Telling the story
You found the answer. Now one busy person has five minutes to read it and decide. This lesson shows you how to write the one-page answer: the answer first, the evidence under it, and a recommendation with its cost, expected impact, owner and date, plus the caveats and the follow-up that make people trust it.
By the end you can
- Put the answer first and build the evidence under it as a pyramid
- Open with situation, complication and resolution in a few sentences
- Turn analysis numbers into round numbers a reader can hold, with two charts at most
- Write a recommendation with cost, expected impact, break-even, owner and date
- Say how sure you are, what would change your mind, and how you will measure the result
The everyday picture
Think of a visit to the doctor after some tests. You don't want her to walk you through every blood test in the order the lab ran them. You want to hear: "It's a minor infection. Take these tablets for five days. If the fever isn't gone by Friday, come back." If you ask, she shows you the results and explains how she knows.
That short answer has everything a decision needs: what is wrong, what to do, how sure she is, and when to check again. The tests are still there, one question away. A one-page answer to a business question works the same way. Your analysis is the lab work. Your reader is the patient: the person who has to act, with little time and no wish to read the lab report.
Answer first: the pyramid
When you finish an analysis, you know it in the order you discovered it. In this course you pulled East city's sales, cleaned them, found that a festival week explained half the drop, found the 9 stores, found the hour of the day, and only at the end saw what to do. The natural way to write is the same order. For the reader it is the wrong order: they must read everything before they learn what you recommend, and a busy reader stops before the end.
Barbara Minto, who taught writing to consultants at McKinsey, described the fix in her book The Pyramid Principle. Put the single main point at the top. Under it, group the few points that support it. Under each of those, put the evidence. Every idea sums up the ideas grouped below it. This is the pyramid principle. You think from the bottom up, and you write from the top down.
Two tests tell you if your pyramid works. First, the 20-second test: can you say the top in one sentence of about 20 words, with the main number in it? Second, the "why?" test: the top raises a question in the reader's head, and the points on the next level answer it. If the top says "move 9 stores back to a 6 am fresh delivery", the reader asks "why?", and three points answer: the drop is real, it sits in those 9 stores, and the fix pays for itself. Keep each level to a few points, three is common, and make them the same kind of thing: all reasons, or all steps.
A reader can stop at any level and still leave with the right message. The head of stores who reads only the title knows what you recommend. If she reads one more paragraph, she knows why. The method, the queries and the data definitions sit at the bottom, in an appendix or a link, for anyone who wants to check.
Quick check
Which first line of the one-pager follows the pyramid principle?
The pyramid starts with the answer and its main number, so a reader who stops after one line can still decide. The first option is method, the second restates the problem without an answer, and the fourth is a label for a folder.