The Rule of Three Works for IT

If you’re a presenter, or simply someone wanting to convey information in a memorable way, you have probably inadvertently or intentionally used the rule of three.  The rule of three is a teaching, writing or presenting device where a key concept is broken into three easy to remember pieces.  Does the rule of three apply to the fields of technology and business? Let’s dive a little deeper to find out.

Financial Times columnist Sam Leith offers executives a few hints on how to make business presentations and documents more interesting. He says that by using a rhetorical device called a “tricolon”, anyone looking to influence or persuade can make their ideas easier to consume and comprehend.

What’s a good example of a tricolon? How about Thomas Jefferson’s prose in the US Declaration of Independence where he writes; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Notice the tricolon; “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and how easy is it forget the first part of the sentence and remember the second. Why is this?

Leith advances the concept that humans accept and retain information better when the Rule of Three is used.  “For reasons that remain neurologically obscure, the human mind adores things in groups of three: tricolons sound strong, memorable and coherent,” he says. 

Tricolons are found in all types of rhetoric from political speeches to children’s books. Take a look at this gem in Quentin Blake’s Angelica Sprocket’s Pockets:

      “There’s a pocket for mice,”

      “and a pocket for cheese”

      “and a pocket for hankies in case anyone feels that they’re going to sneeze”

Here we have three pockets, but we mostly remember what is supposed to go in them, namely mice, cheese and hankies.

We can use this rhetorical device in our business presentations and messaging for better conclusions.  For example, most readers of this column know that I have marketing duties for Teradata Cloud. 

While there are many compelling aspects of this particular solution,  I’ve boiled the ocean down to “fast, flexible and powerful”, where deployment in the cloud is faster than you’d expect, flexible enough to meet your needs for a little or a lot of analytic capability and powerful with the availability of three analytic engines. While it’s terribly tempting to create a longer checklist of all the benefits of this solution, I’ve intentionally limited myself to only three (and arguably even these require more refinement!).

Want to make your next presentation more compelling? And added effect of the tri-colon is that it can provide a rhythm to our discourse.  Rhythmically, we can use tricolons to break up the monotony of an otherwise bland presentation (especially ones that technology executives are prone to deliver!).

Going forward, let’s be sure to use more tricolons (i.e. Rule of Three) in our training materials, internal presentations, customer whitepapers, conference presentations and more. I’m pretty sure by doing so; we’ll end up much more interesting, memorable, and effective.