Amazon barbara minto pyramid principle download pdf

Not in Library. Libraries near you: WorldCat. The Minto pyramid principle: logic in writing, thinking, and problem solving , Minto International. Classifications Library of Congress PE Edition Notes Includes bibliographical references p.

B87 M56 The Physical Object Pagination p. Community Reviews 0 Feedback? Loading Related Books. November 20, Behind schedule changing methods 5. Paying lower wages 6. Shortage of people 7. High overtime 8. This analysis reveals two separate lines of reasoning, with the possibility that some points that should be made have been omitted.

Now you're ready to draw some conclusions. Either he's saying that the costs are high because the productivity is low and the overtime is high, or he's saying that to cut the costs you have to simplify the methods and raise the wages. To decide which, you want to think through the introduction. What does the original memo indicate the reader already knows? Apparently he knows that costs are important, that TTW is uncompeti- tive in its pricing of simple jobs, and probably that nobody at TTW knows whether the costs are too high or not.

In that case, your thinking might go something like this: 1 Subject composing room costs. Question 2 are they too high? Answer 3 yes. Exhibit 9 shows these ideas in what might have been an acceptable ver- sion of this memorandum. You may not agree with the young consultant's reasoning, but at least it is presented so clearly that the reader can deter- mine whether he agrees with it or finds things to question about it.

I have reprinted the memorandum in full here because I want to demonstrate that the total introduction includes a statement of the Key Line points. With these included, the reader can get your entire thinking in the first 30 seconds or less of reading. And since the rest of the document exists only to explain or defend what you have already stated, he can be confident that no important points are going to jump up and surprise him later on. Consequently, he can scan if he has limited time available.

Indeed, if your entire thinking is not clear to the reader in the first 30 sec- onds of reading, you should rewrite. As we already knew, composing costs represent 40 per- cent of hardback costs, and percent of paperbacks.

TTW does not know whether these costs are too high, but the company is considered uncompetitive for simple jobs. Our preliminary investigation indicates that composing costs could prob- ably be cut considerably by: I I I..

A look at composing methods shows that every job goes through basically the same steps to ensure high quality, whether it is a Bible or a thriller. This may explain partly why they are considered uncompetitive. Kennedy is willing to set up an experiment to learn 1 whether any steps in the process can be eliminated, particularly for simple jobs, and 2 the causes of the low PAR standing. Beginning next week we will follow a few simple jobs through the process, controlling the marginal effect on quality of changes in the number and timing of checks, and test the customer's reaction to them.

We will also carry out a detailed methods study to try to close the PAR gap. Two compositors just quit, leaving the department with fewer people than budgeted. As a result, most jobs are running behind schedule, and overtime hours exceed budget by more than 50 percent. The company presently faces a new union demand, which may force them into higher wages.

If so, they should be able to hire appropriate people and eliminate the overtime charges. To this end, you want to take some care in the way you word the headings see Chapter 6, How to Highlight the Structure , making sure to state them so that they reflect ideas, rather than categories.

Never have a heading called 'Findings', for example, or 'Conclusion'. Such headings have no scanning value. Caveats for beginners It. Essentially, though, you will either be working from the top down or from the bottom up.

I have tried to tell you exactly what to do in a general way, but the possibilities are endless, so that questions are inevitable. Following are the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions from beginning users of the pyramid. The minute you express an idea in writing, it tends to take on the most extraordinary beauty.

It appears to have been chiseled in gold, making you reluctant to revise it if necessary. Consequently, never begin by just dictating the whole document 'to get it all down,' on the assumption that you can figure out the structure more easily afterwards.

The chances are you'll love it once you see it typed, no matter how disjointed the thinking really is. Once you know what you want to say in the bulk of the introduction-Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer-you can place these elements in any order you like as you write, depending on the effect you want to create.

The order you choose affects the tone of the document, and you will no doubt want to vary it for different kinds of documents. Nevertheless, begin your thinking with the Situation, since you're more likely to be able to think up the correct Complication and Question following that order.

Very often you'll sit down to write and have the main point fully stated in your head, from which the Question is obvious. The tendency then is to jump directly down to the Key Line and begin answering the New Question raised by the statement of the main point. Don't be tempted. Sort out the introductory information first so that you leave yourself free to concentrate solely on ideas at the lower levels.

You cannot tell the reader 'what happened' in the body of the document, in an effort to let him know the facts. The body can contain only ideas, and ideas can relate to each other only logically. This means that you can talk about events only if you are spelling out cause-and- effect relationships, since these had to be discovered through analytical thinking.

Simple historical occurrences do not exist as the result of logical thought, and therefore cannot be included as ideas. The introduction is meant to tell the reader only what he already knows. Sometimes, of course, you won't know whether he actually knows something; at other times, you may be certain that indeed he does not know it. If the point being made can be easily checked by an objective observer and deemed to be a true statement, then your reader can be presumed to 'know' it in the sense that he will not question its truth.

An idea has to be supported until you have answered all the questions likely to be raised by it. Naturally, not every point needs the same depth of support. At the Key Line level, however, all points must have at least one level of support. This is particularly true of the 'therefore' point in a deductive argument. If you find yourself with no need to support the final point, then you have overstructured your argument and probably need only an inductive grouping.

By summarizing what the reader already knows, the introduc- tion establishes the relevance of the question to which your document will give him the answer. You can then devote your energies to answering it. However, actually finding the structure of the introduction can be a rel- atively complex and time-consuming activity. To this end, you may want a more comprehensive understanding of the theory and nature of initial introductions than was given earlier.

You will also want some insight into the nature of the introductory comments needed at each of the key struc- tural points in the body of the document. Initial introductions. The 1n1t1al 1ntroduct1on can be thought of as a circle around the top of your pyramid, outside the structure of the ideas you are presenting Exhibit It always tells the reader a story he already knows, in the sense that it states the Situation within which a Complication developed that raised the Question to which the document is giving the Answer.

Why does it always have to be a story, and why one that he already knows? Why a story? If you think about it for a moment, you can accept that nobody really wants to read what you've written the way he really wants to read a novel that everyone has assured him is both gripping and sexy. He already has a multitude of jumbled and unrelated thoughts in his head, most of which are on other subjects, and all of which are very dear and interesting to him.

He will be pleased to make that effort only if there is a com- pelling enticement for him to do so. Even if he is quite eager to know what your document contains, and convinced of its interest, he must still make the effort to push aside his other thoughts and concentrate on what you're saying.

All of us have had the experience of reading a page and a half of something and suddenly realizing that we haven't comprehended a word. It's because we didn't push aside what was already in our heads.

Consequently, you want to offer the reader a device that will make it easy for him to push his other thoughts aside and concentrate only on what you're saying.

A foolproof device of this sort is the lure of an unfin- ished story. For example, suppose I say to you: 'Two Irishmen met on a bridge at midnight in a strange city.. I have riveted your mind to a specific time and place, and I can effectively control where it goes by focusing it on what the two Irishmen said or did, releas- ing it only when I give the punch line. That's what you want to do in an introduction. You want to build on the reader's interest in the subject by telling him a story about it.

Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That is, it establishes a situation, introduces a complication, and offers a resolution. The resolution will always be your major point, since you always write either to resolve a problem or to answer a question already in the reader's mind. But the story has also got to be a 'good' story for the reader. If you have any children you know that the best stories in the whole world are ones they already know.

Consequently, if you want to tell the reader a really good story, you tell him one he already knows or could reasonably be expected to know if he's at all well informed.

Psychologically speaking, of course, this approach enables you to tell him things with which you know he will agree, prior to your telling him things with which he may disagree. Easy reading of agreeable points is apt to render him more receptive to your ideas than confused plodding through a morass of detail. How long should it be? How long should an introduction be? How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to reach the ground. The introduction should be long enough to ensure that you and the reader are 'standing in the same place' before you take him by the hand and lead him through your thinking.

The Situation and the Complication can each be as long as three or four paragraphs, but never more than that. It can't take very much to remind someone of what he already knows. Indeed, if you find yourself littering the introduction with exhibits, you can be sure that you are overstating the obvious.

By contrast, the introduction can also be as short as a sentence: 'In your letter of January 15 you asked me whether But it must say enough to remind the reader of his Question. Where do you start the situation? You begin writing the Situation by making a statement about the subject that you know the reader will agree with because you are telling him something that he already knows. If you find you can't make a statement about the subject, then either you have the wrong subject, or you're start- ing in the wrong place to talk about it.

You start at the point where you can make a self-sufficient and noncon- troversial statement about the subject - self-sufficient in the sense that no previous statement is needed to make the precise meaning of this one clear, and noncontroversial in the sense that you can expect him automat- ically to understand it and agree to it.

If you are writing a report for wide circulation, however, or a magazine article or a book, the job is not so much to remind the reader of the ques- tion as to plant one. Here getting started is a bit more difficult. Assume that your readers are moderately well informed, and present an explana- tion of what is already generally accepted knowledge on the subject.

By arranging known material in a narrative form, and usually in a way that they haven't thought about it before, you inspire your readers to ask the question you wish to address. The key characteristic of all opening Situation sentences is that they leave you expectant for further information - and that is what qualifies them to be openers. Each one establishes the base for a story to come. What's a complication? The Complication of the introduction is not a complication in the everyday sense of the word; it is the Complication to the story.

It describes an alter- ation to a stable situation, rather than a problem per se, although sometimes the alteration is a problem. Exhibit 12 shows several possible kinds of complications.

Something changed What should we do? Something could change How should we react? Here's what you might Do we find it?

To illustrate further, Exhibit 13 shows some introductions pulled at random from popular publications, along with an outline of their structures. Why that order? The situation-complication-solution form of the introduction is essential. However, the order of the parts can be varied to reflect the tone you want to establish in the document. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others which are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing.

In every case the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management. S Many major industries have stopped growing or are threatened by decline C - Assumption is that growth is threatened because market is saturated Q - Is that a correct assumption?

Harvard Business Review Cracking Japanese Markets With the strong yen creating an increasingly competitive environment and Washington achieving a conspicuous lack of success in trade negotiations. Many executives in the United States and Europe have abandoned their search for new opportunities in the Japanese market. Frustration has set in as attempts to become 'insiders' have proved futile.

Some companies have shifted their attention to emerging markets like China and India, but by ignoring Japan they are making a big mistake. Then, about 35, years ago in Europe a dramatic turning point was reached. In addition to new kinds of stone tools, we find symbolic objects: the first adornments of the body, in the form of beads and pendants, and the first known attempts at painting and sculpture.

This cultural explosion occurred at the same time over large parts of western and eastern Europe. S For 2. However, as yet no one in the London Office can claim the magnum of champagne available to the first consultant who can demonstrate an acquisition or merger by a client that would not have happened without our efforts. Since our diversification work has increased by 40 percent in the past 5 years, the time is ripe fora Firm Development Project to determine how we can ensure that diversification studies dobring significant benefits to the clients we serve.

This memorandum outlines the major issues and hypotheses that should be resolved and tested during the project. Yet we cannot point to a single acquisition or merger that would not have happened without our efforts. This memorandum outlines CONCERNED: complication-situation-solution To my knowledge, no one in the London Office has yet conducted a single diversification study for a client that has yielded demonstrable results beyond vvhat he could have done for himself. This situation is startling, since our practice in this area over the past 5 years has grown by 40 percent.

We cannot in conscience go on charging clients for work that does not yield significant benefits and maintain our high reputation.

I suggest, therefore, that we conduct a Firm Development Projectto determine how we can make diversification studiesan area of our practice that is proven to bring significant benefit to clients.

The memorandum outlines,.. What about the key line? If it is a lengthy one, therefore, you will want to set the points out in the middle of the page as shown in Exhibit Setting the points out enables the reader to get your entire thinking in the first 30 seconds or so of reading. Since anything that follows will serve only to explain or defend these points, you have courteously put the reader in the position of being able to determine whether he needs to go on or is ready to accept your conclusions as they stand.

In any case, he now knows what to expect and can read with a greater sense of ease. If the document is a short one, with only a paragraph or two to support each section, you do not of course want to set out the points and then repeat them in headings.

In such cases, use the points as topic sentences to your paragraphs and underline them so that they jump out at the reader. Remember that the Key Line points should be expressed as ideas. It is not sufficient, for example, to write an introduction like the following: This memorandurn describes.

Here the setout of the points is useless in the sense of conveying the mes- sage of the document to the reader. It simply forces on the reader a string of words that he can't put into perspective - mere excess baggage that wastes his time and delays his understanding. As a rule of thumb, you never want to have a section labelled 'Background' or 'Introduction' because the major point it expresses will not be on the same level of abstraction as the other points that follow.

In the example above, of course, because the writer is writing about subjects instead of about ideas, the ideas likely to be behind the subjects will prob- ably not form a clear argument, either inductive or deductive. Indeed, one suspects that the ideas in the various sections are badly jumbled as they stand.

For example, the 'Unique benefits and specific results' should probably be discussed under the 'Principles of project team approach,' and the 'Prerequisites for success' probably belong under 'How the program is organized. More botches are made of introductions than of any other part of a person's writing.

However, by reading enough exam- ples you should get a sense of when an introduction sounds 'right,' and keep working at yours until they do. In fact the issue is what kind of society we want to shape through television. It is a question of whether we want a self- indulgent society with anarchic tendencies, or a. REPORT Adequate supplies of cheap phosphorus are the key to maximizing Greenwalt's profits, since phosphorus and its derivatives accountfor 75 percent of the company's sales and profits.

In the interim the high cost of United Kingdom production will adversely affett the company's profit levels. Examination indicates that a considerable profit opportunity is available to us.

Achieving these savings is the subject of this report. But now that the man in the street has become aware of what is happening, he, not knowing the why and the wherefore, is as full today of what may prove excessive fears as, previously, when the trouble was first coming on, he was lacking in what would have been a reasonable anxiety. He begins to doubt the future.

Is he now awakening from a pleasant dream to face the darkness of facts? Or dropping off into a nightmare which will pass away? He need not be doubtful. The other was not a dream; this is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men's devices are just as fertile and productive as they were.

The rate of our progress toward solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life - high, I mean, compared with, say, 20 years ago - and will soon learn to afford a standard higher still. We were not previously deceived. But today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.

The result is that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time - perhaps for a long time. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle, but powerful, influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantage of wealth and luxury.

Puring a hilPPY period. Rather, it is related to the needs of the reader. What does he have to be told not only to com- prehend fully the significance of your main point, but also to want to read on to learn how you arrived at it?

In summary I hope this discussion of opening introductions has made you think that it is important to devote a good deal of thought to ensuring that you write a good introduction. For as you can gather from the examples, a good introduction does more than simply gain and hold the reader's interest.

It influences his perceptions. The narrative flow lends a feeling of plausibility to the writer's particu- lar interpretation of the situation, which by its nature must be a biased selection of the relevant details; and this feeling of plausibility constricts the reader's ability to interpret the situation differently.

It also gives a sense of inevitable rightness to the logic of the writer's conclusion, making the reader less inclined to argue with the thinking that follows. Finally, it estab- lishes the writer's attitude to the reader as a considerate one of wanting him clearly to understand the situation - to see behind the language to the reality it represents. To emphasize the theory behind writing good introductions: 1 Introductions are meant to remind rather than to inform. This means that nothing should be included that would have to be proved to the reader for him to accept the statements of your points - i.

These are the Situation, the Complication, and the Solution. And in longer documents you will want to add an explanation of what is to come. The first three elements need not always be placed in classic narrative order, but they do always need to be included, and they should be woven into story form.

Thus, there is scope to include whatever is necessary for full understanding: history or background of the problem, outline of your involvement in it, any earlier investigations you or others have made and their conclusions, definitions of terms, and statements of admissions. All these items can and should be woven into the story, however. Which patterns will become common for you will, of course, depend on the business you are in. But to show you what I mean, here are the five patterns I have seen repeated most often, drawn from both business and consulting.

They are: 1 Directives 2 Requests for funds 3 'How to' documents 4 Letters of Proposal 5 Progress Reviews Directives This must be the most common kind of business memorandum written anywhere in the world - reflecting a situation in which you are writing to tell someone else to do something. In this case, you will be planting the question in the reader's mind, rather than reminding him of it. To illustrate, suppose you are holding a meeting for your field salesmen, at which you are planning to teach them how to present a new selling technique to chain grocery stores.

However, in order to do so effectively you need some information from them on a particular problem chain in their local area. How would you structure the introduction? In this case the question would be implied rather than stated, since the flow of the writing would not require it to be spelled out.

Nevertheless, it is absolutely essential that you spell it out for yourself before you begin to write. Otherwise, you run the danger of not being absolutely sure of your question. Note also that the Complication and the Answer are reversals of each other, since the Answer is the effect of carrying out the actions, which of course would solve the problem.

From time to time needs updating. And again you have another question that would be implied rather than stated in writing. Requests for funds Another very common memorandum type is one requesting funds.

What data? In what form? Only the Situation would be stated in the writing, and then the pyramid structure would tell the reader to approve the purchase for some set of rel- evant reasons. For example: We should approve this request because: The cost will be more than offset by the projected savings It will greatly increase the Group's productivity It will create new opportunities for service. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 However, the introductory structure varies slightly depending on whether you are telling the reader how to do something he has not done before or whether you are telling him how to do properly what he is already doing.

The trick here is to begin your thinking by literally laying out the present process as they do it now. See Exhibit Then lay out the process as you think it should be done. The differences between the first structure and the second tell you what the steps on your Key Line must be.

You may assume that you know pre- cisely what they are, having been working on them for so long. Old-Fashioned My edition is from , which looks identical to the latest on Amazon from But it reads like a book from , when it was first published.

Back then, word-processing barely existed, let alone templates and stylesheets, with multi-level headings, dozens of fonts, and myriad formatting effects. The pages here would have looked clear and innovative, with navigation cues of headings, numbers, indents, shading, and lots of diagram.

Nowadays, the advice about headings, fonts, and numberings is too simple, basic, and out of date. Being old is not an excuse for a technical book lacking an index. Pet hate. There is no advice about delivering presentations, let alone the dreaded PowerPoint, which was released the same year as this book. File Name: minto pyramid principle pdf free download.

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Related free Ebook PDF. She argues: She argues: Controlling the sequence in which you present your ideas is the single most important act necessary to clear writing. Please click button to get the pyramid principle book now.

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