SUMMARIZING GROUPED IDEAS

We come at last to consider the first rule of the pyramid: ideas at each level must be summaries of the ideas grouped below them, because they were in fact derived from them.

When a grouping of ideas conveys a deductive argument, you can easily derive the idea above by making a simple summary that leans heavily on the final conclusion. But when the grouping is an inductive one, made up of a set of statements that you see as closely related in some way; the idea above must state what the relationship below implies. In other words, the act of summarizing the grouping is the act of completing the thinking.

Most writers simply group ideas, without completing the thinking. As we have seen, the tendency is to tie together ideas that have a general rather than a specific relationship, so that the ideas don't truly go together and therefore can't be summarized. But even if the ideas do go together, finding the summary idea that completes the thinking is hard work. Rather than do the work, people fall back on what I call intellectually blank assertions, such as:

The company should have three objectives.

There are two problems in the organization.

We recommend five changes.

I call these statements intellectually blank because they do not in fact summarize the essence of the ideas grouped below them, they simply state the kind of idea that will be discussed. As such, they are deadly for both the reader and the writer.