Structure your thinking. Keep your voice.

Write recommendations readers act on.

Every reader comes with a question in mind. Answer it first, then give the reasons, and the decision is easy to make.
Governing Idea teaches Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle in three short modules. Then it checks your real memos and proposals against it, in a private workspace.
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Built by a former CIO with a master's in English from Middlebury College, who taught the Pyramid Principle to new hires at McKinsey.

From draft to decision

Your draft
Our peak line now averages 11 minutes, and 1 in 8 customers leaves before ordering. Two of our three largest rivals already let customers order ahead. Our 15 best-selling drinks make up 85% of morning orders, so we could cut the morning menu to just those. Our 120 busiest shops have the longest waits, and pick-up shelves with an extra barista at peak would help there. Mobile order-ahead could launch in all 300 shops by May. We think we can win back the morning rush by June and recover about $20 million a year in lost morning sales.
Answer first
We will recover about $20 million a year in lost morning coffee sales by June.
  1. Cutting the morning menu to our 15 best-selling drinks speeds up every order by 40 seconds.
  2. Installing pick-up shelves and adding a peak-hour barista in our 120 busiest shops keeps walk-in waits down to 7 minutes.
  3. Launching mobile order-ahead in all 300 shops by May, with a free first drink for loyalty members, wins back two-thirds of the customers who now walk out.
Governing ideaKey lines
Illustrative example; company and figures invented.

Why it matters

You work out a recommendation in the order you found it: what’s wrong, where, why, what you could do and, last, what you should do. Most drafts keep that order, so the answer arrives at the end, like the draft above. Your reader needs the reverse. Barbara Minto’s insight is that a reader understands a point only when it answers a question they’re already asking; give the analysis first and they’re holding evidence for a claim they haven’t been given yet. If a document needs you in the room to explain it, it hasn’t done its job.

Most AI tools rewrite your text without improving your thinking. Governing Idea teaches the method, so the structure is yours.

Two parts

Learn

Three short modules teach the method: lead with the answer, group your reasons, and end with what happens next. Finish with a course record and, when your own document reaches Sound, a certificate.

Write

Use it on your real memos and proposals. Checks test the structure stage by stage and show where it would lose a reader, before you send it. Your drafts are private by default, and your words stay yours.

See how it works →

Request beta access

Governing Idea is in beta. Individual access is free during the beta.