Logical thinking determines your career height.

A few years ago, the interview questions of the world's top 500 companies began to spread on the Internet, which stumped a large number of people. Give a simple example: How many bicycles are there in Shanghai? No one can give the correct answer of 100%.

Of course, the questioner does not need the interviewer to give specific figures. There is no standard answer to this question. It is through such a question to examine the interviewer's logical thinking ability and your ability to understand the relationship between a system and things. For example, we can estimate the total population of Shanghai and the main people who ride bicycles and get an interval value.

There is a line in The Godfather: "Those who spend half a second seeing through the essence of things and those who spend their whole lives not seeing the essence of things are doomed to be completely different fates." It is a person's logical thinking ability to quickly see through the essence of things.

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More and more enterprises begin to attach importance to employees' logical thinking ability. Many large enterprises will ask employees to make a questionnaire before they join the company, and judge their personality, hobbies, ways of thinking, work attitude and so on through this questionnaire. The core of this is to examine the logical thinking ability of employees. This is because in the process of business decision-making, whether as a top manager of strategic decision-making, as a middle manager of business decision-making, or as a grass-roots manager of business decision-making, enterprises will use logical thinking to judge, reason and demonstrate. People with good logical thinking will play a greater role.

How to improve your logical thinking ability? Here I recommend Shang Xiao Gao's book Writing Weapons that McKinsey taught me. Shang Xiao Gaoshan, as a global strategic consultant and a representative of Gaoshan Shang Xiao Office, has worked in world-class enterprises such as McKinsey, Mobil and JPMorgan Chase. Based on the author's work experience, this book introduces the logical thinking methods of world-class companies to help you form the habit of logical thinking automatically.

? McKinsey taught me to write weapons.

Pyramid structure: the core skill of logical thinking

The most important thing in the workplace is efficiency. Passing the information you want to express to others quickly and effectively and being accepted by them is a key indicator to test your logical thinking and expressive ability. Pyramid structure is a necessary tool to realize rapid information transmission.

The so-called pyramid structure is to arrange the icons of themes or information according to the hierarchy.

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The above picture is a type of pyramid structure-parallel pyramid (another type is in-line pyramid). As can be seen from this picture, when we convey information, we put the main information at the top, followed by the key information and finally the secondary information. This main message is the summary of all contents and the core point of all information. By grasping the main information, the audience or speaker can immediately grasp the intention and main content expressed by the speaker. The key information is to describe the main information and concretize the content of the main information. Secondary information is an extension of key information.

The advantage of pyramid structure is that decision makers can quickly grasp the core point of the matter and reach a preliminary judgment. Key information and secondary information supplement the main information, and also provide more detailed support for decision-making and improve the specific content of decision-making.

For employees in the workplace, mastering the pyramid structure can help us make work reports, make project plans, analyze problems and make decisions, which is more hierarchical, clear-cut and logical, so as to develop a fast and efficient work style and add points to our career.

Information Design: What should I show? What kind of presentation skills are used?

When we decide to use pyramid structure to transmit and present information, then the next step is how to design information and fill in the content. The author introduces two modes of information design: bottom-up and top-down.

Bottom-up is to refine the information group located at the lower level into the upper information. According to the pyramid structure, the secondary information is summarized to get the key information content; Summarize the key information and get the main information content.

And top-down, it is a thinking process of decomposing information, top-down, bottom-up. This method will be more in line with the organizational structure of the company. Similar to the company's order, it will be decentralized from the chairman-manager-supervisor-front-line business. Because each floor is responsible for different sections, the task of the general order is split. When it comes to the bottom line business, everyone may only need to be responsible for a small section.

The design of information is a supplement to the structure and a concrete manifestation of logical thinking. When thinking logically, it is often both at the same time. Only by mastering the design of information can we turn thinking into content and apply it to practical work.

MECE's skill, the meaning lies in "thinking about GAI"

The full name of MECE is exhaustive collection of mutual exclusion. No repetition, no omission. "Don't repeat" is to make people easy to understand, and "Don't leave out" is to be more convincing. Therefore, MECE is the basic concept of logical thinking. (Author's language)

Don't repeat it, don't miss it, the most important thing is to make your own MECE building. For example, we make an annual work report, which is divided into work performance report and analysis of existing problems.

When reporting the results, we summarize the results by department; For the problem analysis, we sort out the problems by functional lines. In this way, it will be clear at a glance when reporting, which departments have reported the content and which functional lines have been analyzed, and there will be no omissions.

When using MECE skills, we need to pay attention to the following points:

1, get into the habit of MECE. MECE is not only widely used in work, but also effectively used in real life. We can cultivate the habit of using MECE through daily life training. For example, when we make a tourism plan, we can find out whether the tourist routes are repeated and whether the scenic spots are missing.

It's no problem to repeat it a little, don't leave it out. Relatively speaking, repetition is natural and not easy to avoid. It will not have a big impact on the whole scheme. But missing the theme is a fatal mistake, just like travel planning. What a pity it will be to miss the most important scenic spots.

3. Set the "Other" theme in case of omission. Just like the previous work report, set other topics, and put the contents other than "performance report" and "problem analysis" into "other" topics to reduce the probability of omission.

By combing the pyramid structure and filling in the content of information design and MECE skills, you can write a well-organized, substantial and meticulous workplace copy. At the same time, in the whole process of copywriting, we are also improving our overall thinking logic and cultivating our thinking habits to improve our ability to adapt to the workplace.