Pyramid Principle
Frameworks and tools to effectively communicate with busy professionals.
In today's business world it's hard to be heard. This course discusses important concepts to sharpen your top-down communication skills and engage and convince different kinds of audiences in a very short time.
The course is divided into 7 sections:
- The 1st gives an overview of the course, explaining the mind’s tendency and needs to structure concept in a pyramid
- The 2nd introduces the key rules of top-down communication, that will be elaborated more in the next section
- The 3rd explains vertical relationships, and how to capture the audience attention and topically answer key questions
- The 4th covers horizontal relationships, and how to convince people with inductive and deductive arguments
- The 5th is about the narrative flow, covering frameworks to effectively describe situations, complications and resolutions
- The 6th summarizes key topics and provides participants with further examples to practice the concepts
- The 7th concludes with a mindshift from story to slides, teaching how to keep the flow and focus on what matters
Business owners, employees, free-lance professionals, board directors, decision-makers, CFOs, treasurers, managers, CPAs, auditors and business consultants will greatly benefit from this course.
ENTRY COMPETENCIES of Participants (Prerequisites): No technical prerequisites
COURSE OBJECTIVES/LEARNING OUTCOMES Expected from the course program:
LEARNING OUTCOMES |
TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED |
Specific OBJECTIVES OF THE TOPICS OR SUBTOPICS |
Get an overview of the course and the key Pyramid Principles |
The Pyramid Principle: History and Notions; The Magic Number 7; Practical Q&A examples |
Understand how the mind reacts to different information flows, as well as its tendency and needs to structure concept in a pyramid |
Introduce to the rules of top-down communication |
Vertical relationships, horizontal relationships. The narrative flow |
Get an understanding of the three key rules and relationships of the Pyramid Principles, and how they are linked to each other |
Learn the rules of vertical relationships of reasoning |
Topical Q&A dialogues |
How to capture the audience attention and topically answer key questions |
Learn the rules of horizontal relationships of reasoning |
Inductive and deductive reasonings; syllogims |
How to choose the best logic and arguments to support thesis and hypothesis |
Learn how to structure a narrative flow |
How to best combine the storyline of situations / complications / resolutions |
How to ease and engage an audience into a topic |
Strengthen the concepts learnt so far |
Further examples |
Gaining fluency on how to identify and best answer key topical questions; choose the most appropriate kind of reasoning and story flow |
Reinforce facts and principles covered in the lesson and how to apply them in everyday business life |
Review and practical applications. |
How to shift mindset from storyline to slides, keep the flow and focus on what matters |
About the instructor
Nicolo Andreula
NICOLO' ANDREULAPRINCIPAL, ALPHABETANicolo’ Andreula is a Principal in the Singapore office of AlphaBeta, an economic and strategic consultancy.He conducts research and is regularly invited to international conferences and government roundtables on policy levers to attract investment and drive growth in APAC digital economies, as well as on how to maximize the potential and the societal benefits of disruptive technologies such as ridesharing, geospatial data and video-on-demand.Prior to joining AlphaBeta, he worked at McKinsey & Company for more than four years on a wide range of engagements with pharmaceutical, consumer and technology companies in Europe, Asia, the United States and the Middle East. Nicolo’ was also a Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey’s business and economics research arm, where he worked on and co-authored influential papers such as “Reverse the curse: Maximizing the potential of resource-driven economies” (2013); “Playing to win: The new global competition for corporate profits” (2015). Before McKinsey, Nicolo’ worked briefly for Goldman Sachs in their Investment Banking Division (IBD) on Mergers & Acquisitions in London.Nicolo’ started his career at Bocconi University, where he earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Economics, while broadening his international exposure through courses at UBC in Vancouver, Canada and Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Throughout his college education, he worked for the Policy Coordination Branch of the United Nations HQ in New York, the research department of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC and a Kenyan NGO. He also holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) from INSEAD, earned in Fontainebleau (France) and Singapore.In 2009, Nicolo’ travelled to Colombia as a Project Advisor for the Task Force for Internally Displaced People of the Local Government of Medellin, and later to Russia, where he was hired by Finmeccanica (now Leonardo, Italy’s largest technology group) as Head of the Business Development Unit. While living in Moscow he acted as a member of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council.Nicolo’ is the author of the paper “Do good institutions improve fiscal transparency?” (Journal ‘Economics of Governance, October 2015). He is also a visiting lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a co-founder of the TEDx Conference in Bari and a Junior Fellow of the Aspen Institute, Italy.