job agent and an inference engine that sizes itself — the cost-routing pattern for running multiple analyses cheaply
Fact-check notes and sources
- McKinsey engagement pricing (~$500K starting): Industry-standard range for MBB consulting engagements, widely documented in business press and consulting career resources.
- MECE framework origin (Barbara Minto, McKinsey, 1960s): Barbara Minto, "The Pyramid Principle" (1987). Framework developed while at McKinsey. strategyu.co.
- McKinsey 7S elements: Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, "In Search of Excellence" (1982). Originally developed by McKinsey consultants. jobaajlearnings.com.
- Porter's Five Forces: Michael Porter, "Competitive Strategy" (1980). Harvard Business School.
- BCG Growth-Share Matrix: Bruce Henderson, Boston Consulting Group, 1970.
- Ansoff Matrix: Igor Ansoff, "Strategies for Diversification" (1957), Harvard Business Review.
This post is informational, not consulting or financial advice. Mentions of McKinsey, Bain, BCG, The Carlyle Group, and all named researchers are nominative fair use. No affiliation is implied.
