Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

• first-stage thinking:
 gathering information; 
• second-stage thinking:
 organising the information. 
Use mindmaps to help you gather information, and the pyramid 
principle to help you organise it into a coherent structure. 
Summarising and grouping 
Imagine speaking your message to the reader. What question 
will it provoke in their mind? The question should be one of 
three: 
• ‘Why?’ 
• ‘How?’ 
• ‘Which ones?’ 
You must have at least two answers to the question. Try to have 
no more than six. Write your answers to that question as key 
points. All your key points must be sentences. You should be able 
to align each key point to a group of ideas on your mindmap. 
Creating key points 
Your key points should all be of the same kind. 
• ‘Why?’ 
Reasons, benefits, causes 
• ‘How?’
Procedures, process steps 
• ‘Which ones?’
Items, categories, factors 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

---

144 Improve your Communication Skills
For each key point, ask what question it provokes: ‘Why?’, ‘How?’ 
or ‘Which ones?’ Identify the answers to that question and write 
these as sub-points. Repeat if necessary for each sub-point to 
create minor points. For every question, you must have more 
than one answer. 
Building the pyramid 
The result of this question-and-answer process is a pyramid 
structure (Figure 8.1). 
Building pyramids: essential principles 
• Every idea must be a sentence. 
• Each idea must summarise the ideas grouped beneath it. 
• Each idea within a group is an answer to the question 
provoked by the summarising idea. 
Message
Key point
Key point
Key point
Sub-
point
Sub-
point
Minor
point
Minor
point
Minor
point
Minor
point
Sub-
point
Sub-
point
Sub-
point
Sub-
point
Figure 8.1 
Building a pyramid
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

---