Casing

Normally I try to keep this blog very high-level and professional. I'm relaxing that aspiration for this post. I have to write about casing.

Casing, as any business student knows, is the art of pretending to consult on a business problem presented by a moderator. The moderator has one or more pages of case details, the bare threads of detail that define the problem: profitability, market entry, o what have you. The moderator then presents information, and through a loosely defined protocol, the person being cased sets up a framework, puts information into buckets, and then dives deep to try and solve the problem.

It's a bit like playing Dungeons and Dragons:

Dungeon Master: You are standing in the entry hall of a giant abandoned castle. On the far end of a hall is a might chest spilling over with treasure. However, there is also a giant dragon, guarding the treasure. The dragon wants to know if he should expand his internal medical billing practice into an external business offering.

Player: I'd like to take a few moments to structure my thoughts.

And so it goes. The moderator parcels out information, and the player - that is, the person being cased - takes that information and tries to find a solution to the problem. Sometimes, identifying the problem is part of the problem itself.

Thing is, this is usually just two girls (or guys, or one of each) in a room. Often as not, the moderator is trying to make sense of the case. There are cases where information is mislabeled ("reveal this for part II" that is clearly required for part I). There are cases where the arithmetic literally does not add up. There are cases with fully 1.5 pages of background information that are absolutely irrelevant to the case at hand.

The result, very often, is the blind leading the blind.

That said, I think that's actually apt training. Business school, like professional postgraduate schools (JD, MD) trains you to work through a problem; there is always a solution, even if it is a solution you do not like. However, real life is messy. Clients don't always have their information together, or even know what they're looking for. Consultants may start of with one framework only to realize it is really, completely and truly, irrelevant, and further clouds their ability to see what they actually need to see.

So, as frustrating as it is, casing is valuable. It is real life. It's uncertainty, debate, communication. As frustrating as it is (and hey, we MBAs like to always be right), it's valuable to see where we can go wrong.