This is the only way to present your ideas clearly to clients. At the top, you start with the most important takeaway. The image above is shaped like a pyramid. Take each of the examples and use the pyramid principle to make the communication clear and structured! If your answers aren’t mutually exclusive, the lines become blurred, and clients may become confused and try clarify your logic on the fly. The pyramid principle was invented by Barbara Minto at McKinsey. 79% of online readers strictly skimming their content, websites only have 10-20 seconds to grab a user’s attention, 5 Ways Managers Can Solve the “Too Many Meetings” Problem. If there is power in the vertical relationships, is there also power in the horizontal relationships? In the real world, the only currency that people pay to read blog posts and internal wiki articles is their attention. The most common cause of unclear writing is poor structure. Derek was quantitatively brilliant, but his comfort zone wouldn’t allow him to offer a client an idea with 3-5 supporting options. The Minto Pyramid Principle assumes that you already know how to write good sentences and paragraphs. They’ll want you around, whether as a consultant or in another capacity – don’t be surprised when clients want to hire you. Then, from there, you support your conclusion with layers of evidence that flow in a logical order.Structuring your information like this allows you to instantly convey the takeaway that your readers are looking for and then prove its value throughout the rest of the article. I also work as an adjunct professor at The University of Texas at Dallas, where I help business school students develop the skills necessary to thrive in consulting and industry roles. The vertical relationship is important because it presents an idea, allows the reader to absorb it, and then provides answers and supporting evidence. The nature of these documents vary depending on your role–strategies, presentations, memos, announcements, email, etc–but your written word often becomes your most important medium of communication.  Sound like any presentations you’ve seen? The Pyramid Principle is Barbara Minto’s powerful and compelling process for “This quarter, Hot Fire Shoes’ profitability unexpectedly flat lined for the first time in company history.”.  Completely exhaustive means you have included every possible answer. 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. Good stories don’t just dump information on their audiences, they begin by crisply describing a situation, creating a mental picture in the mind of the audience. She loves snow and hiking in the nature, and is fed up with the busy city-life in New York. Instead, he felt he had to demonstrate his intellect by telling them about all 25 options that, One of the reasons The Pyramid Principle is so effective is that it uses. The Pyramid Principle is a famous book by Barbara Minto on the McKinsey method for effective communication. One of the best, yet relatively unknown tools to help you hold the attention of executives (or any audience) is The Pyramid Principle. This is from 4 years ago and covers the Minto’s pyramid principle – one of the most important concepts in executive communication and logical structuring of arguments.This is really big at all the big 4 and big 3.It is the scaffolding of management consulting thinking. How do you use the Pyramid Principle? If you  fail to get right to the point, you risk losing them. The Pyramid Principle is the international best-seller on how to produce crisp, clear, compelling business writing. You want to pick three to five options to highlight as answers to the question you’ve presented to them. Then you arrange the information in a way that your audience can rapidly process.  But all else being equal, the person who advances the fastest is usually the one who knows the value of time, how to deliver value, and tell a succinct story with sound reasoning. © 2021 Jeff Kavanaugh. If this were a story, however, we would list our main points in chronological order. All Rights Reserved. Lectures by Walter Lewin. 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. The Pyramid Principle is a structure to present your synthesis in an effective and convincing manner. The Pyramid Principle advocates that “ideas in writing should always form a pyramid under a single thought.” The single thought is the answer to the executive’s question. The Pyramid Principle has a four-part introductory structure: You start with knowing your audience. The same is true with your audience.  For horizontal relationships, the supporting points relate to each other, using either deductive or inductive reasoning. What Is the Minto Pyramid Principle? In fact, according to research from Nielsen, websites only have 10-20 seconds to grab a user’s attention.However, there is a silver lining that you can pluck from that unfavorable statistic. Personally, I like three to five because that gives you room to be wrong on one or two options. In this example section, our “what,” or main takeaway, is “report metrics in your wiki instead of in a meeting,” which is also the section header. Use the following examples of connected and complementary models to weave Minto’s pyramid into your broader latticework of mental models. If you’re wrong, it will make your thinking clearer, so that a listener can point out the flaw in your logic and collaboratively provide you constructive feedback. The Pyramid Principle was created by Barbara Minto at McKinsey as a method of structuring communications for maximum impact. Structure the case conclusion recipient-friendly by applying the Pyramid Principle Use the pyramid structure to provide syntheses and recommendations at the end or in between your case interviews. If I handed you a list of 25 options, you’d have no chance of making a smart decision. Next, the “why,” or your supporting evidence for your takeaways, will branch out from each point. SCQ Framework SM The Minto Pyramid Principle® is the powerful and compelling process for producing everyday business documents – to-the-point memos, clear reports, successful proposals, or dynamic presentations.. Minto Books International, Inc. 19 Cadogan Place London SW1X 9SA UK Tel: +44 (0)207 235 6274 Fax: +44 (0)207 823 1827. Namely, communicating a key takeaway right away can potentially hold your audience’s attention for the entire duration of your article.This still begs the question, though — how do you get to the point, and how do you do it in an engaging way? At the top, you start with the most important takeaway. Minto Books International, Inc. 19 Cadogan Place London SW1X 9SA UK Tens of thousands of people worldwide have benefited from former McKinsey consultant Barbara Minto’s famous Pyramid Principle. This creates a sense of urgency, compelling the executive to listen and possibly act, based on your upcoming ideas. ConsultingMethodology.com page 1 of 5 The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto (The logic of writing) The pyramid structure A person that seeks to learn your thinking about a particular subject faces a complex task. This means restructuring answers into the right scopes and right descriptions. You see, it’s not just about working hard. You’re not looking for a one-size fits all solution here. Barbara was. Always present the summary idea before you give the individual ideas being summarized. The Pyramid Principle is used the consulting world over – whether during interim internal discussions or executive-level presentations. To keep executives focused, you need to craft a coherent story. Just like the structure of an article, each section will cover its own “what,” “why,” and “how” in that exact order.Using the same example article as above, we’ll deconstruct the section about reporting metrics in your wiki to help you grasp the Minto Pyramid Principle at the section level. Repost. If you’re right, it will allow the audience to grasp the idea quickly and easily. Finally, the “how,” or tactical, practical advice for executing the main takeaway, will branch out from each “why.”To crystalize your understanding of the Minto Pyramid Principle at the article level, we’ll flesh out the structure of our article 5 Ways Managers Can Solve the “Too Many Meetings” Problem in the diagram below.  The top of the pyramid is a statement, with the supporting base of the pyramid ready to provide answers to the questions the statement raises. Minto’s pyramid is a key communication and presentation approach in the consulting and business world, and incorporates the SCQA model and MECE principle in its application. We recommend following the Minto Pyramid Principle. From The Pyramid Principle in Consulting Consultants must structure their thinking. Another upside to mastering how to craft coherent ideas, is that executives are keenly aware of how hard it is to do what you’ve demonstrated. Just like a pyramid, your article’s premise, which should be stated in the introduction, will sit at the very top of your article. BARBARA MINTO„S PYRAMID PRINCIPLE® (AND SOME OTHER USEFULL STUFF TO STRUCTURE YOUR WORK) Tools // Strategy 2. Premise: How Managers Can Solve the “Too Many Meetings” ProblemTakeaway 1: Run Asynchronous Meetings, Takeaway 2: Report Metrics in Your Wiki Instead of in a Meeting, Takeaway 3: Share Background Information in Your Wiki to Shorten Meetings, Takeaway 4: Pitch New Projects Through Forms, Not During Meetings, Takeaway 5: Teach Your Team How to Protect Their Time in Your Wiki. You still need to hustle, and you still need to hit your targets. Barbara was among those to leave. The Minto Pyramid Principle® Course The Pyramid Principle explained. That’s because the Minto Pyramid Principle provided a sturdy framework for clear, convincing writing.If you’re wondering how we ordered our main points, we approximated how much our audience would value each takeaway and ranked them from most helpful to least helpful. Like any good story, you introduce a complication to highlight the conflict, the problem or opportunity that affects the situation.  Absolutely, though in a different way. Instead, he felt he had to demonstrate his intellect by telling them about all 25 options that might work, in a semi-organized list. The Minto Pyramid Principle® is the powerful and compelling process for producing everyday business documents – to-the-point memos, clear reports, successful proposals, or dynamic presentations. Â. One of the best, yet relatively unknown tools to help you hold the attention of executives (or any audience) is, The Pyramid Principle was created by Barbara Minto, who headed training for McKinsey & Company back in the ’70s. at getting all the new recruits to go from hot-shot, straight-from-campus hires to expert consultants in the shortest amount of time. Minto Pyramid Principle, also referred to as the McKinsey’s Pyramid Principle, is a My revised thoughts (2016) shown in red color.. Consultants must structure their thinking. This is a seminal concept in executive communication, and has spread like a virus from McKinsey to every other con… If you want to move up the ranks from in any business, then you need to master a critical skill beyond work ethic: the ability to communicate more information, more clearly, in a limited amount of time. Barbara Minto reveals that the mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings. It’s to lay out your argument in the clearest terms possible, so that listeners can understand your thinking and engage more fully. The question you raise needs to have answers that are mutually exclusive and completely exhaustive, otherwise known in business lingo as MECE. The main difference between the Minto Pyramid Principle and the IPS is that the former presents ideas and conclusions that rest on logical analysis and reasoning, whereas the latter is used to report facts in typical news writing style, starting with more and ending with less important information. Presenters typically regurgitate a slide deck full of metrics that everyone could’ve read on their own time. 3. Executive attention spans are notoriously short – don’t make your point in the first 10 seconds, and you’ve already lost your audience. She based her thinking around ideas ranging from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and other sources on logic throughout history.Her pyramid principle works really well with the consulting problem solving process as it is a natural partner for hypothesis-driven thinking. Every piece of information on the pyramid base reinforces the tip above it, making the pyramid’s conclusion inescapable to the viewer. Yes, a presentation may last a lot longer, but you don’t have much time to get–and keep–someone’s attention. In vertical relationships, the supporting points (the base) need to answer the question raised by the statement above (the tip). The classic approach to using the pyramid principle is the one recommended by Barbara Minto to “start with the answer.” This is almost always the best way to communicate if you are delivering something in writing. So, start collecting that attention — by cutting to the chase. It starts with the answer first, then gives 3 general supporting reasons why, then multiple more granular details about each reason below that. They will make you ♥ Physics. In a follow-up post, we will look at an example of applying the tool on a business news article. The Pyramid Principle was created by Barbara Minto, who headed training for McKinsey & Company back in the ’70s. How often have you had to decide between unloading a ton of content or dumbing down the message to communicate it quickly? We recommend following the Minto Pyramid Principle. The Pyramid Principle is Barbara Minto’s powerful and compelling process for producing everyday business documents. The Minto Pyramid Principle Then came the 1973 Oil Crisis, leaving in its wake a troubling economic situation in the U.K. and a major force reduction in the London office. Here, you present your results first and then how you got there. During the course of … Exercise 2: Below are two examples of communication. For the Love of Physics - Walter Lewin - May 16, 2011 - Duration: 1:01:26. For the Hot Fire Shoes example, you can start with a relatively simple answer. Minto's book also gives us the MECE rule and the publication's contents have become ubiquitous in consulting and are often being repackaged for audiences in other areas. Barbara Minto‘s “The Minto Pyramid Principle” is a how-to guide for writing concise reports in a management consulting firm that has been around for years.I wrote a one sheet summary of her book over a decade ago that I still sometimes find to be a useful aid for writing. The idea is to start with your main idea, and then use logically grouped arguments to support your position. As written on Minto’s website, “Extended thinking eventually ends in a single pyramid of ideas, at many levels, obeying logical rules, and held together by a single thought. The question you raise needs to have answers that are. You’ve established your familiarity with their company, established a positive atmosphere, and set the stage for your story. Yes, it’s possible your recommendation may be wrong. Next, we dive into the section’s “why.” Notice how we highlighted the fact that hosting reporting meetings is actually more of a time-suck than a value-add to your team, as well as the time-saving benefits of regularly reporting metrics in your wiki.“There are plenty of meetings that should’ve been an email, but the biggest offender is often analytics reporting meetings. The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto 1. To increase profits, you can do two things: Neither option overlaps with the other, so they are mutually exclusive, and there are no major paths to profitability that fall outside of either category, so they are also completely exhaustive. The Pyramid Principle Training module This document is part of a set of supporting material available for download upon purchase of Strategy Execution Heroes by Jeroen De Flander (isbn 978-908148731-3) . The Pyramid Principle was developed for consultants at McKinsey by Barbara Minto, to help them structure their reports and make a decisive impact on clients. “How can we increase profitability for Hot Fire Shoes?”. Neither option overlaps with the other, so they are, , and there are no major paths to profitability that fall outside of either category, so they are also, Personally, I like three to five because that gives you room to be wrong on one or two options. The Pyramid Principle will show you how to communicate your ideas clearly and succinctly. You can use your wiki page’s comments to prompt engagement and discussion about this data. This is a key tenet of both effective information analysis and communication to your audience. S-C-Q-A helps you write introductions which engage an audience’s attention before you provide the answers. However, the purpose of the Pyramid Principle isn’t always to convince everyone that you’re right. Recommended for you. Pyramid Structures. It is now widely part of the toolkit every strategy consultants around the world needs to learn and use. That’s what The Pyramid Principle is at its core: a principle that allows you to quickly seize your audience’s attention and communicate with gravitas, by creating a compelling story that is easy to understand and remember. In The Pyramid Principle, the question extends logically from the complication, which keeps the overarching problem mentally straightforward and easier to follow. Consultants must structure their thinking easy to follow one or two options strategy consultants the. To work hard Pyramid into your broader latticework of mental models the conflict, the moment of for! 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