What is the pyramid principle?

Answer first, then reasons

Barbara Minto's own summary is that thinking is easy for a reader to grasp when ideas are organised as a pyramid under a single point. The top of the pyramid is the governing thought, the answer to the question the reader has. Beneath it sits a small group of key points that together justify it, and beneath each of those, the evidence. The logic runs both ways. Reading down, each level explains the one above. Reading up, each group of ideas can be summarised by the idea above it. Minto describes three rules behind the shape: the point above summarises those below, the ideas in a group must be the same kind of idea, and they must be in a logical order.

Where it comes from

Minto worked at McKinsey from 1963 to 1973, editing reports in Cleveland and then London. In an interview for McKinsey's alumni news, she recalls noticing that she kept reorganising consultants' ideas into a pyramid shape, and concluding that the problem was the thinking, not the language: people started writing before they had worked out what they thought. Her book, The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving, remains the standard text, and she has taught the method in courses for decades. Groups of ideas in the pyramid must be MECE, the abbreviation she coined for mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

SCQA, the introduction to the pyramid

Before the answer, Minto uses a short introduction she calls the Situation, Complication, Question framework, often extended to SCQA with the answer. The situation states something the reader already accepts. The complication introduces what has changed. The question is the one that change raises. The answer is the top of the pyramid. In a deck, SCQA can take a single slide or a single paragraph on an executive summary slide. Its job is to make the reader want the answer, briefly, without turning into a long background section.

How to build a deck with it

Write the governing thought as one sentence. Write the three to five reasons that support it, checking that they do not overlap and that together they are enough. Put the answer and the reasons on the first content slides, often as an executive summary. Then give each reason its own section, with slides whose titles state the evidence. Read the slide titles in order: they should reproduce the pyramid, with each section's titles supporting its reason. Anything that does not support a reason is either missing a place in the pyramid or does not belong in the deck.

Common mistakes

The first is a long background section before the answer, which is exactly the habit the method replaces. The second is key points that are topics rather than claims, such as market, financials and team, which organise the deck without arguing anything. The third is key points that overlap or leave an obvious gap. The fourth is burying bad news beneath the pyramid, which a sceptical reader will dig up and hold against the whole argument. The fifth is applying answer first to audiences who must be brought along, such as a hostile audience or a keynote building to a reveal, where a different structure may persuade better.

Where it shows up in the product

The investment memo example on this site follows the pyramid closely: the recommendation and price on slide two, five numbered reasons on slide three, then the company, the market, the value chain, the financials, the competition, the risks and the return cases as support. When a deck is generated here, a planning step writes a title and a one sentence summary for every slide before the content is filled, so a brief that states the answer, the reasons and the order produces a deck in that shape. Takeaway slides suit the answer and its reasons, and dividers mark each supporting section.

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