Chapter 5: The Power of Logical Structure

Structure is a beautiful thing. It brings order, clarity. It enables understanding. We know it when we see it (even if it is just subconsciously) because comprehension immediately becomes easier. Our mind is automatically sorting information into distinctive groups and establishing hierarchies of relationships between these groups (semantic network model) all the time. Effective structure is the first commandment of presentation creation. But what is logical structure? How do you create a presentation that has logical structure? There are half a dozen or so tricks, which when employed obsessively, can allow you to quickly cut through most of the pitfalls (and fairly unhelpful theory of logic) to produce a structure that works.

Group your ideas together to form an argument

Your mind is automatically imposing order on everything around you, all the time. You are grouping, classifying and imposing relationships on all the information your brain processes. The goal in crafting a presentation is to facilitate the mental processing that is going on in the mind of your audience. To make this processing as easy as possible. We can do this in two ways:

1. Rule of 7 updated: limit the number of your groups to 4

George Miller, a Harvard psychologist, published a famous study in 1957 entitled ‘The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two‘. This led to a well know rule of thumb that stated people only had the capacity to process 7 chunks of information at a time. Further research has enabled us to refine our understanding of how this rule changes depending on our definition of ‘chunks’ of information. More recent conclusions state that people can really only process 4-5 concepts – and only one at a time. As a consequence, we should seek to structure our ideas into groups of 4-5 or less. Put simply – there is no such thing as 7 or 9 of anything. If you have a list of 9 things, then you need to go up a level of abstraction and group them into 3-4 buckets. It is easy to take this insight too far. There is no magical number of bullets per slide. Edward Tufte has some interesting things to say about this here. At its core, this is about a relatively self evident truth: Your audience will struggle to process information. Help them out by being aware of the number of discrete ideas you are sharing at any one time.

2. MECE: Ensure your groups are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive

MECE stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. It is terminology that today is synonymous with McKinsey and other top-tier consultancies. The term refers to the idea of structuring lists of ideas in ways where the list is: Collectively Exhaustive (collectively, the ideas in the list cover all possible components of the idea)

(collectively, the ideas in the list cover all possible components of the idea) Mutually Exclusive (individually, each idea in the list is distinct from each of the other ideas, there is no overlap between ideas)

The easiest way to get your head around these ideas is with an example. The following list of the 7 dwarves is not collectively exhaustive Grumpy Happy Sleepy Bashful Sneezy Dopey We are missing Doc! The following list of options for where to go for dinner is not mutually exclusive: Restaurants East of our current location

Italian restaurants

Restaurants with music

Restaurants South of our current location There is overlap within this list. There could be Italian restaurants east of us. Some restaurants south of us could have music. This ‘test’ (is this list MECE?) is extremely powerful technique in ensuring logical structure and improving the clarity of your presentation. You will be surprised at how many groups of ideas you will create which will fail this test – and result in you thinking about additional, great points and ideas that make you argument even more powerful.

Inductive vs deductive arguments

Deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion. The scientific method uses deduction to test hypotheses and theories. The deductive argument presents ideas in successive steps. An example of this type of argument is: John is ill

If John is ill, he will be unable to attend work

Therefore, John will be unable to attend work

Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning (know also as induction or ‘bottom-up’ logic), is a kind of reasoning that constructs general arguments that are derived from specific examples. Inductive arguments can take very wide ranging forms. Inductive arguments might conclude with a claim that is only based on a sample of information. Here is an example of an inductive argument. Two independent witnesses claimed John committed the murder.

John’s fingerprints are the only ones on the murder weapon.

John confessed to the crime.

So, John committed the murder. Generally, our advice is to construct inductive-based arguments. They are easier for an audience to absorb because they require less effort to understand. The challenge is that our instinct when writing a presentation is to present our thinking in the order we did the work, which is usually a deductive process. DON”T DO THIS. No one cares what you did. How hard you worked. They want an answer to a question, not a tour of what you were up to for the last month!

Pay special attention to the Introduction

The start of a presentation requires special attention from a structural point of view. It contains many traps which can lead unsuspecting authors astray. The purpose of the presentation is to address a question in the mind of the audience. The objective of the introduction is to establish the groundwork to plant this question, so that the rest of our presentation can focus on answering it. The best approach for achieving this is Barbara Minto’s SCQA framework. Buy Barbara’s exceptional book The Pyramid Principle.

Context (or Starting Point): Where are we now?

Financial performance last year was fantastic, but growth has stalled in the first quarter… Begin at the beginning. The Situation/Context or Starting Point is the background or baseline that anchors the rest of the story that will subsequently unfold. It is comprised of facts that the audience would be aware of and agree with in advance of reading the presentation. This helps to ground the presentation and establish a common starting point. Typical situations are “we took an action”, “performance was good”, “we have a problem”. Soon the audience will be asking themselves “I know this – why are you telling me?”. This is where the complication comes in.

Catalyst (or Complication): Something has changed…

A strategy for returning to growth has been proposed… What happened next? The Complication creates tension in the story you’re telling. The key objective of the complication is to trigger the Question that your audience will ask in their mind. Typical complications: “something is stopping us performing the task”, “we know the solution to the problem”, “a solution to the problem has been suggested” and “the action we took did not work”.

Question: The question in the mind of the audience

Is this the right strategy? The Question arises logically from the Complication and leads into the Answer. It is not explicitly stated in the introduction, it is implicit. Typical questions: “what should we do?”, “how do we implement the solution?”, “is it the right solution?” and “why didn’t the action work?”

Answer (or Solution): Your answer to the question

Yes, it will drive growth because… The Answer to the Question is the substance of presentation and your main point. It is your recommendation. Summarize it first – completing your introduction – then break it down into details and write the main body of your presentations. This is where we develop our inductive argument, deploying groups of MECE ideas on the way to proving our point.

Call To Action (or Next Steps): What you want the audience to do