Written by Jonathan Dunnett
5 minute read
In brief: Most people don’t realize that a fact isn’t a picture. They scan a LinkedIn profile, have one conversation, form a quick impression, and proceed as if they have understanding. They don’t. The Pyramid of Understanding is built around the idea that facts become themes, and themes become narrative — and that narrative is where real understanding lives. Speakers who consistently get booked don’t rely on a single impression or a quick LinkedIn scan. They build context over time, and that context becomes their competitive advantage.
Part 2 of the Pyramid of Understanding series. Start with Part 1: Information isn’t intelligence.
The discovery call that wasn’t
A while back, I had what was supposed to be a discovery call: within minutes, it became clear that the other person expected me to diagnose their entire speaking business and hand them solutions on the spot. No context. No prior research on their business, their market, or their challenges. Just: tell me what to do.
That’s a fact-level interaction. They had a few data points about me, formed a quick picture, and proceeded accordingly. The problem is that a few data points isn’t a picture. It’s a guess dressed up as understanding.
I hadn’t spent 45 minutes reviewing their profile, their website, or their positioning. And this person was expecting me to shoot from the hip — to be, as I put it, a gumball machine. Put in a quarter, get an answer. That’s not how I operate. I don’t diagnose and tell. I understand first, and then I make recommendations. That’s not a style preference: it’s the methodology.
What this person demonstrated, without realizing it, was a fact-level understanding of who I am and how I work. They had a few data points. They assumed that was enough. It wasn’t.
What I ascertained about this person from the conversation? I understood how they likely tend to work, their assumptions and their collegiality (or lack thereof).
The Pyramid of Understanding is about helping us understand others, and that information is normally used to help us make a decision, influence or persuade: from this interaction, I made a decision that this person wasn’t going to be a good client.
Why our brains shortcut
Human behavior is messy and our brains want shortcuts. We want to understand people quickly and we want answers even faster, and so we lean on what we already know, or what we think we know, and we fill in the gaps with assumption. That’s where most of us, myself included at times, get it wrong.
We’ve all trusted too quickly. We’ve all dismissed someone too soon. We’ve all walked into a room thinking we had a read on the person across the table, and been wrong. When we stop being curious and start making assumptions, that’s usually where the mistakes happen.
The problem isn’t that we make quick judgments: sometimes speed is necessary. The problem is when we mistake a quick judgment for genuine understanding. A first impression is a fact. A fact is the bottom of the Pyramid.
From fact to narrative: how the Pyramid works
The Pyramid of Understanding is structured around five levels. Each one builds on the last.
- Fact A single data point. A job title. A LinkedIn post. One conversation.
- Facts Multiple data points beginning to form a pattern.
- Theme Enough facts in one area to create genuine understanding.
- Themes Multiple themes in play: priorities, communication style, relationship to risk.
- Narrative A coherent picture of who this person is: their values, their patterns, their worldview, what drives them.
This is all wrapped in context: who you are, who they are, cultural backgrounds, biases, and more.
Most people operate at the bottom two levels. They react to individual signals and call it understanding. A LinkedIn profile scan is a collection of facts. One lunch is a fact. A single impression from a 10-minute conversation is a fact.
Facts are a starting point. They are not a destination.
What the Pyramid asks you to do is stay curious long enough to move up the ladder. To look for patterns across multiple data points. To notice what themes emerge when you pay attention over time. And eventually, to build a narrative — a picture of who someone actually is, how they think, and how they’re likely to show up when it matters.
Now: do you need to understand someone’s life story to get you pizza? No. You need to know that you can trust them to go and pay, and not doing anything to your food, and return in a timely manner. More serious decisions deserve higher levels of understanding:
- Is this the right speaker’s bureau for me?
- Should I engage with this person as a client?
- Should I keep this long-term client, even though they’re no longer a great business fit?
- Should I partner with this new supplier for my speaker reel?
The Pyramid also equips us for engagement: it helps inform how we can best approach someone, given who they are, their context, and what we’re trying to achieve with them. In the case of that discovery call? This person was aggressive and just wanted answers. And frankly, that told me something about how they’d show up as a client. I’m not a gumball machine, and understanding that early saved us both time.
How to build a speaking pipeline: why most people never leave the bottom of the Pyramid
Most people operate at the bottom of the Pyramid: they react to individual signals. They make decisions based on a LinkedIn profile scan, one conversation, or a single impression. Then they wonder why the relationship didn’t go the way they expected, or why the opportunity didn’t land.
I’ve had conversations with speakers who were responding to RFPs by doing a quick scan of the organizer’s LinkedIn and throwing a proposal over the transom hoping for the best. No relationship. No context. No understanding of what that organizer really cares about: just facts — and an assumption that facts would be enough.
They weren’t. And the speakers who built the relationship first — even when they didn’t get that particular opportunity — were the ones who got the call the next time around.
Speakers who ask “how do I build a speaking pipeline?” are often looking for a tactic. What they actually need is a methodology for understanding the people on the other side of every opportunity. That’s the difference between keynote speaker business development that compounds and outreach that disappears into a void.
This is a relationship business. It’s a high-ticket business. Someone is going to pay you thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars: cold emails aren’t going to cut it.
Context compounds
The speakers who build sustainable pipelines are the ones who don’t stop at facts. They ask: what does this person actually care about? What does success look like for them? What are the themes in how they talk about their work? What does the narrative tell me about whether this is the right fit, and how I should approach the conversation?
If they can’t answer those questions from a distance, they figure out a way to build a connection: a warm intro, a conversation with someone who knows the person, a genuine reason to reach out before the ask exists.
Twenty or thirty minutes of good conversation with someone that knows the person you’re interested well in is worth a lot of internet searching.
This is what keynote speaker business development actually looks like when it’s done deliberately. Not more outreach. Speakers who are serious about how to build a speaking pipeline that lasts stop chasing tactics and start building understanding.
Not more content. A deeper understanding of fewer, better-fit opportunities — pursued with the kind of intelligence that makes the difference between a proposal that lands and one that disappears.
That’s building context. And it doesn’t happen in a single interaction: it compounds over time.
Intelligence that becomes actionable isn’t built from a single data point. It’s built from the discipline of staying curious long enough to see the picture form. It doesn’t mean that people can’t change in a moment or for the rest of their life: but, the better you understand the picture, the more likely you are to be successful.
Next in the series: how to actually apply the Pyramid — to stakeholders, to organizers, to the relationships that drive your speaking business forward.
Want to build this into how you work?
If you want this kind of thinking applied to one specific client, organizer, or market: a market intelligence coaching session is built for exactly that.
If you’re not sure whether this is a one-time gap or something ongoing: book a FREE 35-minute call. No pitch, I’ll tell you honestly what fits.
Jonathan Dunnett helps keynote speakers get booked on purpose. He is a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow and brings systematic, intelligence-driven frameworks to speaker business development. Serendipity isn’t a strategy.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Pyramid of Understanding?
The Pyramid of Understanding is a framework developed by Jonathan Dunnett that helps professionals move from raw information toward actionable intelligence. It structures how you gather, layer, and contextualize what you learn about the people and organizations you work with — moving from individual facts through themes toward a coherent narrative. It was developed out of 18+ years of applied competitive intelligence and behavioral profiling work.
What does “context compounds” mean for speakers?
Context compounds means that the understanding you build about a person, organizer, or market doesn’t just accumulate — it gets more valuable over time. A single fact tells you almost nothing. But facts, gathered across multiple interactions and sources, start to form themes. Themes build into narrative. And narrative gives you the kind of deep understanding that changes how you pitch, how you engage, and how you close. Speakers who build this kind of context consistently outperform speakers who rely on a single impression or a quick scan.
How do I build a more predictable speaking pipeline?
A predictable speaking pipeline isn’t built from more outreach or more visibility: it’s built from better understanding your market, your target customers and the key stakeholders inside of those organizations. When you know what your target organizers actually care about, how they make decisions, and what success looks like for them personally, your approach changes. You stop pitching at people and start engaging with them. That kind of understanding doesn’t happen by accident — it comes from applying competitive intelligence principles to your business development: systematic research, deliberate relationship building, and context that compounds over time. The Pyramid of Understanding gives speakers a structured way to build that context before the ask exists — and that’s what makes a pipeline predictable rather than dependent on luck.
Why do most speakers struggle to get consistently booked?
Most speakers focus on their talk, their positioning, and their marketing — and assume that good content plus good visibility equals consistent bookings. It doesn’t, not reliably. What actually drives consistent bookings is a systematic understanding of the people and organizations that book speakers, combined with the relationship intelligence to engage them in ways that land. Most speakers are operating on facts. The ones who get consistently booked are operating on narrative.
Is the Pyramid of Understanding only useful for speakers?
No. The Pyramid of Understanding applies to anyone who needs to make better decisions about the people and organizations they work with: clients, vendors, partners, suppliers. The speaker business development context is where Jonathan applies it most directly, but the underlying methodology comes from competitive intelligence practice and works across industries and professional contexts.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is “the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge on the competitive environment to improve organisational performance” (Madureira et al., 2023). It’s not corporate espionage and it’s not a simple Google search: it’s a structured methodology for moving from scattered data toward actionable insight. The CI Fellows (of which I am a Fellow) have a comprehensive walkthrough if you want to go deeper — and it’s the foundation of how I work with speakers. The goal is always the same: reduce uncertainty and make better decisions. Applied to a speaking business, that means understanding who books speakers, how they make decisions, what they care about, and how to position yourself to be the right answer before the conversation even starts.
How does competitive intelligence apply to building a speaking business?
Most speakers think of business development as marketing: visibility, content, social proof. Competitive intelligence takes a different angle. Instead of broadcasting at the market, you study it. Who are the organizers booking in your space? What topics are getting traction at the events you want to speak at? What do the speakers who consistently get booked have in common — and what gaps exist that you’re positioned to fill? That kind of intelligence doesn’t come from a LinkedIn scan. It comes from deliberate, systematic research applied over time. That’s what I bring to the speakers I work with, and it’s what the Pyramid of Understanding is built to support.