1-3-9 Story Spine: Advanced concepts

One of the most powerful storytelling techniques that I teach is the 1-3-9 Story Spine. Please read this older post to get an idea about the concept.

In this post, we consider a few advanced questions about this storytelling technique:

a. Does the idea work in real life? Are there any examples of people using it?

b. After the one-sentence summary at the top, how many buckets and levels should be there?

c. How do I know if my story narrative is complete, clear and correct?

d. Should the summary be perfectly in place before we start work on our slides?

Let’s consider each question in turn.

a. Does the idea work in real life? Are there any examples of people using it?

Yes, several books have used the 1-3-9 Story Spine to structure their contents.

The bestselling Atomic Habits by author James Clear has a clear summary in its table of contents. After a small section on the fundamentals (why habits are important), the book is organized around on four simple laws of habit formation:

1. Make it Obvious
2. Make It Attractive
3. Make It Easy
4. Make It Satisfying

Each section elaborates on the theme with specific ideas. The reader thus gets a big-picture overview of the book’s message, both before and after reading the book (as a recap tool).

Another well-known book on habits is The Power of Habit by journalist Charles Duhigg. The topics have been structured under three heads:[i]

1. The Habits of Individuals
2. The Habits of Successful Organizations
3. The Habits of Societies

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant’s book, Think Again,[ii] is also structured under three heads:

1. Individual Rethinking: Updating our own views
2. Interpersonal Rethinking: Opening other people’s minds
3. Collective Rethinking: Creating communities of lifelong learners

In the realm of storytelling at work, my favourite (and most influential) book is Made to Stick[iii] by Chip and Dan Heath. The book uses a neat and memorable acronym (applying the pattern-labelling technique we learnt in Chapter 4) of SUCCESS to categorize the six elements[1] which make a message stick:

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Stories

No Rules Rules the influential tome on Netflix’ culture by ex-CEO Reed Hastings and INSEAD professor Erin Meyer,[iv] almost follows the 1-3-9 Story Spine principle to a T:

1. First Steps to a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
   • First Build Up Talent Density…: A Great Workplace Is Stunning Colleagues
   • Then Increase Candor …: Say What You Really Think (with Positive Intent)
   • Now Begin Removing Controls…: a. Remove Vacation Policy and b. Remove Travel and Expense Approvals 
2. Next Steps to a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
   • Fortify Talent Density …: Pay Top of Personal Market
   • Pump Up Candor …: Open the Books
   • Now Release More Controls …: No Decision-Making Approvals Needed 
3. Techniques to Reinforce a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
   • Max Up Talent Density …: The Keeper Test
   • Max Up Candor …: A Circle of Feedback
   • And Eliminate Most Controls …!: Lead with Context, Not Control 
4. Going Global
   • Bring It All to the World!

Daniel Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, is known for his concise three-theme summaries. In Drive, he argues that motivation isn’t fuelled by financial rewards but by ‘Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose’. In To Sell Is Human, he updates the old sales mantra ‘Always Be Closing’ to the new ABCs: attunement (connecting with the buyer), buoyancy (handling rejection) and clarity (making your offer clear).

Even presentations use this idea. A presentation made by Sequoia Capital to its portfolio companies (titled Adapting to Endure[v]) used this tool to structure their recommendations to portfolio companies across three heads (with further ideas under them):

1. Prepare your mind
   • Confront your fear
   • Courage over fear
   • Crisis → Opportunity
   • Confront your reality
2. Prepare your team
   • Start with why
   • Reaffirm your mission and values
   • Showcase your leadership
   • Align your team
   • Ask for commitment
3. Prepare your company
   • Cash and cash flow
   • Create financial degrees of freedom
   • Concentrate investments in your future
   • Constraints → Creativity

b. After the one-sentence summary at the top, how many buckets and levels should be there?

You could have anywhere between three to five buckets – the lesser you have the better.

Why is three an ideal number to aim for? Because of the Rule of Three, one of the most commonly followed norms in writing. Apart from the ease of remembering, three elements has a nice rhythm and lilt to it. No wonder it has been used since ancient times (Aristotle’s ‘beginning, middle, end’, Caeser’s ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, and Marc Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans and Countrymen’) to pre-modern times (The US constitution’s ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ‘, the French Republic’s slogan, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ and Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people’) to the present day (Daniel Pink’s ‘Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose’, or Adam Grant’s ‘Individual, Interpersonal and Collective’).

Of course, these are guidelines. There are no hard and fast rules about these numbers and you can exceed three buckets. But if you consider the examples from the books we examined, you’ll see that the number tends to be closer to the three-four buckets range.

	Number of buckets
Book/document	Three	Four	Six
Atomic Habits (James Clear)		✓
Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg)	✓
Think Again (Adam Grant)	✓
Made to Stick (Heath Brothers)			✓
No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer)	✓
Drive (Daniel Pink)	✓
To Sell is Human (Daniel Pink)	✓
Sequoia Deck	✓

c. “How do I know if my Story Narrative is complete, clear and correct?” You use the MECE framework

Let’s take each of these – completeness, clarity and correctness – separately. Let’s start with correctness or accuracy. Now for a fact-based storyteller, this is a hygiene factor. Your assertions should be based on verifiable and credible facts. You should have clear sources for all your messages. If you are citing an opinion, then you need to state the facts (with sources) which form the basis of that opinion. For the purpose of this book, I am assuming that the information you want to present is correct to the best of your knowledge.

Let’s consider the other two elements – ensuring that your story is clear and complete. It has a simple solution – the MECE framework. MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive and it is a term credited (again) to Barbara Minto[2] of McKinsey and Co. In MECE:

• Clarity comes from the ME (Mutually Exclusive) part and the right flow
• Completeness from the CE (Collectively Exhaustive) part

Some of the earlier examples we discussed exhibit this MECE condition:

• When Adam Grant uses breakdown of ‘Individual’, ‘Interpersonal’ and ‘Collective’ rethinking, he is using a MECE frame
• When Charles Duhigg structures habits under the heads of ‘Individuals’, ‘Organisations’ and ‘Societies’, he is using a MECE frame
• In Marketing when they use the AIDA framework (Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action) or the Marketing Funnel approach, they are using a MECE frame

MECE frames are all around us – we should use them more deliberately to ensure that our stories are clear and complete. These structures are simple (though not easy) to create. You need to frame or define your problem or story universe and then break it down into MECE component parts. You can do this using four approaches[3]:

1. Using basic math to break down your problem into component parts (e.g. ‘Revenue = Volume into price’, or ‘Profit = Revenue minus costs’)
2. Segmenting your universe (like how Adam Grant uses the ‘Individual’, ‘Interpersonal’ and ‘Collective’ slices)
3. Using a set of logical questions to solve a problem (e.g. What is the Problem, Why is it occurring and How to solve it)
4. Taking a process and breaking it down into sub-processes (e.g. the AIDA framework or the Marketing funnel approach)

d. Should the 1-3-9 Story Spine summary be perfectly in place before we start work on our slides?

How long should you grapple with the story narrative before starting work on your presentation/report? Should you do a quick and dirty one-hour effort and get on with the slides? Or should you obsess over it like Pixar does with its movies, iterating over the sentences ‘thousands of times’ till the story works on paper?

The answer, as you would expect, is somewhere in between. Try out various approaches until you find something that works for you.

Remember though – the clearer your story narrative before you start work on your slides, the more effective your final output would be.

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Featured Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

[1] Gee, six buckets is a tad on the higher side. But remember, three is a guideline, not a rule. Also, the SUCCESs acronym makes it easier for the message to stick.

[2] Barbara Minto: “MECE: I invented it, so I get to say how to pronounce it”. Accessed from https://www.mckinsey.com/alumni/news-and-events/global-news/alumni-news/barbara-minto-mece-i-invented-it-so-i-get-to-say-how-to-pronounce-it on 12 February 2025

[3] This comes under the realm of structured problem solving. You can read books like ‘Bulletproof Problem Solving’ and ‘Problem Solving 101’ to know more.

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[i] Duhigg Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House.

[ii] Grant, Adam, ‘Think Again: The Power Of Knowing What You Don’t Know’. Penguin. Kindle Edition.

[iii] Heath, Dan and Heath, Chip, ‘Made to Stick : Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck’, Random House

[iv] Hastings, Reed; Meyer, Erin. No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (p. i). (Function). Kindle Edition

[v] ‘Adapting to Endure’ Presentation by Sequoia Capital accessed from https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/adapting-to-endure/ on 12 June 2024