| How the "Big Building" Principle Works |
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Before there was pen and paper, the Greeks developed a method to help students remember mathematical formulas. Each of these formulas was individual bits of information. To solve a complex equation, the student had to have 20 or 30 of these formulas available to consider as a solution. But the human brain simply can't store this many items on one "wand" or "rod." So it was nearly impossible for the students to remember so many items. The method they developed to solve this problem worked this way. The student would visit a large building and memorize one formula in each room as they toured the building. Once the memorization was complete, the student would use their visit to the building to remember each formula because each one was associated with each room. They could mentally tour the building, as they had in reality, and easily recall each formula. They had "anchored" the formulas to the rooms. The large building was their theme. Each item (formula) was anchored to a room along a continuum (the tour of the whole building). When the Victorians discovered this technique, they created elaborate parlor games, adding rooms to great imagined houses in order to lengthen each other's lists of memorization. And Matteo Ricci fascinated Chinese Royalty lecturing and teaching these techniques. I used them myself. When I was studying for the Real Estate Broker's Exam in California, I had a long list of items I needed to memorize. I used post-it notes around my apartment, and each day took a tour, memorizing each item. When I sat down to the test, I took out a clean sheet of paper, imagined myself on the tour in my apartment and wrote down almost 40 important items such as: 43,560 square feet in one acre (a detail I still remember and have only once needed so far). Themes provide the big building for your proposal. Without their even realizing it, you're giving your client a way to anchor and remember what you say. You add rooms with your benefit statements by tying each benefit statement to both the theme and one issue that's of critical importance to the client. For example, your theme might be: On Time Delivery, every step along the wayA benefit statement to illustrate your schedule and this theme might read: Our schedule is the first step in our on-time delivery; we craft it to support the entire project with realistic timelines and sufficient manpower requirements. |
Ricci Legacy
The Ricci family has been consulting and supporting success for hundreds of years.