SCQA (Situation, Complication, Question, Answer) is a four-part opening that takes a reader from what they already know to the question your document answers, and then gives the answer. The Pyramid Principle, developed by Barbara Minto at McKinsey, is the structure that follows. One governing answer sits at the top, a few grouped arguments support it, and evidence supports each argument.
Used together, they turn a pile of analysis into a deck a senior reader can follow in two minutes. Below are the two ideas, the rules that make them work, and a complete worked storyline from a raw brief to a twelve-slide outline with action titles.
What SCQA and the Pyramid Principle are
| Element | What it does | Test |
|---|---|---|
| Situation | States something the audience already knows and accepts | Would the audience nod? If they'd argue, it's not the situation |
| Complication | States what changed, or the tension that creates a problem or opportunity | Does it create a need to act? |
| Question | The single question the complication raises in the reader's mind | Is it one question, and the one the reader actually has? |
| Answer | Your governing thought: the recommendation or conclusion | Does it answer exactly that question, in one sentence? |
The Pyramid Principle is Minto's argument that writing is easiest to grasp when ideas are arranged as a pyramid under a single point. Her own site summarises the method as presenting ideas "organized as a pyramid under a single point" (Barbara Minto). Minto joined McKinsey in 1963, straight out of Harvard Business School, as the firm's first female MBA hire. Her book, first published in 1985 and now titled The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving, became standard training across consulting firms.
Three rules hold the pyramid together:
- Ideas at any level summarise the ideas grouped below them. The governing answer summarises the pillars, and each pillar summarises its evidence.
- Ideas in each grouping are the same kind of idea. All reasons, or all steps, or all options. Never a mix.
- Ideas in each grouping follow a logical order: time (first, second, third), structure (by region or business unit), or importance (most to least).
There's also a vertical test. Each statement should raise a question in the reader's mind ("Why?" or "How?"), and the level below should answer it. Minto calls this the question-and-answer dialogue.
Why it works
- Readers want the answer first. Journalism's inverted pyramid and the military's "bottom line up front" (BLUF) rest on the same observation: readers stop early, so the most important information goes first. Nielsen Norman Group recommends the inverted pyramid for web writing for this reason, and Kabir Sehgal's HBR piece on military email describes BLUF as the way to make messages actionable.
- Working memory is small. Cognitive research puts the number of chunks people can hold in mind at about four (Cowan, 2001, revising Miller's earlier "seven, plus or minus two"). Grouping ten findings into three pillars is what lets a reader actually keep track of your argument.
- It exposes weak thinking. If you can't write the governing thought as one sentence, or the pillars don't add up to it, the analysis isn't finished. It's better to find that out on a whiteboard than in front of the client.
How to build an SCQA storyline: six steps
Step 1: Pin down the audience and their question
Write down who will read the deck and what they'll do with it: approve a budget, choose an option, change a plan. The question should be theirs, not yours.
Step 2: Write the situation and complication
Keep the situation short and uncontroversial. The complication carries the tension. It's usually a change (a new competitor, a missed target, a regulation), a gap between where things are and where they should be, or an opportunity with a time limit.
Step 3: Write the governing thought
Answer the question in one sentence. It should be specific enough to be wrong. "We should improve profitability" isn't a governing thought. "Exit the two loss-making regions and reinvest in the core" is.
Step 4: Find the three pillars
Ask "why?" (for a recommendation) or "how?" (for a plan) about the governing thought. Group the answers into two to four MECE pillars: no overlaps, no gaps. Our guide to MECE issue trees covers this step in depth.
Step 5: Support each pillar with evidence
Under each pillar, list the facts and analyses that prove it. Each becomes a slide with an action title. Number of slides per pillar: as many as the proof needs, usually two to four.
Step 6: Write the deck as titles, then build slides
Turn the structure into a slide list where every title is a full sentence (see our action titles guide). Read the titles top to bottom. If the argument holds, build the slides.
Worked example: from brief to storyline
The company, figures and brief below are illustrative. They're built to show the method, not to describe a real firm.
The brief
Northline is a European distributor of industrial spare parts with about €400m revenue across five countries. The CEO says: "Margins fell from 9% to 6% in two years. The board wants a plan in six weeks. I think it's pricing pressure from online competitors, but I'm not sure."
Step 1: Audience and question
- Audience: the CEO, then the board. They'll approve or reject a plan.
- Their real question: "How do we get back to a 9% margin within two years?" It isn't "Why did margins fall?", which is a diagnostic sub-question.
Step 2: Situation and complication
- S: Northline has grown steadily by serving maintenance teams who need parts fast, and it reached a 9% EBIT margin in 2023.
- C: Margin has since fallen to 6%. The board wants a recovery plan, and the obvious explanation, online price pressure, accounts for only part of the decline.
- Q: What will restore a 9% margin by 2028, and which moves come first?
Step 3: Governing thought
A: Northline can recover about three points of margin by 2028 by fixing price discipline on long-tail parts, consolidating two sub-scale warehouses, and moving small accounts to a digital channel. Price discipline should come first because it pays back within the year.
Step 4: Pillars (the "how?" answers)
| Pillar | Claim | Why it's MECE with the others |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Price | Discounting on long-tail parts, not online competition, explains most of the gross-margin loss | Revenue-side lever |
| 2. Cost to serve | Two warehouses under 40% utilisation add avoidable logistics cost | Operating cost lever |
| 3. Channel | Small accounts cost more to serve than they earn through field sales | Customer and channel lever, separate from price and site footprint |
The three pillars cover the margin equation: price × volume minus cost to serve, with channel mix determining cost per account. They don't overlap. Volume growth was considered and deliberately excluded because the market is flat, and the deck should say so in one line.
Step 5: Evidence per pillar (planned analyses)
- Price: a price waterfall by part category, a discount-dispersion analysis, and a comparison against online competitor prices for the top 200 parts.
- Cost to serve: warehouse utilisation and cost per order line by site, and a network model of a five-site versus seven-site setup.
- Channel: account profitability by size band, and a pilot read-out from a digital-ordering trial.
Step 6: The deck as titles
| # | Slide | Action title |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Executive summary | Three moves can restore about 3 points of margin by 2028, starting with price discipline |
| 2 | Situation | Margin fell from 9% to 6% in two years while revenue held flat |
| 3 | Complication | Online competitors explain less than a third of the decline |
| 4 | Pillar 1 | Discounts on long-tail parts doubled, with no volume gain to show for it |
| 5 | Pillar 1 | The same part sells at prices up to 40% apart across branches |
| 6 | Pillar 1 | A discount-authority matrix would recover about 1.5 points within 12 months |
| 7 | Pillar 2 | Two of seven warehouses run below 40% utilisation |
| 8 | Pillar 2 | A five-site network cuts logistics cost by about a fifth with no loss of next-day coverage |
| 9 | Pillar 3 | Accounts under €10k a year cost more to serve than they contribute |
| 10 | Pillar 3 | Pilot customers moved to digital ordering kept their volume and halved order-handling cost |
| 11 | Roadmap | Sequencing price, then channel, then network spreads the investment and front-loads the gains |
| 12 | Decision | Approve the pricing programme and the network study today to stay on the 2028 path |
Read only the right-hand column. It works as a one-page memo: the answer, the reason the obvious explanation is incomplete, three pillars with proof, sequencing and a decision. That's the test.
Answer-first or build-up?
SCQA gives you the opening order. Delivery is a separate choice.
| Situation | Order | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The audience asked the question and trusts you | Answer, then S/C as needed | They want the conclusion and the decision |
| The audience doesn't yet agree there's a problem | S, C, then Q and A | The complication has to land before the answer will |
| The answer is unwelcome (cuts, exits) | S, C, Q, then A, with the evidence tightly sequenced | Reduces defensiveness. Still state Q early |
| The document will be read, not presented | Answer first, always | Readers skim, and the answer may be all they read |
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Situation is a history lesson | Three slides of background | One or two sentences the audience already accepts |
| No real complication | "The market is evolving" | Name the change and what it puts at risk |
| The question isn't the audience's | Answers a question nobody asked | Ask: what would the CEO type into a search box? |
| Governing thought is a topic | "Margin improvement opportunities" | Write a sentence that could be wrong |
| Pillars overlap | "Pricing" and "Commercial excellence" | Apply the MECE test and merge or redefine |
| Mixed kinds of idea in a group | Two reasons and one action step | Keep reasons with reasons and steps with steps |
| Evidence doesn't support its pillar | The chart shows something else | Rewrite the title or drop the slide |
Checklist
- The question is the audience's, written in one sentence
- The situation is uncontroversial and short
- The complication names a specific change or tension
- The governing thought answers the question in one sentence and could be wrong
- There are 2 to 4 pillars, MECE, all the same kind of idea, in a logical order
- Every evidence slide has an action title that supports its pillar
- The titles-only read works as a memo
- The deck ends with a decision or next step
Where Whyston fits
Whyston builds this structure before it builds slides. From your brief and sources it drafts the SCQA, the governing thought and MECE pillars, then assigns each evidence slide an action title and the sourced numbers that support it. You can edit the storyline first and generate slides after, which is the order this guide recommends.
FAQ
What does SCQA stand for?
Situation, Complication, Question, Answer. The situation states what the audience already accepts, the complication states what changed or what's at stake, the question is the one that complication raises in the reader's mind, and the answer is your main recommendation.
What is the difference between SCQA and the Pyramid Principle?
SCQA is the introduction: it brings the reader to the question your document answers. The Pyramid Principle is the whole structure: one governing answer at the top, supported by a small number of grouped arguments, each supported by evidence. In Barbara Minto's method, the SCQ sequence leads into the top of the pyramid.
Should I always present the answer first?
For busy senior audiences who asked the question, yes. Lead with the answer and use the situation and complication only as needed. Build up to the answer only when the audience is likely to resist it or needs to agree on the problem first, and even then state the question early.
How many supporting arguments should sit under the main answer?
Usually three, rarely more than five. Working memory holds only a few chunks at once, and Minto recommends grouping ideas so the reader never has to hold too many at one level. If you have seven reasons, look for the two or three categories they fall into.
Is SCQA the same as SCR?
They're close relatives. SCR (Situation, Complication, Resolution) drops the explicit question. Making the question explicit is useful when writing because it forces you to check that your answer actually answers it.