The Pyramid Principle
How to sharpen your thinking and get more traction with execs.
Many talented ops leaders struggle with communication.
In this post I explain the most likely reason for communication issues and how to fix them.
Common Symptoms of a Communication Problem
Feels like execs are tuning out your presentations
Alternately, listeners start nit-picking or going on tangents
Requests or proposals are full of friction, you get lots of push back, everything feels like pulling teeth
The Issue
Ops people are system thinkers. We’re trained to work a problem rigorously from one step to another.
This makes it natural to structure presentations the same way.
Example:
Lots of context and detail about the problem
Step-by-step walk through of what we did to investigate it
Lots of supporting detail on how we arrived at our conclusion
Conclusion!
The problem here is that we confuse the mental journey with arriving at the answer with the best way to communicate that answer.
The two are not the same - in fact, they need to be inverted.
An executive's most precious resource is TIME. They trust you to go on the journey to get the answer. (Or at least, the want to trust you.)
Ultimately an exec wants a clear understanding of your conclusion, the main reasons for it, and access to details to feel confident.
If you don’t give them that, they will either
Get impatient / frustrated (“why won’t they get to the point?”)
Feel a lack of confidence and start diving into or challenging small details along the way, because they’re not clear on your overall proposal and argument
The Solution
I use a method called "The Pyramid Principle," invented by Barbara Minto at McKinsey. They teach it to all new associates.
“The pyramid is a tool to help you find out what you think,” she says. “The great value of the technique is that it forces you to pull out of your head information that you weren’t aware was there, and then helps you to develop and shape it until the thinking is crystal clear. Until you do that, you can’t make good decisions on slides or video.”
My current COO is an ex-McKinsey consultant, and we make it a standard part of our company onboarding too (where I learned about it).
The Pyramid Principle teaches you to focus and structure your thoughts, so you can communicate complex ideas QUICKLY and in a way that inspires confidence.
Here’s how it works.
Start with the Answer
Give a quick problem statement (just enough to orient the person) and then your recommendation
Problem: Our CRM has thousands of duplicate contact records.
Recommendation: We should procure a data management platform to mitigate dupes and maintain data health.
By focusing on the answer, you’ve made it crystal clear what you recommend. You now focus the audience on understanding why you’ve recommended this instead of getting lost on tangents.
Summarize Supporting Arguments
Next you want to provide your main supporting arguments in summary. These should be crisp statements that you will back up later with more detail.
Argument #1: Duplicates cost us 1,000 hours of lost productivity across the sales org yearly.
Argument #2: Duplicates cost us $50,000 in wasted spend on marketing automation.
Argument #3: A data management platform is the most cost-effective solution to this problem.
This step allows you to clearly position your main arguments in the listeners mind.
Sometimes, this alone is convincing. The exec trusts you have data to back up your claims - you’re good to go.
Provide Supporting Detail
Lastly, you can provide supporting detail to back up each of your claims, logically-ordered together under each main argument.
Argument #1: Lost Sales Productivity
• Sales people spend 5+ mins managing dupes every time they work a new lead.
• We often have multiple sales people working dupes, leading to extra lost time.
• This happens 5-10 times per week with each incident costing 30 minutes of sales and ops time.
• [show the math for how you reached your estimate of 1,000 hours]
Impact
Overall this method will sharpen and clarify your thinking and help you make sure you're confident in your ideas.
That confidence will transfer to your audience, transforming your communication and how you're perceived by executives.
It will be far easier to get a "yes" on whatever you're recommending. It really is magical once you train yourself to use it.
This doesn’t mean you’ll never get pushback or that 100% of your requests will be approved (if only!).
But discussion tends to be much more productive - focused on clarifying an argument or suggesting additional points to consider.
Resources
The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking - This is Barbara Minto’s book.
How to Use The Pyramid Principle (Barbara Minto) - A brief and helpful video that goes into more detail on how to apply the framework.