Start by keeping the job of your structure very clear. You are not trying to build the perfect consulting framework from scratch. You are trying to create a few logical buckets that help investigate the question without obvious overlap.

That usually means choosing one clean way to segment the problem. For example, if you are diagnosing profit decline, costs and revenue is one reasonable top-level split. If you are exploring growth, customer, product, and channel might be more natural.

With practice, MECE becomes less about memorizing buzzwords and more about spotting the right lens for the specific question in front of you. You may also find it helpful to read case structure vs case framework if you want a more structured way to practice this.

What helped me was checking whether each bucket would lead to a different analysis. If not, they probably overlap.

I also try to say ‘These are the main buckets I want to test first’ instead of acting like my structure is perfect.