unanchored_detail
NEW - #1 because it is the only thing a BCG interviewer criticized on his hardest case, and it caps communication at 3 no matter how good the content is. Rule: name the bucket before its sub-questions, and the sub-bucket before its detail. Out loud it sounds like: 'Now revenue. Within revenue there are two things: price and quantity. On quantity, the question is whether we have a capacity constraint. On price, whether we are in line with the two competitors who beat their targets.' His words: 'always anchor on which bucket you're in so the person can follow your thinking' - and it is quick, 'now I'm going to talk about revenue, within revenue I want to know these six things.' Extra explicit because the round is virtual and he cannot see your paper. I will count every moment detail arrives without its parent named; 2+ in the structure walk is a fail.
Filler density
PAIRED with the anchoring drill - same 90 seconds, same fix. Inside the structure walk you said 'sort of' 12 times (3.6/min): 'I'm sort of thinking about this in three buckets', 'sort of segment this financial analysis'. It is not a volume problem (2.3/min across the case is fine) - it is placement. The framework is the one stretch that must sound decided. Ban 'sort of', 'perhaps' and 'a little bit' between the words 'my hypothesis is' and the end of the last bucket. Say 'I am looking at three areas', not 'I'm sort of thinking about this in three different buckets'. I will count softeners inside the structure walk specifically; target zero.
math_not_self_initiated
NEW - direct from the interviewer, answering your own question about whether you should have calculated unprompted: yes. Rule: the moment an exhibit shows round numbers (2.5 and 250, not 1.76 and 256), either do the math or propose it BEFORE being asked - 'these are round numbers, I'd like to size C2 against the $500M hole, should I run it?' As long as you propose it, odds are they say yes. Then tie the result to the problem statement in the same breath: '$625M - that is more than the entire miss, so C2 alone explains it.' I will count interviewer math prompts; the target is zero, and two caps quantitative at 3.
Quant setup error
ESCALATED - failed 4 sessions running, now the longest-lived miss in the ledger. This session's form: asked for the saving, you computed the absolute ($8.6M for Dallas at Munich costs) and had to be redirected to the delta. Before the first multiplication, say the sentence: 'I am solving for X, in units of Y' - 'I am solving for the incremental profit, in dollars saved per year, which is the per-visit cost gap times visits per location.' Delta vs absolute, per-year vs per-cycle, saving vs spend. I will check that the quantity and its units were named before any arithmetic.