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Product Description
How many times have you written an email at work, read it back and found that it didn't make as much sense as you'd hoped? or worse, someone else has told you that they can't follow it. The Pyramid Principle will show you how to communicate your ideas clearly and succinctly.
Barbara Minto reveals that the mind automatically sorts information into distinctive pyramidal groupings. However, if any group of ideas are arranged into a pyramid structure in the first place, not only will it save valuable time and effort to write, it will take even less effort to read and comprehend it.
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.
The clear communication of ideas, whether to clients, colleagues or the management board, is a key factor in determining personal success. 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.
Bring your ideas to life!
From the Back Cover
PRESENT YOUR THINKING SO CLEARLY THAT THE IDEAS JUMP OFF THE PAGE AND INTO THE READER’S MIND.
The Pyramid Principle is the international best-seller on how to produce crisp, clear, compelling business writing. Tens of thousands of people worldwide have benefited from former McKinsey consultant Barbara Minto’s famous Pyramid Principle. Can your writing do without it?
GET THE MAXIMUM IMPACT WITH THE MINIMUM EFFORT.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The person who seeks to learn what you think about a particular subject by reading what you have to say about it faces a complex task. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The person who seeks to learn what you think about a particular subject by reading what you have to say about it faces a complex task. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you have searched on Amazon for "The Pyramid Principle" be aware that there are 2 books:
This one; The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking written in 1985. Pearson published it in 1987, for sale only outside the US. They had first dibs on the second book but turned it down. Then, when the second book became popular, they gussied up the exhibits on the first book and slapped a current date on it. But it is still the 1985 edition.
The one you actually want; The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving. First published in 1996, it is 12 chapters and three appendices vs 9 chapters and 1 appendix and the examples are a bit more up to date.
It wasn't apparent from the information on Amazon that there are 2 versions of the book but having now seen them both I regret purchasing this one (the Pearson / FT Prentice Hall edition). Do yourself a favour and buy the correct version. If you write reports of any kind you'll find it very helpful.
This one; The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking written in 1985. Pearson published it in 1987, for sale only outside the US. They had first dibs on the second book but turned it down. Then, when the second book became popular, they gussied up the exhibits on the first book and slapped a current date on it. But it is still the 1985 edition.
The one you actually want; The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving. First published in 1996, it is 12 chapters and three appendices vs 9 chapters and 1 appendix and the examples are a bit more up to date.
It wasn't apparent from the information on Amazon that there are 2 versions of the book but having now seen them both I regret purchasing this one (the Pearson / FT Prentice Hall edition). Do yourself a favour and buy the correct version. If you write reports of any kind you'll find it very helpful.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Minto's book reflects as much the organisation (McKinsey & co.) and industry (management consulting) she comes from, as it does advice on structuring writing and thinking. By that I mean that the writing style propagated is going to be directly applicable to management consulting, accepted well internally (i.e. within consultancies), while clients might continue to cringe at it. Having seen the system from both sides (as a consultant and a client), I can understand how.
The basic premise of the book is to introduce some standard consulting tools for structuring thinking and writing
- the pyramid principle of organising your thoughts and summarising up front (drawing the conclusion for the reader from the start) rather than at the end and presenting directive supporting arguments later;
- the situation, complication resolution (question-answer) structure;
- the MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) way of organising thinking.
All of these are occasionally useful - dealing with relatively straightforward problems in situations with little dynamic complexity, and exclusively for business type writing. While it is the natural inclination of a consultant to be strongly prescriptive (thou shall do this or that) and while inductive reasoning is preferable (as one can hide weak arguments better that way) this is not an approach that will always work with clients (or in a non-consulting corporate environment), and is certainly not something that will help you writing academic publications, or help you in fiction writing at all - in fact one needs to throw all the advice given here overboard before attempting any of these latter two.
In terms of style it is also very strongly reflects Minto's background - strongly prescriptive, not seriously considering any alternatives but hers, sloppy in literature research (taking the most convenient or widely read source, rather than the most profound or the original one) and relatively condescending - if you've ever worked in the industry, there is at least some entertainment value in being reminded of it (if you've just faced it from the receiving end as a client, I am sure it will produce groans).
On a final note, a book on clear writing and organising thinking logically, should read well and the points made should immediately jump out at the reader and stick with him. Here Minto falls short on both counts - having had several years of consulting behind me I still found it very tedious to follow (in spite of knowing the content relatively well) - if not exactly difficult (there is no attempt to make this a research supported scientific treatise), and the lack of chapter summaries at the end (and corresponding blankness on what exactly she was trying to convey in the specific chapter) directly negates the pyramid principle of writing for the application presented - a 'how to' guide.
The basic premise of the book is to introduce some standard consulting tools for structuring thinking and writing
- the pyramid principle of organising your thoughts and summarising up front (drawing the conclusion for the reader from the start) rather than at the end and presenting directive supporting arguments later;
- the situation, complication resolution (question-answer) structure;
- the MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) way of organising thinking.
All of these are occasionally useful - dealing with relatively straightforward problems in situations with little dynamic complexity, and exclusively for business type writing. While it is the natural inclination of a consultant to be strongly prescriptive (thou shall do this or that) and while inductive reasoning is preferable (as one can hide weak arguments better that way) this is not an approach that will always work with clients (or in a non-consulting corporate environment), and is certainly not something that will help you writing academic publications, or help you in fiction writing at all - in fact one needs to throw all the advice given here overboard before attempting any of these latter two.
In terms of style it is also very strongly reflects Minto's background - strongly prescriptive, not seriously considering any alternatives but hers, sloppy in literature research (taking the most convenient or widely read source, rather than the most profound or the original one) and relatively condescending - if you've ever worked in the industry, there is at least some entertainment value in being reminded of it (if you've just faced it from the receiving end as a client, I am sure it will produce groans).
On a final note, a book on clear writing and organising thinking logically, should read well and the points made should immediately jump out at the reader and stick with him. Here Minto falls short on both counts - having had several years of consulting behind me I still found it very tedious to follow (in spite of knowing the content relatively well) - if not exactly difficult (there is no attempt to make this a research supported scientific treatise), and the lack of chapter summaries at the end (and corresponding blankness on what exactly she was trying to convey in the specific chapter) directly negates the pyramid principle of writing for the application presented - a 'how to' guide.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
From a engineering background, with the limited amount of pen training this entails, the Pyramid Principle offered a good support. It outlines the purpose of writing, in any business setting, and by doing this in a logic well structured manner, Minto takes her readers from struggling to get their message across, to focusing on struggling on what that message should be.
By elevating the abstraction in your thinking to higher levels, you are able to communicate your concepts and ideas more clearly. This book teaches you how. First by focusing on the writing, and the core parts of communicating via text. And secondly by focusing on the thinking behind the writing. Why do we write this, what do we need to convey, and how do we convey it in the most clear manner.
Starting a career in management consulting this book will give great support to its readers, and serve as a good go-to-guide for how-to-write.
By elevating the abstraction in your thinking to higher levels, you are able to communicate your concepts and ideas more clearly. This book teaches you how. First by focusing on the writing, and the core parts of communicating via text. And secondly by focusing on the thinking behind the writing. Why do we write this, what do we need to convey, and how do we convey it in the most clear manner.
Starting a career in management consulting this book will give great support to its readers, and serve as a good go-to-guide for how-to-write.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Good value for money
A very good methodology to structure documents and presentations for my professional activity (consulting). Good value for money, with a simple step by step approach.
Published 18 months ago by Joao Virott da Costa
Great for producing material for a soul destroying beaurocracy
Firstly, this book is not innovative, it just rediscovers and applies standard argument form in critical thinking to create a pyramid style outline. You can learn this for 9.99. Read more
Published on 25 May 2010 by BPM Consultant
A must read for writing business documents
This is an amazing book and i would say it should be made part of the teaching in colleges especially for people who are about to start a corporate career. Read more
Published on 12 May 2010 by Book Myths
Good for the total novice - did not work for me
The book is on clear writing. By the time you finish, you realise that the main points could have been written on about 3 pages. Read more
Published on 2 May 2010 by Laszlo
You only get out what you put in!
Not the easiest book to follow, but, once understood it gives the clarity of thinking required before comunicating. Read more
Published on 26 Oct 2009 by KMcG
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