3-Level Pyramid Structure for Effective Presentation

Structuring a presentation can be taxing. It usually is a crucial make-or-break step in the decision making process. An effective presentation is the one that is able to put forward thoughts in a clear, crisp and concise manner. 

The biggest hurdle we may have to overcome through a presentation is known as Curse of Knowledge (a.k.a. Curse of Expertise). 

The curse of knowledge

It is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, who is communicating with other individuals, assumes they have the background knowledge to understand. In layman’s terms, we assume that the other person understands the context more often than we would like to acknowledge.

For example: In a classroom setting, teachers have difficulty because they cannot put themselves in the position of the student. A knowledgeable professor might no longer remember the difficulties that a young student encounters when learning a new subject. This curse of knowledge also explains the danger behind thinking about student learning based on what appears best to faculty members, as opposed to what has been verified with students.

Minto Pyramid Principle

A presentation without structure comes out illogical. But with the help of a structured presentation we can get people to understand, agree with and remember any presentation we create and deliver. 

One of such powerful structures used by consultants all over the world is known as Minto Pyramid Principle. It was developed by Barbara Minto for the consultants at McKinsey. According to it, our presentation should state the issue and its answer at the very beginning. Rest of the presentation should support the answer. It has three levels – Answer, Argument, Proofs. 

Level-1 : Answer

Though this level is called answer, it includes 4 most important pieces of the presentation that is commonly referred as SCQA.

Situation – describes what we are dealing with

Complication – what’s not working, what’s wrong 

Question – what we are trying to solve

Answer – the solution we have identified to solve the question

Level-2 : Arguments

The answer must be supported by logically valid arguments. People may choose to disagree with our answer unless we convince them with strong logic. These arguments are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. One way to look at the argument is to think of these in terms of the points when put together would make our answer irrefutable. A solid set of arguments would leave no room for any other better possibilities than the answer itself. These points are very often qualitative in nature and depending on the complexity of the problem each argument can have sub-arguments.

Level-3 : Proofs

Each argument is then supported by our research data that we used for reaching the conclusion. There can be proofs that would require too much data. In such cases, it is wise to keep them in annexure for reference purposes.

Putting together the Presentation

The presentation must start with a clear introduction. We must state SCQA so that everyone can know the gist of the presentation even when we are not able to finish the whole presentation due to various issues. It is quite common scenario where people have to leave before time due to urgent issues. Many times we run out of time due to interruption. Therefore we must keep first thing first so that even in the worst case scenario, everyone attending the presentation knows our recommendation. 

Use the Minto Pyramid Principle to put a structure to the presentation. Once we set the structure, revisit each slide to ensure the titles reflect the logical flow towards the answer.

The following slides should simply cover all the arguments along with supporting data one-by-one.

Once we have the structure in place, we should get it validated by our peers, colleagues, and manager. Once cross-confirmed, fill in all the details in each slide and finish it.

The presentation would come out as a beautiful story.

Advantages and Limitations of Minto Pyramid Principle

Now that we have understood this powerful presentation structure, we must keep ourselves aware about its key advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: 

• Organized thoughts, ideas leads to efficient writing
• Helps the reader to understand the problem in whole
• Consistent quality
• Greater persuasion
• Matches the way the human brain works

Limitations :

• Demands a lot of training to create better statements
• Danger of repeating information for each argument, proof
• Extremely difficult to present insightful synthesis where arguments are used back and forth
• Limited for unambiguous conclusion or recommendation only, not suitable for other types of presentations

Conclusion

I hope this technique will help in preparing effective presentations. I follow it and hope you would do the same. Feel free to put your thoughts in the comments section below. Thanks for reading.