MECE is an acronym for “Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive” - a principle often attributed to Barbara Minto from McKinsey. It aims to sharpen thinking and simplify complex ideas into easily understood structures.
When applying MECE to a problem, you break it into mutually exclusive (they don’t overlap) and comprehensively exhaustive (they cover all possibilities) subproblems.
Mutually exclusive is a concept from probability theory that says two events cannot occur at the same time. For example, if you roll a six-sided die, the outcomes of a six or a three are mutually exclusive. When applied to information, mutually exclusive ideas would be distinctly separate and not overlapping.
Collectively exhaustive means that the set of ideas is inclusive of all possible options. Going back to the six-sided dice example, the set (from one to six)) is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
References
- Paul (2022) What is the MECE Principle? Understanding Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive - StrategyU. Available at: https://strategyu.co/wtf-is-mece-mutually-exclusive-collectively-exhaustive/.