The value of thinking top-down versus bottom-up

The value of thinking top-down versus bottom-up

by | - Problem solving, - Synthesis, - Thinking skills

You are welcome to either read or listen to this post on top down thinking.

Click the image below to listen, or scroll down to read.

Is this an innate skill or something you can learn?

The value of thinking top-down

 

Tengke perfectly summed up the value of top-down in a recent workshop.

He said: ​​“In my experience, the closer people are to senior leadership levels, the better they are at thinking top-down.

The lower their level, the more they think bottom-up”.

This was an astute observation.

Leadership roles require us to think quickly about a wide range of topics. We don't have the luxury of thinking about everything from scratch and yet we must quickly ‘sniff out' problems and solutions.

This relies on our ability to see patterns in situations and quickly develop a hunch. More formally, you would call this either exercising judgement or forming an hypothesis.

Tengke's comment meshes with my own observations. A recent conversation about cognitive competencies required for successful leadership does likewise.

Combined, these lead me to ask: Is this ability to think top down innate or is it learned?

Top down thinking is, in my opinion, both innate and learned although most people need to ‘learn' to master the skill.

Here are my key takeaways before I unpack each idea further.

  • Thinking top down requires both experience and the right ‘mental muscles'
  • There are many ways to learn how to think top down even when it doesn't come naturally.
  • The best way to learn is to find a practical program that explains how to think top down in your situation.

 

Thinking top down requires both experience and the right ‘mental muscles'.

Lightbulbs went on for me when I was speaking with my colleague Jane. We were discussing how I help people unearth the thinking problems lurking inside their communication.

The thinking skills she incorporated into a talent framework for a multi national resources were a direct match.

She described four key cognitive competencies that show leadership potential:

Helicopter thinking.

This is the ability to mix conceptual and analytical thinking. At Clarity First I describe this as ‘porpoising'. This is the ability to mirror the swimming patterns of a porpoise. A porpoise dives down deep into the oceans and then swims back up to the top before going down again.

Flowing between higher order ideas and lower level details is an essential leadership attribute.

Analytical thinking.

This is what we learn at university and, if we are lucky, refine further at work. It is the ability to break problems into parts and solve them It requires using our critical thinking abilities to evaluate the quality of our work.

Imaginative thinking.

This is as it sounds: the ability to be creative. To think of out of the box solutions. To find new and novel ways of doing things rather than just following a set process. This competency has a heavy innate component, to a certain extent, we can learn it.

Sense of reality.

This relates to solid business judgement, or acumen if you will. It comes through experience and mentoring. Those with the IQ needed for their work can learn it.

The good news is that if we are people with a growth mindset who are moderately bright, we can make progress in all these areas. So long as we have sufficient innate capacity, we can all get better at these four thinking skills.

If you are still reading this post you likely have sufficient innate capacity.

There are many ways to learn how to think top down even when it doesn't come naturally.

This ability comes as a result of a mix of the right mix of knowledge and experiences to add to your innate ability. It seems to me there are four that matter most.

It may include years of experience in a specific area.

After a time you ‘just know' where to look to find problems or opportunities that others miss. A bit like the tailor I refer to in this post.

The ability forms after years and years of working bottom up. It results from developing an intuition for what does and does not work in a particular setting.

The key here is that the ability is confined to a particular setting, or at best to that setting and related ones. And gaining the ability is slow.

It might include being inspired by someone who does it well

. In my case, my boss of 30+ years ago was a whiz at explaining complex ideas using diagrams. This was early in my corporate career, and I had never seen anyone do that before. Nor had I thought about communicating this way.

I am not sure I will ever remember what he drew, but I do remember thinking “I want to be able to do that” and have continued to strive for that since.

It may involve learning how to use and apply specific frameworks

. This is where top-tier consulting experience is golden, as we are exposed to people who are expert at using – and in fact, designing – robust thinking frameworks that apply across multiple disciplines.

For example, when thinking about a change management challenge I default to two key frameworks which I use to scaffold my thinking. McKinsey's Psychology of Change and PROSCI's ADKAR framework.At times I also merge frameworks. I find the Psychology of Change framework pairs well with another simple one from PA ConsultingTogether they describe the delivery phases of any change program in the simplest of terms. The items even rhyme to make them memorable.

Working closely in a framework-heavy environment where everyone was encouraged to think top down was golden. It helped me go beyond the practices, to learn how to apply the principles across a wide range of settings.

Even better, it may involve being taught how to create, use and test frameworks that apply across many disciplines.

I teach universal thinking principles based in logic and synthesis. I then combine this with my own experience to share patterns, which are widely applicable. Having helped people communicate across about every area I can think of over the past 30(ish) years, I know they work.
Just this week, I helped people in human resources, engineering, project management, pharmaceuticals, medical affairs, technology and the law. And this is a pretty normal week!

The best way to learn is to find a practical program that demonstrates how top-down thinking can apply to your situation.

I'll outline them here one by one here:

#1 – Decide that top-down thinking is a skill worth mastering.

I hope this post has inspired you to learn more about thinking top down and how it can help you add more value while also saving tons of time.

#2 – Want it enough to learn how to do it.

This is up to you. You need to decide whether you want to avoid the long road of identifying the right patterns for your situation. How useful would it be to think top down when preparing upcoming papers and presentations? How many nights and weekends have you burned this quarter editing papers and presentations? What is this worth?#3 – Find a learning program suited to your situation. If you need to prepare papers and presentations for decision-making audiences, I can help. Here are a few ways:

  • Engage – online course to help you prepare papers and presentations for senior leaders and boards. Learn more here.
  • Express – Online course to help you prepare simpler papers and presentations.
  • Extreme Clarity Workshop – Interactive workshop to help you get the general idea. Learn more here.
  • Board Paper Bootcamp – Interactive program to learn to apply the ideas. Includes Engage modules as prework. Learn more here.
  • Email course – this free mini course offers you strategies to improve the quality of your emails in just 10 minutes. Learn more here.

#4 – Follow through and actually learn how to apply it.

This involves investing enough time and energy to go further than just ‘hearing about a good idea'. You need to build the mental muscles and establishing new thinking habits that will deliver you consistent results over timeOnce you learn the basics, you must use them to stick. You may also find my Clarity Hub a useful place to belong. I offer weekly how to emails, masterclasses, tips and tools to help you embed top down thinking techniques into your work. Learn more here.

In closing, I might point out that this list of actions was heavily inspired by a framework 😉

Have a great week.
Regards, Davina

How to use your critical thinking abilities to turbo charge your communication skills

How to use your critical thinking abilities to turbo charge your communication skills

by | - Thinking skills

When I first joined McKinsey as a communication specialist, I was astounded at how quickly consultants came up with rigorous ways to think about new issues.

Over time I came to see how they did it and wanted to share one related strategy that will help you with your communication.

Thinking top down boosts your impact enormously while also providing a useful framework for doing justice to your analysis when communicating.

Here are three ideas to help you put that into practice:

  1. Understand what top-down thinking is about
  2. Get into the helicopter first
  3. Make like a porpoise

I'll run them through in more detail one by one.

 

Understand what top-down thinking is about

Top-down thinking is about identifying the things that matter most before either deciding what problem to solve or building the supporting case for your point. 

In practice, it’s a bit like when you go to an experienced tailor: they don’t tally up each measurement and then look at a chart to know that you are a size 42 regular.

They take a quick look at you and have a hunch that you look like a 42 regular and then test that hypothesis by taking out their measuring tape to check that they are right.

If their measurements disprove their hunch, they adjust their thinking to conclude that perhaps you are a size 40 disguised in baggy clothing.

In problem solving, this means thinking through the roadmap before digging into any particular aspect of the analysis. 

Consultants rely on previously used frameworks to give them ideas for identifying what that roadmap looks like. You can also do this by adopting the standard framework used in your industry or discipline and complement that by grabbing hold of the HBR guide to Key Management Models.

In communication, this works largely the same way. With experience, we can identify the communication pattern and then test it using a set of principles to check that our message and supporting points do their job. We outline both the patterns and a useful test in our short and practical book, The So What Strategy.

Top-down and bottom-up strategies complement each other but starting with the top magnifies our impact and saves us significant amounts of time.

So, let’s look at how you do that.

 

Get into the helicopter first

As with many things, the idea of thinking top down isn’t that hard.

Doing it, however, is not as straightforward unless you have a process to follow.

Here is how I think about it when preparing a piece of communication.

When thinking through my strategy before I draft anything, I focus on absolutely nailing two things: my purpose and my
audience.

This is information that doesn’t appear inside my communication, but rather shapes it.

In going through this process, I ask myself many things to confirm each element. When thinking about my audience though, there is one critical question that I always ask: What would they need to know to agree with me, or do what I need them to do?

I then brainstorm and prioritise my thoughts so that I end up with a high-level list of no more than five points that I must focus on.

I then work top down as much as possible to craft my communication, and work bottom up to test that the ideas are in the right place.

In the Clarity First Program we teach you exactly how to do this.

This brings me to my next point.

 

Make like a porpoise

Have you seen the way a porpoise bobs up and down as it swims?

This is a useful image for me when I think about how I make sure I take full advantage of both top down and bottom up
thinking when I prepare my communication.

As discussed above, I first sort out my top-level messaging.

Having now been helping people prepare their communication for a couple of decades, I am a bit like the tailor I mentioned earlier. I default to key storyline patterns to fast track this process wherever possible.

I then iterate up and down through the hierarchy of my thinking until I am confident that all if the ideas I need to communicate have a logical place in my storyline.

This played out real time in today’s coaching session.

I worked with a team to prepare a short but contentious email outlining some changes to their priorities that partner organisations needed to know about.

We started thinking through our strategy, mapped out our high-level messaging and then as we worked our way toward the end, asked ourselves whether each point was in the right place.

To do that, we assessed the links between our ideas and the inferences we were drawing at each stage.

We checked that the introduction would draw the audience into our main point quickly, that the ideas that supported that main point are organised to be MECE (mutually exclusive and cover everything).

We also double checked that the words on the page achieved our initial purpose and addressed the concerns of the most important audience members.

The team will then communicate the message top down.

They will begin with a short introduction and follow with the main idea and then the right depth of carefully mapped ideas to support that idea.

They will enable their audience to get the big picture quickly and follow the argument step by step.

Click here to learn how to do this for yourself.

 

PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.

Ironically, writers need to educate readers about what ‘reader-focused’ means

Ironically, writers need to educate readers about what ‘reader-focused’ means

by | - Communicating complexity, - Minto Pyramid Principle, - Stakeholder management, - Writing

The Minto Pyramid Principle is a widely lauded approach for preparing clearer business reports.

Developed by a McKinsey & Company team led by Barbara Minto in the 1960s, ‘pyramid’ helps people use logic and structure to organise their ideas into a logical and coherent reader-focused argument.

At Clarity First we love this approach.

It enables us to think top down, draw out insights quickly and communicate complex ideas clearly.

However, despite much evidence from our own work and its popularity across consulting and business strategy teams in particular, very little formal research has been undertaken into its actual effectiveness.

Perhaps it was enough to say “It’s McKinsey: It’s good”.

However, Dr Louise Cornelis (another ex-McKinsey communication specialist) recently changed this when working with a series of Masters’ students at Groningen University in Holland.

She undertook a qualitative study to understand whether preparing a business report using a ‘top-down, reader-focused pyramid structure’ was actually helpful to the reader.

Dr Cornelis’ findings demonstrate some irony.

Writers and readers don’t always agree on what is ‘reader-focused’ unless the writer first educates the reader about what ‘reader-focused’ actually means.

Here is why that seems to be true.

#1 – Audiences are hard wired into their old habits

It seems that our readers are hard-wired into what they expect and can be confused by a new way of doing things unless it is explained to them.

In the case of business reports, many people are accustomed to receiving reports written with titles such as ‘Executive Summary’, ‘Background’, ‘Issues’ and a ‘Conclusion’ at the end and are quite lost when these are absent.

They can be confused by Pyramid reports that ignore these section titles, preferring to instead have customized titles that reflect the content of the report: a bit like newspaper headlines.

#2 – Consultants and others using the approach often forget to explain how their approach works

When, however, the approach is explained they not only like the Pyramid Principle approach much better, but can read the documents significantly more quickly.

Readers who were provided with a short description of the structure before reading the documents were able to grasp the main message from a document almost five times faster than those with no preparatory explanation.

Dr Cornelis found that people very much appreciated the Pyramid Principle report-writing approach but only when they understood what it was trying to do.

So the next time you have a good idea: remember to ensure your significant others understand the benefit, even when the idea is specifically for the them.

 

 

Keywords: design your strategy, develop your storyline, research

_________________________________________________________________

Louise Cornelis is a communication consultant based in Rotterdam. Louise specialises in helping her clients use structure and logic to communicate clearly, having learned her craft at McKinsey & Company and honed it by working with a wide range of clients since.

She particularly enjoys grappling with complex challenges that relate to helping others not only communicate clearly, but want to do so. The Clarity First team very much enjoys thinking about these challenges in collaboration with Louise.

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PRESENTED BY DAVINA STANLEY

I love what I do.

I help senior leaders and their teams prepare high-quality papers and presentations in a fraction of the time.

This involves 'nailing' the message that will quickly engage decision makers in the required outcome.

I leverage 25+ years' experience including

  • learning structured thinking techniques at McKinsey in Hong Kong in the mid 1990s before coaching and training their teams globally as a freelancer for a further 15 years
  • being approved to teach the Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto in 2009
  • helping CEOs, C-suite leaders and their reports deeply understand their stakeholder needs and communicate accordingly
  • seeing leaders cut the number of times they review major papers by ~30% and teams cut the amount of time they take to prepare major papers by ~20%*
  • watching senior meetings focus on substantive discussions and better decisions rather than trying to clarify the issue

My approach helps anyone who needs to engage senior leaders and Boards.

Recent clients include 7Eleven, KPMG, Mercer, Meta, Woolworths.

Learn more at www.clarityfirstprogram.com

 

(*) Numbers are based on 2023 client benchmarking results.