Core Formats II — Pricing, Growth, M&A, Ops + Led Modes

Learning objectives

By the end you can:

1. Run a pricing case through all three lenses (cost-plus (the floor), competition-based (the anchor), and value-based (the ceiling, via economic value to the customer)) decide which lens should rule a given decision, and price to contribution rather than to revenue.
2. Build a growth tree that decomposes a revenue-growth target into its real drivers (existing vs new customers; volume vs price vs mix; core vs adjacency; organic vs inorganic), size each branch, and identify the binding constraint and the highest-return lever, never adding growth that earns below the cost of capital.
3. Screen an acquisition with the five-question discipline (strategic rationale → target attractiveness → ability to win and integrate → value and price with stressed synergies → deal risks), build a synergy estimate, and stress it for double-counting, dis-synergies, timing, and cost-to-achieve before letting it move the offer.
4. Diagnose an operations or turnaround problem by separating a cost problem from a throughput problem, building a margin bridge that reconciles, running root-cause analysis to the real lever, and sequencing a turnaround (stabilize → diagnose → fix the constraint → then grow).
5. Recognize which of these four formats a prompt actually is (including disguised and hybrid prompts) and build a bespoke structure for it in under a minute rather than reaching for a memorized framework (the CN3.03 discipline, previewed here).
6. Read and operate in both led modes (interviewer-led and candidate-led) naming what behaviour changes (who drives structure, pace, hypothesis, and synthesis) and what never changes (rigor, math, answer-first), and demonstrate fluency in each with a worked dialogue.
7. Close every format answer-first (governing recommendation first, then the two or three reasons, then the risks and next step) handing the storyline cleanly to CN1.03 and the deck craft to the Presentation galaxy, never re-teaching either here.
8. Reach for a finance playbook when the case demands sector physics or a real valuation: knowing that CN2.04 teaches the generic strategy method, and that unit economics (M4.02), moats (M4.04–M4.05), M&A modeling (M3.09), and the ten sector playbooks (M5.01–M5.10) live in the Finance galaxy and are cross-linked, never duplicated (R1).
9. (AI-augmented objective.) Use an AI assistant to accelerate the scaffolding of these cases (a first-cut value driver, a comparable-multiple starting range, a synergy checklist) while tracing every figure to a primary source under the Guardrail, because on these formats a plausible-but-wrong number does not just embarrass you, it moves a real recommendation.

Prerequisites & connections

Builds on. This module assumes the whole earlier consulting spine and does not repeat it. From CN0.01 you carry structure-hypothesis-answer-first and the honest-scope contract; from CN0.02, the engagement frame and the trust equation that make a recommendation land. From CN1.01 you carry MECE issue trees: every tree below must be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, or the math double-counts. From CN1.02 you carry hypothesis-driven problem solving, the day-one answer, minimum killing analysis, and the refusal to boil the ocean. From CN1.03, the crown you have already earned, you carry the "so what," insight-versus-finding, and the governing-thought storyline that every close here instantiates. From CN2.01 you carry case math under pressure (percentages, growth, breakeven, weighted averages, smart rounding, used live in every worked example); from CN2.02, market sizing, which you will lean on to size a growth branch or a target's addressable market. And from CN2.03 you carry Core Formats I: the profit tree and the attractiveness-then-capability logic of market entry, which the pricing, growth, and turnaround formats all extend.

These four formats lean on the Finance galaxy and never re-teach it (R1). They repeatedly touch machinery that the Finance galaxy already builds properly, and the consulting move is to reach for it, not to rebuild it. Pricing and turnaround both stand on unit economics, contribution margin, CAC/LTV, operating leverage, which is M4.02; growth quality is judged by M3.07's master rule that growth destroys value whenever ROIC < WACC. M&A screening borrows the deal mechanics of M3.09 (DCF/LBO/accretion-dilution) and M3.10 / E11.02 (special situations), while the why-and-whether of a deal is developed further in CN6.01–CN6.02. Whenever a case needs sector physics, a bank's net interest margin, an airline's RASK−CASK, a pharma pipeline's risk-adjusted value, you reach for the relevant M5.01–M5.10 playbook rather than inventing sector economics at the table. Industry structure and moats (M4.03–M4.05, and their consulting mirrors CN3.01–CN3.02) tell you whether a pricing power or a growth runway will survive competition.