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How to Use This Manual

How to Use This Manual

The Discover Your MAD Skills Masterclass is built around a simple idea:

Great case solvers do more than analyse the obvious. They learn to see what others miss.

The first manual introduced a systematic approach to solving business cases. It focused on deciphering the problem, analysing the situation, developing alternatives, making recommendations, and building implementation plans. The second manual focused on communication: how to transform good analysis into a persuasive presentation through effective slide design, storytelling, speaking, and question-and-answer skills.

The fourth manual focused on financial analysis and Excel mastery, showing how numbers are used to evaluate opportunities, test assumptions, assess alternatives, and strengthen recommendations. The fifth manual explored additional case competition topics and analytical tools that frequently appear in more specialised cases.

This manual is not designed to be read once, memorised, and put on a shelf. It is designed to be used. Think of it as your case-solving toolkit, a resource you return to before practice sessions, during team preparation, when you are stuck in the middle of a case, and after a competition when you are trying to understand what went well and what needs to improve.

The purpose of this manual is not to help you collect more frameworks. It is to help you develop the judgment to know which tools to use, when to use them, and what to do with the insight they produce. As you work through the manual, keep one principle in mind:

Frameworks are not answers. Frameworks are thinking tools.

A framework may help you organise information, identify relationships, generate questions, or evaluate an option. But completing a framework is not the objective. The objective is to understand the situation well enough to make a better decision. That distinction should change how you use every chapter in this manual.

Start With the Question, Not the Framework

One of the easiest mistakes in case competitions is reaching for a familiar framework too quickly.

  • You see a market-entry case and think, "We should use PESTLE."
  • You see a struggling company and think, "Let's do a SWOT."
  • You see competitors and think, "Porter's Five Forces."
  • You see financial information and immediately start building a model.

The problem is not that these tools are wrong. The problem is that the tool was chosen before the question was defined. Instead, begin by asking: What are we trying to understand? Then ask, "What tool will help us answer that question?"

This manual repeatedly encourages you to identify the case's characteristics before selecting your analytical approach. Is the central challenge growth, profitability, innovation, implementation, changing market conditions, stakeholder management, sustainability, or something else? That should become a habit. Don't ask: "Which framework should we use?" Ask: "What do we need to know?" Then select the tool that helps you find out.

How the Manual Is Organised

The manual is built as a progression from tools to thinking to application to action to performance. You do not necessarily need to read every chapter in sequence every time you use it. Instead, understand what each section is designed to help you accomplish.

Part I: The MAD Skills Toolbox

This section introduces the philosophy behind selecting and using case-solving tools. The goal is to move from knowledge to judgment. You may eventually know dozens of frameworks. That is useful. But knowing when not to use a framework is often more valuable. Use this section when you are:

  • building or expanding your personal case-solving toolkit;

  • learning a framework for the first time;

  • deciding which tools are relevant to a particular case;

  • trying to understand the difference between knowing a framework and applying it effectively.

The question to keep asking is: What am I trying to understand, and which tool will help me understand it?

Part II: Thinking Skills

This section is about the thinking behind the tools. The manual introduces critical, strategic, systems, analytical, creative, and ethical thinking, as well as decision-making under uncertainty. These are not isolated capabilities. They interact throughout the case-solving process. Use this section when your team needs to improve how it thinks, not simply what it knows. The Mad Skills Thinking Cycle provides a useful mental model:

Observe → Question → Connect → Explore → Evaluate → Decide → Adapt

Use it to challenge your team's thinking at any point in a case.

  • Are you observing what is actually happening?
  • Are you asking the right questions?
  • Are you connecting the pieces?
  • Are you exploring enough possibilities?
  • Are you evaluating the evidence?
  • Are you making a decision?
  • Are you prepared to adapt if your assumptions change?

The goal is not to move mechanically through these stages. The goal is to develop the habit of moving deliberately between them.

Part III: Understanding the Situation

This section contains tools for understanding the organisation, market, customers, competitors, stakeholders, and broader environment. Use these chapters when you are still trying to answer: What is really going on here? This is where teams should resist the temptation to jump immediately to solutions.

  • A completed framework is not analysis.
  • A list of strengths and weaknesses is not an insight.
  • A collection of market statistics is not a strategy.

The real work begins when you ask, "So what?" And then: Why does that matter to the decision we need to make?

The manual deliberately emphasises this distinction: frameworks should generate meaningful insights rather than demonstrate that a team knows the framework. Use this section to move from:

Information → Understanding → Insight

before attempting to move to a recommendation.

Part IV: From Insight to Solution

Once you understand the situation, you need to turn insight into choice. This section helps you move from understanding customers and problems through alternatives, decision criteria, financial feasibility, and ultimately strategic choice. Use these chapters when your team is asking:

  • What could we do?

  • What alternatives should we consider?

  • How should we compare them?

  • Which option is best?

  • Does the option create enough value?

  • Why is this the right choice for this organisation?

A particularly important principle in this section is that the pieces of your analysis should connect.

  • Your understanding of the customer should inform the problem.
  • Your analysis should inform your alternatives.
  • Your alternatives should inform your decision criteria.
  • Your criteria should inform your choice.
  • Your financial analysis should test that choice.
  • Your strategy should bring the pieces together.

If those connections are missing, your solution will feel like a collection of analyses rather than a coherent recommendation. The manual describes this as the movement from analysis to insight to choice to strategy. Use this section to build that connection.

Part V: Turning Strategy Into Action

A recommendation is not complete simply because it sounds good. Someone has to make it happen. This section focuses on implementation the point at which strategy becomes action. Use these chapters when your team needs to answer: How will the organisation actually execute this recommendation? Consider the resources required, responsibilities, timing, capabilities, risks, milestones, measures, and potential barriers. Implementation should not be an afterthought added to the final slides, as the judges expect it. It should show that your team has thought beyond the idea and considered what it would take to make the idea work. A strong strategy tells the organisation where to go. A strong implementation plan demonstrates how it will get there.

Part VI: Winning the Room

A great recommendation still has to be communicated. This section brings the solution into the competition environment: the presentation, closing, and question-and-answer process. Use it when you are preparing to turn your analysis into a persuasive executive-level communication. Do not think of this as a completely separate skill from case solving. Your presentation should make the logic of your solution visible. The judges should be able to follow the journey:

Problem → Insight → Alternatives → Choice → Strategy → Action → Value

Your job is not to show judges everything your team discovered. Your job is to make clear why your recommendation is the best decision. The final stages of the competition are also where your preparation is tested under pressure. Use this section not only to learn presentation techniques, but to practise communicating your thinking with clarity, confidence, and composure.

Use the Chapters as Learning Tools

Each chapter is designed to do more than explain a concept. As you work through a chapter, look for the recurring elements:

  • Learning Objectives
    • These tell you what capability you should develop, not simply what information you should remember.
  • Why This Matters
    • This connects the concept to actual case-solving decisions.
  • Discover Your MAD Skills Principle
    • These are the ideas worth remembering under competition pressure.
  • Frameworks and Tools
    • These provide structure for your thinking. Do not use them mechanically.
  • Coach's Lens
    • These sections highlight practical observations from competition coaching and common ways teams misuse or misunderstand a tool.
  • Competition Examples
    • Use these to see how the concept can influence an actual case-solving situation.
  • MAD Skills Drills
    • Do not skip these.

Reading about a skill creates familiarity. Practising the skill creates capability. Use the drills with teammates. Apply them to previous cases. Repeat them until the underlying thinking becomes more natural.

Reflection Questions

Use these after practice and competitions. The objective is not simply to ask, "Did we win?" Ask:

  • What did we do well?

  • What did we miss?

  • What assumptions did we make?

  • What evidence challenged us?

  • Where did our thinking break down?

  • What would we do differently next time?

Reflection turns experience into learning.

Use the Manual in Three Different Ways

This manual can serve three different purposes depending on where you are in your development.

  • Learn
    • If you are developing your case-solving skills, work through the chapters deliberately.
    • Read the explanation.
    • Study the tools.
    • Complete the drills.
    • Discuss the reflection questions with your teammates.
    • Then apply what you have learned to a case.
    • Do not measure progress by how many frameworks you can recall.
    • Measure it by whether you can use a tool to generate a better insight.
  • Practise
    • Once you understand the concepts, stop reading and start applying.
    • Choose a case.
    • Set a time limit.
    • Solve it with your team.
    • Then return to the relevant chapters and ask:
      • Which thinking skill did we use?
      • Which tool would have helped us?
      • Where did our reasoning become weak?
      • What would a stronger team have noticed?
    • This is where the manual becomes a coaching resource rather than a textbook.
    • Use individual chapters to diagnose weaknesses in your team's performance.
    • If your team tends to jump to solutions, please practise the thinking chapters.
    • If your analysis is descriptive rather than insightful, return to the analytical tools.
    • If your recommendations lack differentiation, work on creative thinking.
    • If your recommendations ignore trade-offs, return to strategic thinking.
    • If your financial assumptions are fragile, revisit uncertainty and financial analysis.
    • If your ideas are strong but your presentation is weak, use the communication and presentation sections.
    • Use the manual to solve the problem your team actually has.
  • Compete
    • During competition preparation, this manual becomes a reference guide.
    • You should not try to remember every page.

You should be developing the ability to recognise quickly:

  • What kind of problem are we facing?
  • What do we need to understand?
  • Which questions should we ask?
  • Which tools will help us answer them?
  • What insight do we need?
  • How will that insight change our decision?

That is judgment. And judgment is what turns a collection of frameworks into a genuine competitive advantage.

Use the Masterclass Resources Together

This manual is part of a larger learning system. The videos demonstrate tools and concepts in action. The manual provides the deeper explanation and reference material. Excel provides a way to practise financial calculations and analysis. Cases provide the environment for developing judgment. A useful way to think about the relationship is: 

Watch → Understand → Practise → Apply → Reflect → Improve

  • Use the Masterclass videos to see the tools demonstrated. For those in regions where YouTube is unavailable, the videos are also available through Innovatank TV.
  • Use the manual to understand the concepts.
  • Use Excel to practise the calculations.
  • Use cases to develop judgment.
  • Use feedback and reflection to improve your performance.

The additional Deciphering Cases resources can provide further perspectives and examples that extend the ideas in the manual. The objective is not to consume more content. The objective is to become a better case solver.

Don't Try to Use Every Tool

This may be the most important practical advice in the entire manual. There are no extra points for using more frameworks. In fact, using the wrong framework can make your analysis worse.

  • Not every case needs a SWOT.
  • Not every market problem needs PESTLE.
  • Not every strategy requires Porter's Five Forces.
  • Not every recommendation requires a complicated financial model.
  • Not every problem needs ten alternatives.

The case's characteristics should determine the tools you use. Think of the manual as a toolbox. A craftsperson does not empty the entire toolbox onto the workbench before starting a project. They understand the problem. They identify what needs to be done. Then they select the tools that will help them do it. Your approach should be the same.

Build Your Own Toolkit

As you work through this manual, create your own personal toolkit. For each framework or tool, record four things:

  • What question does it answer?
  • When is it useful?
  • What insight can it generate?
  • How could that insight influence a recommendation?

Over time, you will develop something more valuable than a collection of frameworks. You will develop pattern recognition. You will begin to see a case and recognise what kind of thinking is required. That is the transition from student to competitor. And eventually, from competitor to professional decision-maker.

Use the Manual After Every Competition

One of the best times to use this manual is after a competition. Do not simply pack away the case and move on. Return to the experience. Identify:

  • Three things we did well.
  • Three things we need to improve.
  • One thinking mistake we made.
  • One tool we could have used more effectively.
  • One skill each teammate should deliberately practise.

Then turn those observations into your next practice plan. The final objective of the Discover Your Mad Skills approach is not simply to help you win a competition. It is to develop the habits of critical thinking, strategic decision-making, communication, leadership, reflection, and continuous improvement that remain valuable long after competition weekend.

Your Goal Is Not to Finish the Manual

  • You can finish reading this manual without becoming a better case solver.
  • You can memorise every framework and still struggle to generate an insight.
  • You can complete every exercise and still jump to the first solution.
  • You can build a beautiful financial model and still make the wrong recommendation.
  • Reading is not the goal.
  • Application is the goal.

The real test is what happens when you receive a case you have never seen before.

  •  Can you decipher the situation?
  • Can you identify what matters?
  • Can you ask better questions?
  • Can you select the right tools?
  • Can you challenge your own assumptions?
  • Can you connect evidence to insight?
  • Can you generate alternatives?
  • Can you make a defensible decision despite uncertainty?
  • Can you explain that decision clearly?
  • Can you defend it under pressure?

And when the competition is over, can you learn from what happened and become better? That is what this manual is designed to help you do. So don't simply read it.

  • Use it.
  • Return to it.
  • Practise with it.
  • Challenge yourself with it.
  • Use it to diagnose your team's weaknesses.
  • Use it to prepare for your next competition.
  • Use it to reflect after your last one.

And, most importantly, use it until the tools become less important than the judgment you have developed through using them. The goal is not to become an expert in frameworks. The goal is to become an expert thinker.

Use the Manual as a Diagnostic Tool

When solving a case, begin with your normal process.

  • Decipher the case.
  • Understand the problem.
  • Analyse the situation.
  • Develop alternatives.
  • Evaluate the options.
  • Make your recommendation.

Then ask:  "What are we missing?"

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