Then the book moves on to an introduction to logic. This is why decoupling into thinking and writing is useful. The easiest way to engage your reader and help her focus on your document is by telling a story. Although this has long been obviously good advice, and then structure. This quote is also a great expression of something I couldn't previously articulate. Another point emphasizing why it pays to start with the conclusion. This is the formula for an introductory statement, which is then gone into a bit more detail in the following quotes. It's very clear when something is confusing, but it's not always clear how to give Specifically, they must obey three rules: (1) ideas at any level in the pyramid must always be summaries of the ideas grouped below them, (2) ideas in each grouping must always be the same kind of idea, (3) ideas in each grouping must always be logically ordered.". Big Idea #8: Use clear transitions between groups of arguments to keep the reader in the loop. Complications should prompt people to ask questions. The idea of optimizing for "time to final draft" as opposed to "time to first draft" The Pyramid Principle explains in detail how written documents and presentations can be logically structured, and the methods described in the book are used by almost every major management consultancy on the planet. Even better, it helps you remember what you read, so you can make your life better. ", This is a fairly abstract idea, but I think pretty powerful if you spend some time thinking What’s a Concierge MVP? Cut production costs by 2% in the next quarter. Eventually you’d get to a level where the problems are obvious; for example, one might find out that lagging profits are due to increased costs related to certain materials. "2. introductory hook, and then iterate on both points and hook until the post's structure Shortform has the world’s best summaries of 1000+ nonfiction books and articles. To solve problems, first approach them logically and envision them using logic trees. First, make all of your points in an organized fashion. Sign up for a 5-day free trial here. Newsletter. All Rights Reserved, Will Larson. Big Idea #4: To formulate recommendations, approach problems methodically and visualize them using logic trees. "You write primarily to tell people what they don't know. "4. This results in jumbled thoughts that are hard for the reader to understand. I cannot emphasize this point too much. Draw conclusions.". Like this summary? This is a final gut check that your overall document makes sense. Any point you make must raise a question in the reader's mind, which you must answer horizontally on the line below.". often bury the lede in their professional writing. And many people are told specifically that they need to improve if they want to progress.". (which are very hard to fix, require repetitive training to address, like wordy sentences) We can use the pyramid principle in many different contexts, but it is particularly crucial to adhere to in delivering your client recommendation at the end of your case study. Pyramid Principle: Just like the name implies, the idea is that the presentation logic looks like a pyramid. You should then use mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive logic when presenting those groups. Then, any statements that follow should raise questions in the reader’s mind. Big Idea #1: Build your pyramid: group similar ideas together and then summarize each group with one statement. Stripe, The idea that this is a very frequent challenge This lets me iterate on structure cheaply until, only moving on to writing Next you want to prove that you have the clearest statement of the Question and the Answer that you can formulate at this stage. Filed under So let’s get to the meat. A good way to help your readers follow along is by referencing back at the start of each section or subsection. Read the world’s #1 book summary of The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto here. Very similar to "plan to throw one away" from Fred Brooks. In that Situation something will have occurred (known as the Complication) that caused him to raise (or would cause him to raise) the Question to which your document will give him the Answer.". Hence, we should hire applicant A.”, is not as interesting as the second one: “We should hire applicant A because we need someone who can read and he can.”. The mind prefers order over disorder. "5. (It's fine to think in writing, just don't try to reuse the thinking bits for communicating to others. Start with the summary and then explain it in more detail. The Pyramid Principle encapsulates an efficient, functional way of communicating where you deliver key conclusions first and then go on to supply supporting information. Subscribe to get summaries of the best books I'm reading. This should lead you to think of what happened in that Situation to raise the Question. You can question the general order of the ideas in a grouping." What happened in the situation to trigger the question?". Want to get the main points of The Pyramid Principle in 20 minutes or less? "The demands of logic and the limitations of a reader's ability to take in information dictate that this structure will always be pyramidal in shape — hence The Pyramid Principle." You can question the prose in which you express them.". They just write whatever comes into their head and hope it makes sense later on. Managing technical quality in a codebase. The first step in determining that order should be based on how you’ve grouped your information, such as by company divisions or other parts of a whole. Want to get smarter, faster? The approach and structure of this book has survived the test of times and it is now up to its 3rd edition. Read a quick 1-Page Summary, a Full Summary, or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. To solve a problem, it’s helpful to visualize the problem using a logic tree. All posts. This is also, fwiw, how I write blog posts now. If you have items that share a certain characteristic, order them from strongest to weakest. "3. Work out the relationships between them." I'm Will aka @lethain. We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on The Pyramid Principle, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Barbara Minto. Deductive reasoning is very straight-forward and easy to follow. How do you use the Pyramid Principle? Applicant A knows how to read. Digg. If you're looking to reach out to me, here are the ways I help. invest into folks' writing. Increase training: Increase factory staff training. You might find the problem is with the machines and they break down every day because maintenance workers aren’t properly trained. If you want to increase profits, look at the efficiency of your factories and customer satisfaction. It should start with an answer to an issue, and then supported by data to … Mining permits are rarely granted to foreign companies, and local mining companies are being sold off cheaply. This makes it difficult for readers to follow your train of thought because they have to read through all those points before they can get back up to the second premise where the argument starts over again. The Pyramid Principle was created by Barbara Minto at McKinsey as a method of structuring communications for maximum impact. ", "2. "It should begin by establishing for the reader the time and the place of a Situation. If the next statement answers those questions, then you can summarize your previous statements as well as place them into context when summarizing your entire pyramid structure. Big Idea #6: Use the introduction to tell the reader your key points within 30 seconds of reading. This is effectively the premise of the entire book. Examine customer satisfaction and increase sales training. In addition, the desired effects should be clearly stated. When I first started thinking about helping folks improve their structured written communication, I read this article on the Pyramid Method, which summarized Barbara Minto's The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking, and over the past few days I spent some time working through it. Hand-Picked Top-Read Stories. For example, “Einstein was a genius because he researched relativity,” or “Einstein was a genius because he researched gravity.”. Develop the Complication. In that situation, the formula ), "If you think for a moment about what you actually do when you write, you can see that you develop your major ideas by thinking in this bottom-up manner. "2. When you’re writing a paper, it’s not always necessary to use headings. Grouping and summarizing is simple, but it has to follow the basic rules. There are far more things that we could choose to focus on than we have time to invest, To do this, state the conclusion first and then provide supporting points. Any grouping of ideas is easier to comprehend if it arrives presorted into its pyramid. A logic tree is a diagram that shows all of the possible problems and solutions for one specific issue. If you try to explain the main idea of your paper by using logic, then your first premise will have several levels of justifications below it. (For me, at least, this sentence is too Click to order it for Andriod. Barbara was the best at getting all the new recruits to go from hot-shot, straight-from-campus hires to expert consultants in the shortest amount of time. "Almost everyone finds [writing] a chore and wishes [they] were better at it. If he has no need, he will have no question, and vice versa.". The first section will be about 1. It is easiest for a reader to digest information if it comes presorted into logical pyramid shape. the core content once it's stabilized. This alludes to what was on my mind when I started looking for ways to help Singer. The Pyramid Principle is a classic book written by Barbara Minto back in the late 80s. Most people don’t have a clear idea of what they’re going to write when they start writing. The Minto Pyramid Principle assumes that you already know how to write good sentences and paragraphs. Minto's idea of intellectually blank assertions are an interesting one! But a reader wants to find out what he doesn't know only if he needs to do so. Sometimes I've thought of this bit as the business value of the topic at hand. To help the reader understand your pyramid hierarchy, you can use headings to show how they’re related. Imposing the proper order means creating a comprehensive structure that identifies the major ideas and their flow, and organizes the minor ideas to support them.". After all, that’s what really matters. Long and arduous chapters can be confusing for the reader. They mostly contain quotes … If you read through a proposal's introduction and can't find anything concrete Write down the Answer, if you know it.". The Pyramid Principle is a distillation of Minto’s 20 years of experience in corporate reporting and writing with McKinsey & Company. That’s where the Pyramid Principle comes in. This suggests that every written document should be deliberately structured to form a pyramid of ideas.". A MECE structure of the divisions within a company will not be redundant, meaning that each division will contain unique activities. The first example, “We should hire any applicant who knows how to read. If it does not, then change it to the one it does raise. The Pyramid Principle explains how to: think creatively, reason lucidly, and express ideas with clarity define complex problems and establish the objectives of any document assess your ideas and recognize their relative importance structure your reasoning into a coherent and transparent argument analyze your argument to confirm its effectiveness. Although a pyramid structure is very useful, it’s ineffective if the reader can’t keep up. Examine factory efficiency and increase factory staff training. Pyramid Principle: Just like the name implies, the idea is that the presentation logic looks like a pyramid. Description Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle is a hierarchically structured thinking and communication technique that can be used to precede good structured writing. Often you already know the answer you think is best, so supply it. "1. Limit the introduction to what the reader will agree is true." Pyramid Structures. Each summary statement is like a tip on top of a miniature pyramid. Decide the Question. The Pyramid Principle. someone feedback on why, and I think this ordering bit helps. "4. In the last year she has taught the Minto Pyramid Principle in Singapore, Dubai, Oslo, and Munich, as well as Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. I plot out my main points, write the Will you be convinced? book 12. tl;dr - it's worth reading Barbara Minto's The Pyramid Principle. When suggesting action to your reader, consider leading with the recommendation instead of the reasoning behind it. The situation is that a company called ArgonEx is considering investing in new mines in Austria. Describe those actions in such detail that you can later determine whether or not they were successful. The author suggests that when you’re writing an essay, your ideas should be arranged in a pyramid structure. reading such an assertion. If some of these quotes are coming across as a bit too abstract, Then it supplies some tips on how to develop arguments: "1. Never has clear, convincing communication been as important as in today’s information-cluttered environment. there are two generaly kinds of issues with folks' writing: style issues 2007 - 2021. (In business writing I find that if folks agree with your conclusion, The Pyramid Principle is used the consulting world over – whether during interim internal discussions or executive-level presentations. I read it in the mid-2000s after it being recommended by the Manager-Tools team and recently re-read it again. Business writing often involves giving recommendations on how to solve a problem. Barbara Minto reveals that the mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings. It concentrates instead on the thinking process that should precede the writing. That really was an awful football match.” This “story” is poorly structured because the main statement is withheld until the very end of this passage. I've absolutely not thought about writing this way, but I can see how this review 13 more than these exerpts do. This is effectively the premise of the entire book. In this case, it would be: Our sales are growing. That, alas, takes deeper explanation and practice! Notes on Building Evolutionary Architectures. "All mental processes apparently utilize this grouping and summarizing process, so that the information in a person's mind might be thought of as being organized into one giant conglomeration of related pyramids.". Or perhaps you have the wrong Complication, or the wrong Question, and must think again.". 1.1. That feedback along with a decade of writing on this blog improved my writing, but it's not very practical advice to give someone looking to improve. This is expanding why a decision needs to be made. To justify your conclusions, you can use deduction to derive conclusions from chains of premises. since they're not part of your target audience. This means that more detailed ideas are grouped together and summarized with one statement. "6. Shortform: The World's Best Book Summaries, Shortform Blog: Free Guides and Excerpts of Books. Competitors have accumulated huge losses trying to enter similar markets on their own. Use the Situation as the starting point for thinking through the introduction." I couldn't find a great quote to pull, but Minto goes on to argue that "5. writing, but sometimes it's not the case. Who should read this summary? Then put them together to form one general statement that summarizes each point you’re making. As we have seen, their tendency is to tie together ideas that have a general rather than a specific relationship, so that nothing is directly implied. For these folks, becoming more proficient̉ writers can be a drag on their career progression, and I've been looking for ways to help folks improve their writing. The Pyramid Principle advocates that “ideas in writing should always form a pyramid under a single thought.” The single thought is the answer to … ), "You can define in advance whether or not you have built the structure properly by checking to see whether your ideas relate to each other in a way that would permit them to form pyramidal groups. Executive attention spans are notoriously short – don’t make your point in the first 10 seconds, and you’ve already lost your audience. Notes on Soul of a New Machine, Messy Middle, Crazy at Work, Company of One. Hi folks. Write down in it the subject you are discussing. Consequently, they are forced to cap them with what I call intellectually blank assertions.". However, if any group of ideas are arranged into a pyramid structure in the first place, not only will it save valuable time and effort to write, it will take even less effort to read and comprehend it. Don't omit to think through the introduction." The main recommendation is on top. I almost got into a fight. 2.