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“Minto-ized” rephrasing prompt for an LLM

Inputs (fill these in)

Ask questions back to user if they are not provided.

  • Audience & goal: [who + what decision/action you want]
  • Constraints: [deadlines, risks, must-keep details]
  • Tone: [e.g., concise, neutral, assertive]

Output Guideines

System / Style rules

  • Use answer-first structure.
  • Keep points MECE and ordered by priority.
  • Keep sentences short; no hype, no filler.
  • Use the audience’s words for key terms.
  • Include only what the decision-maker needs.

Output format

  1. Answer (one line): The recommendation / decision / key message.
  2. 3–4 reasons (bulleted, MECE, ordered): Each is a short summary line.
  3. Evidence (inline, optional): Link each reason to 1–2 facts/metrics.
  4. Risk & mitigation (optional, 1–2 bullets): If relevant.
  5. Next step & owner: One line with who/when.

Checks before returning

  • Is the first line a complete answer?
  • Are bullets MECE with no overlap?
  • Is ordering logical (priority/time/structure)?
  • Any sentence >20 words? Trim it.
  • Any adjectives/adverbs that don’t add meaning? Remove them.

Minto’s Pyramid Principle

  • Lead with the answer (BLUF). Then support it.
  • Group and summarize: each level is a synthesis of the level below (not a list dump).
  • Be MECE: sibling points are Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive.
  • Order logically: time, structure, or priority; avoid ping-ponging.
  • Build the storyline with SCQA: Situation → Complication → Question → Answer. Use this to open or to fix a wandering narrative.

SCQA preface (optional, 3–5 lines max)

  • S: Brief current state the audience accepts.
  • C: What changed / why the status quo fails.
  • Q: The decision/question on the table.
  • A: The same one-line answer as above.

Example

Original - Narrative sytle

"We're doing OK in the watches category but not as great as we could be doing. We have decent growth rate and the new promotions coming up are excellent. But I don't like what I am seeing on the repeat purchase rates. They are down about 10% versus last month. I think we should make it a priority to do more research with users. Maybe we can also test some higher frequency email campaigns. We're already locked and loaded on those new promotions so that will be good to get those out."

Minto-ized

Watches are critical to our growth strategy. They're 15% of our sales and a feeder category for jewelry and shoes. We're +3% to sales plan YTD. However, repeat purchase rates are down 10% versus last month. That costs us about 300bps in growth if it continues.

The team and I have been working on the obvious question: "What should we do about that?" We've decided to focus on marketing and merchandising to our buyers. • Increase cross-marketing of other categories in email (evidence] • Accelerate release of two new sub-categories (evidence] Do a price-promo to lapsed buyers test [evidence)