Part 3 · 1 chapters · ~8 min

Writing for Executives

The pyramid principle, bottom line up front, the specific ask, translating engineering metrics into revenue, cost, risk and customer terms, status updates that surface risk early (green, yellow, red with reasons), bad-news memos, Amazon-style narratives, and a before-and-after rewrite.

5

Answer first

beforeafter
"Over the past quarter the payments team has been investigating reliability issues with our rail integrations. We found that retries are implemented inconsistently, and reconciliation is mostly manual. There are several options…""Ask: approve two engineers for Q1 to build a shared rail platform. Why: payout failures cost 310 tickets and ₦4.1M of manual reconciliation per month; 70% come from three inconsistent rail integrations. Result: failures down an estimated 60% by April. Decision needed by: 1 December, to start in January."
code
weekly status, one line per item, risk first
🔴 Rail 3 migration: blocked on partner sandbox (down 9 days). Need: escalation to partner account manager by Fri.
🟡 Reconciliation gate: 1 week behind; recovering by dropping the CSV export (not needed for launch).
🟢 Adapter platform: on track for 3 Feb.

Bad news early: a yellow reported in week 2 is a scheduling conversation; the same problem reported as red in week 10 is a trust problem. Report risk as soon as it is likely, with what you need.

WRITING FOR EXECUTIVES
the pyramid: answer first, support after
the answer"Approve 2 engineers for Q1 to cut payout failures 60%."the askdecision, money, people, by whenwhy it matterscost of the problem in their termsevidencedata, options considereddetailsappendix, linked
swipe the figure sideways, or tap expand for full screen
1/4
answer first
Barbara Minto's pyramid principle: lead with the conclusion, then the supporting arguments, then the evidence. Executives read the top and decide whether to read more.
conclusion in line oneMinto pyramid