Pyramid Principle Communication

When to use this skill

• Executive or leadership communication where the decision matters.
• Recommendation memos that must be scanned quickly.
• Storylines for presentations, updates, or board materials.
• Any unclear draft that needs a single governing question and answer-first structure.

Required inputs

• Audience and decision owner.
• Governing question to answer.
• Available evidence and major constraints.

Workflow

1. Define one governing question and one decision objective.
2. Draft the answer first as a one-sentence BLUF.
3. Build 3-5 MECE support points with parallel phrasing.
4. Choose logic mode per level: deductive or inductive, not both.
5. Add evidence, implication, and risk for each support point.
6. End with a decision, owner, date, and immediate next action.

Ask-first questions

1. What exact decision must this communication drive?
2. Who is the final decision owner and what is their risk tolerance?
3. Which evidence is confirmed vs still assumed?

Assumption policy

• If answers are incomplete, proceed with explicit assumptions.
• Tag each assumption with confidence: high, medium, low.
• Avoid fabricated data; request verification when confidence is low.

Output contract

1. Context
2. Decision or Recommendation
3. Analysis
4. Risks
5. Next Actions
6. Assumptions

Guardrails

• Keep one governing question; reject multi-question drift.
• Do not mix recommendation with exploratory brainstorming in the same top level.
• Use concrete language; avoid vague claims like "optimize" without mechanism.
• Flag missing evidence when conclusions are not fully supported.

Resources

• references/pyramid-rules.md

  - Rule set and anti-ambiguity checks.

• references/scqa.md

  - SCQA framing and transitions.

• templates/structured-storyline.md

  - Decision-ready output structure.

• examples/pyramid-example.md

  - Golden example with partial information.

Keywords