Business Thinking for Designers

The basic elements of an analytical story
The pyramid shape introduced by Minto provides three 
basic elements of an analytical story: what, why, and how. 
Represented in Figure 5-1, the form gives structure to your 
thinking for a presentation, an email, or an analysis.
Figure 5-1: Structure your presentation with the SCR format

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Communicate the options
The pyramid is a tool to help you find out what 
you think. The great value of the technique 
is that it forces you to pull out of your head 
information that you weren’t aware was there, 
and then helps you to develop and shape it until 
the thinking is crystal clear. Until you do that, 
you can’t make good decisions on slides or 
video. 
Barbara Minto
Author, Educator, Creator of 
The Minto Pyramid Principle
From the top down, the pyramid forms the three basic sections 
and ensures that both your thinking, then your presentation, 
complete a thought before moving onto the next. By answering 
in the order of what, why, and then how, you present an 
analytical argument that your stakeholders can follow.