(2016-06-19) Vemu The Pyramid Principle Book Review

Preeti Vemu: The Pyramid Principle Book Review. 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.

Today, we take a quick dive in to what is known as the “Minto Principle.” Ever heard of it? In 1987, Barbara Minto wrote a book called the Pyramid Principle – Logic in Writing and Thinking. Minto is an ex McKinsey & Company consultant and wrote this during her early days there. She went on to train Bob Waterman and Tom Peters.

The Pyramid Principle is aimed at bettering your communication by helping your thinking, and focuses fundamentally on the logic of writing. cf (SCQA)

This book provides answers to questions like, “How can I grab my audience’s attention in just a couple of minutes?” and “How can I create a compelling story with a logical structure that is easy to understand and easy to remember?”

But what about using the right data to create a great presentation? This is another one of the skills you NEED to have in the bag if you want to be a world class consultant.

When your presentation is both new and interesting, more questions get raised. Instead of tuning out, your audience will be asking questions like, “What?”, “How?”, “Is it true?” and “Does it actually work?” As they do this, they’ll stay engaged and want more from you, which is ideal.

It provides insight on how to define complex problems and establish the objectives of any document

This book also talks about how your horizontal logic and vertical logic, when arranged in a hierarchal and systematic structure

Vertical logic is the question-answer dialogue and the horizontal logic is the kind of reasoning you use to understand the information being presented to you.

Horizontal logic is deductive reasoning or inductive reasoning.

Storytelling is an art with structure. That structure is referred to as introductory flow. This includes situation, complication, question and answer

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.

Ideas at any level in the pyramid must always be summaries of the ideas grouped below them.

different kinds of order.... Time order: if there is a sequence of events that form a cause-effect relationship, you should present the ideas in time order. Structural order: break a singular thought into its parts, ensuring that you have covered all of the major supporting ideas. Degree order: present supporting ideas in rank order of importance, most to least important.

Watch out for a possible naming ambiguity between the Minto Pyramid Principle and the inverse pyramid structure of writing. In journalism, the inverse pyramid structure (IPS) of writing refers to reporting a news story from the most important material to the least important, separating the statement of what happened from the specific detail of how and why it happened.