35 Consulting Methods, Arranged in the Order You Actually Use Them on a Hard Business Problem

FrameworkShelf · October 2026

Some of the most used tools in management came out of consulting firms: RAPID from Bain, the growth-share matrix from BCG, the 7-S model from McKinsey. They have steered big decisions for decades, yet most managers run into them by accident, one at a time, if they meet them at all.

Behind them sits a plain routine of structured problem solving. Pin down the question. Collect only the facts that answer it. Weigh a few real options. Hand over a recommendation someone can act on. The order doesn't change, whether the issue is customers leaving, a price to set or a process that keeps failing.

Each step has a single job and passes its result to the next one. No sticky-note wall, no deck padded for safety.

The methods themselves are public. Porter published the Five Forces in 1979, and many of the others are just as old. What's missing is one place that teaches them together, in the order you would actually use them.

A degree splits them across semesters. A typical business book stretches a single idea over a whole volume. Online, each article covers one framework in its own jargon. At work, you're supposed to absorb them along the way.

The result is improvisation: experience, every spreadsheet within reach, and the hope that the reasoning survives the first tough question from a senior colleague.

On routine work, that's enough. On the problems that matter most, it's where things come apart.

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Where capable people get stuck on hard questions

Picture the most recent problem at work that had no obvious owner and no obvious answer.

Sales in one region dipped and every manager had a different theory. Or you were asked for a recommendation by Thursday while the spreadsheets told three different stories. Or the same agenda item kept coming back to the weekly meeting, month after month.

What happened next? If it went the usual way: a search, a template from an old project, a few frameworks half-remembered from a training, stitched together into something that looked reasonable. And then the meeting.

The gap between “works hard and knows the numbers” and “works a hard problem through a clear sequence” is seldom talent. It's a routine you can repeat: split the question into parts, check what the facts actually say, and assemble a recommendation that survives a hard follow-up.

Consulting firms tend to drill that routine into their people early. Outside those firms, people usually assemble it piece by piece, from articles and from whatever a good manager happened to show them. The methods were never secret; they were just never arranged in one sequence you could pick up and follow.

Think back over the last few months

Moments that follow you home from work

• Someone asked for your recommendation, and you answered with a long tour of the background.

  Ch. 31 Pyramid Principle, in Part VI: Communicate and Deliver

  Open with the answer and stack the support underneath, so the point lands before anyone drifts.

• The fix the whole team signed off on last spring never moved the result it was meant to move.

  Ch. 7 Driver Trees, in Part II: Find the Facts

  Break the result into what actually drives it, then check which branch changed before picking a cure.

• The options were debated in circles until the most senior person simply picked one.

  Ch. 24 Scoring Models, in Part IV: Choose What to Do

  Rate every option against the same criteria where everyone can see them, so the choice can be explained later.

• Weeks into the project, a director asked which question all this work was answering.

  Ch. 1 Problem Statement, in Part I: Frame the Problem

  Write the question down on day one and get it agreed before a single spreadsheet is opened.

None of this comes down to talent. Each one is a step that was skipped, and each step has a chapter.

What the new tools still leave to you

There's more data on every desk than ever, and tools that can draft an answer in seconds. What none of them do is decide which question is worth answering, check whether the logic holds, or get a room to agree on a call. That part is still the job. The methods in this book are for that part.

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From the first question to the final plan, across 35 chapters

All of it sits in one book: The Problem-Solving Toolkit. Inside, the workflow runs from the opening question all the way to a plan with owners:

Every method comes with its own diagram, 35 in all, simple enough to redraw on a whiteboard. And every chapter ends with a Try It exercise, an answer guide and a template sheet.

Jump in wherever your current problem is. Each chapter stands on its own, with pointers to anything it builds on.

The Problem-Solving Toolkit is published by FrameworkShelf, a brand of AURELIAI SpA, and written by The FrameworkShelf Editorial Team. Each method is credited to its originators in its chapter.

Prefer to start with Chapter 1? Get the sample PDF →