Finding Clarity: The Fundamental Principle
Finding Clarity: The Fundamental Principle
In some ways, the nature of executive communication is simply about respecting your audience’s mental altitude.
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💡Level Up: Finding Clarity
One of the lessons I learned early on in my leadership journey was the importance of clear, resonant communication. (Emphasis on “resonant” because the message has to not only reach, but also be received by the end listener. It has to resonate.)
Whether it was at a team meeting or at the finish line of a cross-functional product launch, I frequently observed stakeholders with differing views completely crossing and missing each other like two ships in the night (and consequently resulting in time spent on wrong or unnecessary things). It was in these moments that I discovered I had a knack for “closing the gap.” Only a few years into my gig as “Product Manager numero uno,” I somehow found myself acting as the go-to mouthpiece for different factions of the org, gathering and delivering synthesized messages to executives and other departments. (More on this in my book 🤓)
“So and so wants X! So and so recommends Y! We’ve come together and believe we should do Z!”
I found that, while I was pretty decent at moving the compass in the right direction and keeping things organized above deck, I had a lot of trouble moving the ship.
Often - I would work tirelessly on a proposal, rallying the troops and getting folks lined up to execute, only to have my efforts wasted or dismissed.
I learned over time that I was doing two things majorly wrong:
I was focused on my own needs
I was moving bottoms-up
Enter The Pyramid Principle, a classic and influential book on logic in thinking and communication, published in 1985 by Barbara Minto (the 1st female consultant at McKinsey). While for most, the book is viewed as a thesis on effective business communication (required reading material for McKinsey consultants, I’ve heard!), for me, it offered a larger lightbulb moment, helping me make sense of how to create and leverage influence.
The Pyramid Principle is based on 1 fundamental principle:
We all have a limited amount of mental energy.
The book cites “The Magic Number 7” or “Miller’s Law” to illustrate this point, which is the principle that the average person can hold around seven items in their working memory.
Scientific evidence aside, this concept is intuitive. When there are too many pieces of information, our minds start to naturally seek common groupings and relationships to reduce cognitive overload. It’s why branding and signals are so important - we only have so much time and energy to invest in understanding something - therefore, we take asymmetrical information and mentally complete the rest of the picture.
For better or for worse.
At higher leadership ranks, it becomes progressively more difficult (and even counterproductive) to try holding onto information that is too low level. In some ways, the nature of executive communication is simply about respecting your audience’s mental altitude. How do you say something that matters to them and peaks their interest? What level should you deliver your message at?
The “matters to them” part for me is key, even more so than the ability to communicate succinctly. I realized that no matter how good my recommendations were, they would fall on deaf ears unless they aligned with what mattered to leadership.
I could form a plan from bottoms-up. But to move the ship, I’d have to start from the top. Everything else would follow.
Once you recognize the top level goals, applying the Pyramid Principle in communication is straightforward: Using layers, we present our argument at the highest level (the question and answer) and move down only if needed. A good intro matters: like in storytelling, we must first peak the audience’s interest by signaling something of value.
The top of the pyramid represents the synopsis of the layers below it:
The context
The problem you’re solving
The solution and how you got there
…All this at a very high level.
Each layer represents a deeper supporting grouping/argument/piece of evidence:
Groupings on the same layer are related to each other (ie. 3 steps, 3 divisions)
Groupings at any level are summaries of the ideas grouped below (summary, supporting answers)
Be careful not to deliver bottoms-up. You did your homework to get to the answer. Start with the answer, not the homework.
Once I unlocked this fundamental principle, I started to operate more like a lighthouse for the ships, preventing them from going too far off course and slowly, but surely, we converged on the same mental energy.
In summary: Get aligned from the top on what matters, then deliver your logic so that it’s both high level and complete (aka, the top of the pyramid). Your leaders (and your brain 🧠) will thank you.
I hope you enjoyed the read. 👋 See you next week!