McKinsey Sustainable Futures Lab (SFL): What It Is and How to Prepare

The McKinsey Solve assessment has historically consisted of two core modules: Redrock and Sea Wolf. In recent months, a number of candidates — primarily in Europe and the Middle East — have reported a third module appearing in their assessment: the Sustainable Futures Lab, sometimes abbreviated SFL.

This guide covers what the Sustainable Futures Lab is, how it differs from the other two modules, how to determine whether you’ll see it, and how to prepare efficiently.

What is the Sustainable Futures Lab?

The Sustainable Futures Lab is a scenario-based module within the McKinsey Solve digital assessment. Unlike Redrock (which tests quantitative reasoning and data interpretation) and Sea Wolf (which tests constraint-based logic), the Sustainable Futures Lab evaluates decision-making, prioritisation, and consistent judgment in consulting-style situations.

Candidates are placed in a business or sustainability-related scenario and asked to make a series of interconnected decisions. Information is revealed progressively — earlier choices influence the options available later — and performance is assessed on the quality and consistency of reasoning across the full scenario, not on numerical accuracy.

This places the Sustainable Futures Lab closer to a Situational Judgement Test (SJT) than to the analytical challenges of the other two modules.

How the Sustainable Futures Lab differs from Redrock and Sea Wolf

Module	Duration	Primary Focus
Redrock	35 min	Quantitative reasoning and problem solving
Sea Wolf	30 min	Logic and constraint-based reasoning
Sustainable Futures Lab (SFL)	20 min	Situational judgement and trade-off analysis

The key distinction is that the Sustainable Futures Lab does not reward numerical fluency or pattern recognition in the same way. The evaluation centres on how clearly you structure a decision, how well you weigh trade-offs, and how consistently you reason across multiple steps.

Will you see the Sustainable Futures Lab in your assessment?

Not all candidates receive the Sustainable Futures Lab module. It appears to be part of a phased rollout rather than a standardised component of every McKinsey Solve assessment.

The most reliable indicator is the total time stated in your invitation email:

• 65 minutes → Redrock and Sea Wolf only
• 85 minutes → Redrock, Sea Wolf, and the Sustainable Futures Lab

The additional 20 minutes corresponds exactly to the Sustainable Futures Lab module. If your email specifies 65 minutes, you will not see the Sustainable Futures Lab in your session.

Beyond the timing indicator, candidate reports suggest the Sustainable Futures Lab has appeared most frequently in European and Middle Eastern recruiting cycles, and may vary by role and intake period.

What McKinsey tests in the Sustainable Futures Lab

Based on candidate reports and the module’s format, the Sustainable Futures Lab appears to evaluate three core capabilities:

Decision-making under uncertainty. Candidates must commit to a reasonable course of action without complete information. The module does not reward hesitation or attempts to find a “perfect” answer — there typically isn’t one.

Prioritisation and trade-off analysis. Each decision point involves multiple plausible options. Performance depends on how clearly candidates weigh factors such as impact, feasibility, risk, and stakeholder implications — not simply which option they select.

Stakeholder awareness. The scenarios incorporate the effects of decisions on different groups: internal teams, clients, and external stakeholders. Considering these dimensions is part of the evaluation.

Candidates also note that consistency across the full scenario matters. Decisions that contradict each other in reasoning — even if each seems locally defensible — appear to reflect poorly on the overall evaluation.

How to prepare for the Sustainable Futures Lab

Given the Sustainable Futures Lab’s duration (20 minutes out of a potential 85), and the widespread candidate feedback that it feels intuitive, preparation effort should be proportional.

Practise general Situational Judgement Tests. Free SJT resources are widely available and directly target the skills the Sustainable Futures Lab assesses: evaluating options in ambiguous work situations, identifying the most and least effective responses, and reasoning about stakeholder impact. This is the most direct preparation available.

Define criteria before choosing. In practice, briefly identify what matters most in a given situation before evaluating options. Candidates who apply a consistent framework — even a simple one — tend to reason more clearly across interconnected decisions.

Keep Redrock and Sea Wolf as your primary focus. Those two modules account for 65 of the 85 minutes in a full assessment and require substantially more preparation. Marginal improvements in the Sustainable Futures Lab are unlikely to offset underperformance in the more demanding modules.

A note on resources

You can run full timed practice for the Sustainable Futures Lab in the Solve Games Guide app — see our Sustainable Futures Lab Guide for format, traits, and sign-in links. Be cautious of third-party resources that claim to replicate the exact assessment experience without transparent methodology.

As more candidates complete the Sustainable Futures Lab and report their experiences, the preparation picture will become clearer. For now, the practical guidance is: confirm your assessment duration, practise SJTs briefly if you have 85 minutes, use timed Sustainable Futures Lab runs to build familiarity, and direct the majority of your effort toward Redrock and Sea Wolf.

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Looking for Redrock and Sea Wolf preparation? Read our full guides:

• Sea Wolf Strategy Guide
• Redrock Strategy Guide