Beyond mind mapped pyramids
August 15th, 2005
Jason Womack linked back to this June post from Cliff Atkinson of fame. Cliff argues that presenters should state their conclusion first. If the audience knows where they are going, they are more likely to pay attention. Great advice - and once again I am struck by the similarity between Beyond Bullet Points and by Barbara Minto and even by Tony Buzan .
Minto concentrates on business writing and gives the same advice: put the conclusion first and supporting information after. In fact Minto argues a conclusion at the end of the document may not even be needed. Buzan created mind maps to group information in a radiant hierarchy, with the most important point (effectively, the conclusion) in the centre.
This works because the human brain likes to group information. We cannot remember or process long lists of items, so our natural tendency is to look for linkage between separate items of new information. We group information items by drawing conclusions about the relationships between them. As we get more information, we start to make groups of groups. And to make sense of those new groups, we have to be able to group them with existing knowledge.
The conclusion gives your listeners or readers everything they need to group information, both with everything else you say or write and with what they already know. Why save it until last?
3 Comments Add your own
1. cliff atkinson | August 15th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Thanks for a your post, Adrian - nice blog by the way!
I think Barbara’s pyramid approach is way ahead of its time, and hopefully will yet be the next “big thing” in communications. By stating the conclusion first, you also lighten the cognitive load on an audience, because they don’t have to struggle with holding many fragments of information in short-term memory before you explain what they all mean.
The pyramid is a powerful tool for elevating what is most important, which can then help clarify both verbal and visual communication. (I wrote a bit more about this at this post http://www.beyondbullets.com/2005/03/cohere.html ).
An interesting thing about mindmapping is that it can be used in a conventional way to simply make “lists” of categories of information; or it can be used to apply Barbara’s pyramid approach that explains the meaning of the information. When used with the latter approach, it can be a powerful combination.
2. Jason | August 16th, 2005 at 12:43 am
Ok, so I just got off the phone with Buzz over at ActiveWords and what a conversation this was! I now, using MindManager and ActiveWords have a way to add something to an existing mind map in less than 7 seconds…
wow…
3. Adrian Trenholm » G… | August 16th, 2005 at 7:29 am
[…] ping trainer August 16th, 2005 Since Cliff, Jason and I all posted / commented on mind mapping, here’s a quick plug for my friend, client and fellow Toastmaster, Susa […]
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