Start with the answer

Strong recommendations stand on solid foundations

Happy New Year 🎊 If you like this post then please share it – thank you!

---

We talked before about breaking complicated questions down into smaller ones to make them easier to deal with.

Toward the end of a project the challenge is often reversed: you need to bundle up the insights from your work into a single, coherent recommendation. The better you can do this the more persuasive and impactful you will be.

My favourite tool for this sort of story synthesis is the pyramid principle.¹

• At the top of the pyramid is your governing thought. This should be a straightforward, action-oriented statement that says what needs to be done to solve the problem.

• Below your governing thought are your supporting arguments. These are the logical building blocks that underpin your recommendation.

• And at the bottom of the pyramid are the key facts and evidence that back up your supporting arguments.

You can check your pyramid is well organised by reading it in both directions. Each step down the pyramid from the top should answer the question "why?". Each step up the pyramid from the bottom should answer the question "so what?".

When presenting, start with the recommendation and then draw on the supporting arguments and evidence as needed. If you need to write it up as a memo, you can easily convert a story pyramid into a list.

One really important point to note: your pyramid doesn't need to reflect everything you learned during the course of the project. The point is to land a convincing recommendation, not overwhelm with complexity – so be ruthless about discarding things that aren’t necessary to support your governing thought.

1. First coined by Barbara Minto, and expanded on in her book The Pyramid Principle.