SCQ Framework^SM

The Minto Pyramid Principle® is the powerful and compelling process for producing everyday business documents – to-the-point memos, clear reports, successful proposals, or dynamic presentations.

Minto Books International, Inc.
19 Cadogan Place
London SW1X 9SA
UK
Tel: +44 (0)207 235 6274
Fax: +44 (0)207 823 1827

The Minto Pyramid Principle® Course

Barbara Minto holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. She personally conducts both a single day and a 2-day live course worldwide, to groups of 10-14 within a company.

The single day course covers:

• The Basic Pyramid Concept – why the pyramid structure, its rules, and how the ideas within that structure relate vertically and horizontally

• How to Build a Pyramid – how to identify the reader’s question, and then use the pyramid rules to discover and organize the points needed to answer that question

• How to Look Critically at the Groupings – to make sure that when you say “There are three reasons for making this change,” there are in fact only three reasons, that you have identified the right three, and that you have drawn the appropriate insight from having identified them. (“There are three reasons” is not an appropriate insight!)

The 2-Day course covers the elements above on Day One, and on Day Two adds:

• How to Define a Problem - how to work out the reader's question in complex situations, when the document has to explain both how a problem arose and how to resolve it

• How to Deal with Action Ideas - how to work out and present recommendations so that they provoke action and lead to change.

The 2-day course is also structured around the work of the people in the group. To this end, Barbara asks each person attending to send her in advance a lengthy sample of his work. She then reads these, draws pictures of their structures, develops new structures, and uses them as examples in the course.

Both courses include an individual tutoring session with Barbara at the end of the formal sessions. She meets personally with each person for 45-mintes to help him apply the pyramid-building process to something he is about to write. It is this tutoring session that makes the technique "take". In both courses, completing the tutoring sessions may require extra time on the following morning.

Barbara’s courses are based on a similar course she developed and taught for several years at McKinsey & Company, Inc., the international management consulting firm. In addition to teaching McKinsey’s consultants and many of its clients, as well as members of the other major consulting firms, she has lectured at the Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Chicago, London and Manchester business schools, and at the State University of New York.

To find out more about courses, click here or e-mail barminto@aol.com