The Elegant Pitch

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The Structured Thought Process

Before you learn a new way to think, you must understand the current approach for generating recommendations. Once you see how the current process falls short, the new process I’m advocating will make more sense in terms of the rationale for why the steps are sequenced the way they are. Most people I work with on building this skill approach their work in what seems to be a logical way. When they’re asked to make a recommendation, they follow this approach:

Step 1: Gather large amounts of data and do excessive amounts of analysis.

Step 2: Look for insights emerging from said analysis.

Step 3: Assemble all the analysis into a comprehensive document to demonstrate how rigorous they’ve been.

Step 4: Share a thirty- ...