Product Description

What is it that enables some people to put complex ideas across persuasively in writing, while others struggle to articulate their thoughts?

analyses, presentations and memos?

The clear communication of ideas, whether to clients, colleagues or the management board, is a key factor in determining personal success.

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.

Barbara Minto's best-selling book, now in its third edition, is based on the concept that any grouping of ideas is easier to comprehend if it is pre-sorted into a logical structure before being committed to paper, and experience has shown that a ‘top-down’ pyramid structure is the most readily understood.

Applying the Pyramid Principle will enable you to present your thinking so clearly that the ideas move off the page and into the reader’s mind with a minimum of effort and a maximum of effect.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109803 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

About the Author

Barbara Minto

developed The Pyramid Principle through her early work as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc. She now runs her own consultancy, Minto International, Inc., specializing in teaching the Pyramid Principle to people whose major training is in business or the professions, but whose jobs nevertheless require them to produce complex reports, analyses, memorandums, or presentations.

She has taught her course to most of the major consulting firms in the United States and Europe, as well as to many of the world's largest corporations and government organizations. She also taught Bob Waterman and Tom Peters, among others, while lecturing at McKinsey.

Customer Reviews

Some prime "steak" but not much "sizzle"

This book was first published in the US in 1987 and then in the UK in 1991. The review that follows is of an edition published in 2002. The title refers to the core concept within the framework Barbara Minto recommends in order to present material "so clearly that the ideas jump off the page and into the reader's mind." The same framework will also guide and inform preparation of presentations to groups. According to Minto, research clearly indicates that "the mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings in order to comprehend it. Any grouping of ideas is easier to comprehend if it arrives presorted into its pyramid. This suggests that every written document should be deliberately structured to form a pyramid of ideas." In this volume, Minto explains how to structure the provision of material in ways and to the extent that accommodate the structure of how those who receive, absorb, and digest it.

Others have expressed their reactions to this book. Here are two of mine. First, if I understand Minto's thesis (and I may not), the three aforementioned "findings about the way the mind works" seem to refer far more to the subconscious than to the conscious mind. If so, I question how Minto's highly rational approach to writing clear business documents can accommodate the need to communicate effectively in non-verbal ways (e.g. body language and tone of voice). Minto's approach requires completing a rigorous, disciplined, and focused process (a geometric progression, really) that presupposes that the recipient of the given document will absorb and digest (not merely organize) the material in a comparable manner.

My second reaction is that Minto's content is generally quite solid (despite what I view as a few questionable premises) but that her writing style often lacks any "Snap! Crackle! And Pop!" The narrative comes across (at least to me) as resembling instructions in an operations manual for a writing machine. Consider this brief excerpt from Chapter 2:

"...you cannot hope to just sit down and start arranging your ideas in a pyramid. You have to discover them first. But the pyramid dictates a rigid set of substructures that can serve to speed the discovery process. These are:

o The vertical relationship between points and subpoints
o The horizontal relationship within a set of subpoints
o The narrative flow of the introduction"

I do not doubt that this approach worked for Minto when she generated and then organized the material for this book about that approach. The question remains, does Minto's presentation of such material engage the reader's heart as well as mind? It seems ironic that she acknowledges the importance of using various elements of "the story" (i.e. characters, situation, plot, conflict, resolution) but only in Chapter 4 when discussing "Fine Points of Introductions." Seldom throughout this book do Minto's ideas "jump off the page and into [her] reader's mind."

My guess (only a guess) is that this book will have the greatest appeal to -- and greatest value for -- those who already think as clearly and precisely as Minto obviously does. They and she would be well-advised to keep in mind, however, that most others do not, especially those who receive a document whose preparation has been guided and informed by The Pyramid Principle.

The power of pyramid principle
This is one of the best book I have ever read regarding business writing. It has had an amazing effect on not only my writing and presentation development but also the structure of my thinking.

Given that this is a book on logical writing it is not the easiest book to read, but don't let this put you off. The method is used by the management consultants Ernst & Young and McKinsey and that is a pretty impressive petigree.

Altough the principle is straight forward the book gives you lots of examples to work through and will provide a useful reference for the future.

I first read this book when I relaised kept seeing it on the bookcases of managers in a number of companies. Make sure that you have it on yours.

A godsend for students.
This book, although advertised as a business book is equally applicable to the 'transferable skills' that Univeristies frequently advise that prospective graduates should possess upon graduation. The book places great onus on our thought processes
and that linearity in a scheme of thinking is detrimental and conventional. Although I am two thirds 'into' the book it has been EXTREMELY beneficial when I am studying the medical sciences, especially medical ethics (of which is a painful subject, which can step on many peoples shoes!). I am writing from a viewpoint of a future medic, but inevitably this book
has been instumental in breaking myself out of my old habits of thinking. The main aspect of the book is that any form of written and spoken communication is dynamic (in respect to the thinking process) and that information can be collated and ordered into a simplistic, but non intimidating fashion, of which the result is a piece of work or a speech which will contain the adequate background to either a layman/specialist without being ambiguous, whilst the listener or reader is able to question your chain of 'argument' and at the same time, acknowledge that your information is cogent.