It’s no surprise that I love word games. Wordle, Letter Boxed, and the Mini Crossword are part of my morning routine. Sometimes I’ll try a newer game, too. Called Connections, it challenges players to group 12 seemingly random words into four clusters based on what those four words have in common.
Sometimes the links are obvious. Other times they are downright bizarre.
A recent puzzle grouped autoharp, contrabass, pepperoni, and rosebud because they end with beer names (Harp, Bass, Peroni, Bud). I only solved it by process of elimination after figuring out the other groups first.
My experience with that puzzle is similar to what audiences often feel in a business presentation. Speakers understand how their various points connect and assume the audience will know. Most times, they don’t. Without that structure all they hear is a list of disconnected ideas that’s hard to understand or remember.
Enter the Pyramid Principle, developed by Barbara Minto when she was McKinsey’s first female MBA. In this approach, you organize and share information in three clusters:
1.) The main message or conclusion
2.) Key sub-points or examples
3.) Supporting details and data
Instead of saying “I found A, then B, then C, and therefore concluded X,” you’d say “My research shows that X is true. I know that because I found A, B, and C.”
At first, this structure might feel weird. It did to me. Like many, I was used to the bottom-up approach – walking audiences through my discovery process before sharing a conclusion. But it doesn’t matter what feels easiest to the speaker. It matters what helps the audience hear and absorb information they need to hear.
When you talk bottom-up, you risk losing people’s attention before you ever get to your key insight.
The crowd gives up on you the way I give up on a day’s Connections puzzle if it’s too hard.
Beyond just holding audience attention, The Pyramid Principle has two more advantages:
1.) It’s more memorable: By stating the main point first, you help audiences file new information in the right mental category, making it easier to process and retain.
2.) It’s more flexible: If your time gets cut short, you can present just the top layers of your pyramid, offering to dive deeper at a later date. Your core message still lands while the audience sees you as someone who respects other people’s time.
Switching to top-down style takes practice, but my experience delivering thousands of presentations over the past 20 years confirms it’s worth the effort.
