Chapter 8 - We Ken Do It

(I) Communications
The Pyramid Principle, Generating Buy-In, How to Win Friends & Influence People

Structuring your thoughts (written communication)
Delivering your thoughts (speaking and presenting)

(II) Effectiveness
The 7 Habits, The 80-20 Principle, Getting Things Done

Objective setting and prioritization
Dealing with sheer volume

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(I) Communications

Structuring your thoughts (written communication)

There are two books that have influenced my communication style. Well, there are many more. But two that have had a lasting influence, having first read them many years ago, which I still reference to this day:

The Pyramid Principle, by Barbara Minto
Generating Buy-In, by Mark S. Walton

Minto's book enforces logical discipline and a top-down structure on one's thoughts, and therefore one's communication. The concepts apply to written and oral communication, as well as its hybrid form, "the presentation".

Walton's book provides a template for influencing an audience, again written or oral. It is more targeted in that the book aims specifically to elicit a positive response from a given group, rather than generically pondering alternative structures that satisfy the logical mind.

Together, both books provide enough of a framework to structure one's thoughts and written materials. Neither focus on the "big game day" (in-person) delivery elements, which is more of a Toastmasters topic. I will come to that later on.

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The Pyramid Principle at its most basic states that you need to structure your thoughts first, and you need to structure your thoughts in a "top down" fashion (resembling a pyramid). In slightly more plain English, deliver the punch line, then double click on the details underpinning that punchline. I am not using Barbara's words, and as with all good books, you should buy the book, read the book, and draw your own conclusions. But I will adhere to her own principle here, tell you the punch line that I took away from her book, and then underpin it with a few supporting details (she would call this "inductive").

Barbara's cook book for delivering a logical sequence takes many dimensions, distinguishing between inductive and deductive reasoning, and culminates in a proposed target structure that sets out the key lines (punch line) at the beginning, and a back-up pyramid of arguments to support this key line.

Obviously the pyramid can have multiple layers, so each box can be double clicked into again. For instance, French tanks are at the Polish border could have three boxes beneath it (e.g. blue, white, and red French tanks are at the Polish border). If you have too many layers, it becomes quite tedious though. The most important point is to structure the hierarchy correctly, so at best, this provides a structure for details that are best housed in an appendix of a long and complex memorandum.

Note that each node, if you want to be truly logical and complete about your pyramid, should attempt to be MECE: Mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. Like slices of a pie, the individual slices of a pie put together constitute the whole pie (collectively exhaustive). Importantly, those slices also do not overlap with one another (they are mutually exclusive).

This is violated all of the time in most people's thought process, and resultant communication. If we stated, for instance, that European and French tanks were at the Polish border, the MECE principle would be violated. French is part of Europe, so if anything, the point about French tanks would have to be in the hierarchy node below the statement of European tanks. These concepts are pivotal to structure data correctly. You can get away with it in spoken language, but bear it in mind.

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As mentioned earlier, Walton is less conceptual and more targeted in his approach. He basically proposed on single template to address a target audience to get them to do something that is aligned with what you want them to do. It's very action oriented.

His structure is very aligned and complementary with Barbara's logical and top-down structure. Walton basically says that you need to be clear about what you want people to do. Then you tell a story, whereby you lay out a vision of a better world, how it benefits your target audience specifically, and what they now need to do. Presto. How to make friends and influence people.

I am not quite doing his book justice, and again you need to buy it, read it, and draw your own conclusions. But if you want the element of the book that left a lasting imprint on me, it's basically his structure. That's shown below, together with how the "Intel inside" message would adhere.