Narrative Builder

When to use

Use whenever analysis needs to become a presentation, memo, or pitch for a senior or executive audience — especially when the current draft is structured chronologically (the order the analysis was actually done) rather than around the answer the audience needs first. A chronological walk-through is how you did the work; it is rarely how an executive wants to receive it.

What it does

Restructures the material using the Pyramid Principle (Barbara Minto): lead with the answer/recommendation, support it with a small number of MECE arguments, each backed by evidence — rather than building up to the conclusion at the end. Wraps that structure in a Situation-Complication-Resolution arc so the narrative has tension and stakes, not just a stacked argument.

Method

1. Write the governing thought first: the single sentence that is the answer, recommendation, or conclusion — if you can't state it in one sentence before building anything else, the analysis isn't actually finished yet.
2. Identify the 3-4 supporting arguments that, together, are both necessary and sufficient to justify the governing thought (MECE) — not a longer list of everything that's true and relevant, which dilutes the argument instead of strengthening it.
3. Under each supporting argument, place only the evidence that directly proves that specific argument — resist the instinct to include every analysis performed; anything that doesn't directly support one of the 3-4 arguments belongs in an appendix, not the main narrative.
4. Frame the whole narrative with Situation-Complication-Resolution: the situation (shared, uncontested context), the complication (what changed or what's at stake — this is what creates the need for a decision now), the resolution (the governing thought, positioned as the answer to the complication, not just a standalone recommendation).
5. Order supporting arguments by strength or logical dependency, not by the order the underlying analysis happened to be done — the audience should never have to wait through weaker points to reach the strongest one.
6. Write section/slide headlines as complete argumentative sentences, not topic labels — "Onboarding friction is costing $2M in preventable churn," not "Onboarding Analysis." A reader skimming only the headlines should be able to follow the entire argument.
7. Anticipate the single hardest objection and address it explicitly within the narrative (or immediately after the recommendation), rather than leaving it for the Q&A to surface, which reads as unprepared.
8. Cut anything that doesn't serve the governing thought, no matter how interesting or how much work went into producing it — an executive narrative is curated, not comprehensive.