The Pyramid Principle. It's the most important workflow concept you can apply
to be effective as a consultant. Hi, I'm Jenny Rae La Roux, Managing Director
of Management Consulted, and a trainer in corporate training and in-school
training- on the pyramid principle. One of the things that we've discovered through
our work as MBB consultants at McKinsey, Bain, & BCG. Was the use of the
Pyramid Principle and how it created effectiveness and driving into the
details of problems, without losing sight of the deliverable or the big picture.
And that's what Pyramid Principle does for you. I'm gonna walk through a brief
history of the Pyramid Principle, and what the Pyramid Principle is in this
video, And if you want more information you can always reach out to us because
we have a wealth of knowledge, and tools, and tips, and tricks around the Pyramid
Principle. Let me lay down some history of the Pyramid Principle so you
understand where it came from. First of all, it's not from the Egyptian
Pyramids. It's from about 40 years ago, when Barbara mento who was an HBS alum,
and one of the first female partners at McKinsey, created this as a tool to help
people improve their written communication.
She found that when she was working with folks that were more junior to her, that
they were not effectively creating arguments that were substantiated with
the facts. And that they weren't ordered in a way that put the most important
arguments first. So she created this idea of the Pyramid Principle as a way to
help people sharpen their arguments and create better effective communication,
internally and externally with clients. Well, fast forward to now. The Pyramid
Principle is one of the most widely taught and implemented tools at
consulting firms. Because it has proven to be an incredibly effective tool to
create focus for consultants who are looking at rampant and ridiculous
amounts of data. For anyone who studied story structure, if you think about a
standard movie, there's a baseline and an introduction of the characters.
Then there's a problem statement. And then you move up toward the key take
away, the message, or the crisis moment. And then there's a resolution. And the
Pyramid Principle actually begins with the crisis, it hits it on the head. And
when you think about building a consulting presentation, the way that
this plays out, is that you actually lay out your hypothesis, or your assertion,
right at the very beginning of the presentation. Rather than creating
context and background around it. What is the importance of that. Well when you're
dealing with executives, who are going to need to be driven to make specific clear
decisions, it's essential that you communicate to them the importance of what
you want to communicate. Not the process that you go through, and every little
minor detail. You need to drive them to 1-3
total conclusions. And if you wait till halfway or three quarters of the way
through your presentation, they might feel baited, they might feel confused, and
they might disagree with you, all the way along the way. If you want to have them
disagree, have them disagree early, and then see what happens after that. There
are three parts of the Pyramid Principle. The first and the most important part, is
the answer. When we're working with coaching and with corporate clients, we
encourage them to begin with the answer that they believe will be proved out
through data analysis later. We encourage them to communicate it, we encourage them
to very clearly build their workflow around it, but we do encourage them to
keep an open mind. Sometimes the answer that you begin with on a case in a
consulting project, or internally as your managing a team, will be disproven, by the
work that you do afterwards. However, having an answer brings clarity to the
work process. Part 2 of the Pyramid Principle is one layer down, the next
middle part of the Pyramid. And these are arguments that support your answer. These
arguments are critical, and there should usually be three to five of those
arguments. The arguments are the things that you will later go on to prove. And
stating them as arguments, as mini assertions, is again, very helpful to
clarify the way that you're going to walk through your
structure. The final part of the Pyramid is the bottom layer. The bottom layer is
data. Each part of data inside a presentation or a written communication
should support the argument up above it. And each one of those arguments should
support the answer. So once you get down to the data layer, that's where you're
proving out some of the substantiating evidence behind the arguments and the
answer. If you think about it like this, the levels of insight for McKinsey. The
data doesn't even include any insight. It's just information. The argument is a
level one insight. It says here is what the data says. This is the biggest market.
The answer is we should go into the market. So that is a level two insight as
far as McKinsey is concerned. Again, the bottom layer, the foundation of
everything is the data. That's the thing that you do last in your workflow. The
arguments are the middle layer of the data, or the level one insights. Those you
define upfront, and you prove or disprove them with the data when you do the
analysis. And the top, the answer, the thing that you start with, both in
communication and in your work flow, is the recommendation for action that an
organization should take. If you have never used the Pyramid Principle, and you
want to try it out, we would love to provide you with more tools and training
to do so. Just come visit us at www.managementconsulted.com for more information.