Is it MECE? Use a Venn

MECE is one of the most well-known acronyms in consulting. Standing for Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive, it is a principle used when doing any form of segmentation, to ensure no duplication (ME) or missed items (CE). This exists in a bunch of scenarios, such as solving problems, writing documents, and preparing presentations. There are countless articles explaining what it is, so I won’t go into too much detail. These often include a Venn diagram or two to show ME and CE, but I haven’t seen them used to demonstrate the whole MECE concept - so that’s what I thought I’d do. Using examples, we can see how a Venn diagram can be used to check your segmentation is MECE.