The power of three

Secret Weapon #013

04 June 2025

There are lots of good rules of thumb for communicating well, but I particularly like the rule of three things. I saw other people using this early in my career, and my experience since suggests it remains a remarkably useful discipline to follow.

Being told there are two things you need to know (or decide between) can feel constrained or that something’s been overlooked. Being asked to pay attention to four or more things can be too much to take in at once.

Bundles of three often hit the sweet spot.

Here are some classic ways to use bundles of three:

• Sitrep: The three things you need to know are A, B and C
• Narrative: First there was X, now there is Y, in future we expect Z
• Synthesis: I like this aspect, I dislike this aspect, on balance I recommend…

You can also nest them. When I’m giving a talk I often follow this basic structure:

1. Tell the audience what the three key takeaways will be
2. Tell the story, in three chapters
3. Tell the audience what the three key takeaways were

It might feel like overkill, but if you do something like this then people are much more likely to be able to recall your three key points when asked about them later on.

Bundles of three pop up in plenty of other forms. Perhaps the most familiar is decisionmakers being offered three options, typically two extremes and a happy medium. There are no prizes for seeing straight through this framing – but it seems to work a lot of the time!