The Power of 3! Which are your favorites?

Leveraging concepts that are interdependent, synergistic, and generative.

Alan Alda is not only an award-winning actor, writer, and director, he is an engaging, entertaining, and effective science communicator.¹ This past July I watched a “Big Think” YouTube video “3 Ways to Express Your Thoughts So That Everyone Will Understand You” where Alda presented his “Three Rules of Three.”

In brief, whenever he gives a presentation he follows these three tips:

1. Never cover more that 3 key ideas.

2. For a complex idea, explain it 3 different ways.

3. For a complex idea, repeat it 3 times.

Although he does not discuss this, I assume that explaining it “3 different ways” also counts towards repeating it “3 times.” Therefore, for a presentation with three complex ideas, I might need to prepare nine talking points. His advice seemed practical and easy to remember, so I shared it with colleagues.

Alda’s YouTube video got me thinking about how I use the “Power of 3” for organizing concepts for communicating to others. The Latin phrase Omne Trium Perfectum means “Everything that comes in threes is perfect.” In a LinkedIn Pulse article Dr. Chris Arnold summarizes why sets of 3 are important:²

“It’s how the brain processes information, the simpler it is the more we will absorb and process something. Scientists have put the number of items we can easily recall in short-term memory close to just three. Then combine with the fact that we are proficient at pattern recognition by necessity, and three is the smallest number of elements required to create a pattern. This combination of pattern and simplicity results in memorable content.”

He provides numerous practical examples of how this concept in applied in several fields.

Example 1

Building upon the Power of 3, I believe that when the 3 concepts are interdependent, synergistic, and generative, their integrated deployment can be even more effective. For example, “The CDPH Way — Becoming a learning, healing, and impactful organization” is the model we use to plan and implement our organization transformation priorities (Figure 1).

• learning

• healing

• impactful

Figure 1: The LHI model for “becoming a learning, healing, and impactful organization.”

The magic happens by working in the center to promote integrated core values and a culture that drives behavior and transformational change. At the end of the day, we want to learn and get better, to prevent harm and promote healing, and to make a difference and have impact.

Example 2

Another Power of 3 is the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains that are the basis of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy or CBT (Figure 2).

• cognitive (“thoughts”)

• emotional (“feelings”)

• behavioral

Figure 2: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: The triangle in the middle represents CBT's tenet that all humans' core beliefs can be summed up in three categories: self, others, future.

At the center are core beliefs which are generally outside of our awareness. A very practical application of this model, besides CBT, is for designing team meeting objectives. When planning a meeting we can ask the following questions: At the end of our meeting,

1. What do we want our participants to know? (cognitive)

2. How do we want our participants to feel? (emotional)

3. What do we want them to do? (behavioral)

Example 3

To expand this model, we recognize that individuals connect to others through communication and relationships. So now we have social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) which is the basis for SEB learning.

• social

• emotional

• behavioral

Can you think of other Powers of 3? It’s better when they are interdependent, synergistic, and generative. Are are a few more off the top of my head.

Example 4

Another Power of 3 are OKRs (Objective and Key Results). For the small “s” substitute “strategies”.

• Objectives (goals that inspire and motivate; ie, emotional)

• Key Results (measures of progress and success; ie, cognitive)

• strategies (theory of change; ie, behavioral)

“A strategy is a coherent set of actions that has a reasoned chance of improving results. Strategies are made up of our best thinking about what works, and include the contributions of many partners. … The ‘reasoned chance’ part of strategies is sometimes called ‘theory of change’.”³

OKRs are very powerful and effective because they are based on a foundation “Power of 3” of cognitive-emotional-behavioral. They are interdependent, synergistic, and generative.

I hope you are beginning to see a pattern here.

To learn about OKRs, read my blog entry here.

To learn about “theory of change” read my blog entry here.

Example 5

Using 3 criteria, Table 1 summarizes how problems can be categorized⁴ as

• simple,

• complicated, or

• complex.

Table 1: Problems can be categorized as simple, complicated, or complex. Source: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9xg5t30s

Example 6

Stoic philosophy or Stoicism can be summarized by three key principles:

• Living according to nature (ie, humans are social beings capable to reason)

• Dichotomy of control (focus on what you can control, starting with yourself)

• Character as the highest good (character comes from pursuing the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance [moderation, self-discipline])

Example 7

To build trust, be trustworthy:⁵

• have character,

• be caring, and

• be competent.

See “The 4 Cs of Building Trust model” (character, caring, competent, and reliable).

Example 8

By definition, complex systems⁶ are diverse entities that are

• connected,

• interdependence, and

• adapting.

Example 9

The Shingo Model (Figure 3) for promoting organizational excellence focuses on

1. building learning systems (and deploying tools) to

2. transform culture (ie, behaviors driven by guiding principles) and

3. achieve results.

Figure 3: The Shingo Model

Here is how Shingo model aligns with the learning-healing-impactful trivium.

1. [Learning:] building learning systems (and deploying tools) to

2. [Healing:] transform culture (ie, behaviors driven by guiding principles) and

3. [Impactful:] achieve results.

Example 10

The Shingo Guiding Principles have three dimensions (Figure 4):

• People: cultural enablers,

• Process: continuous improvement, and

• Purpose: enterprise alignment.

Figure 4: The Shingo Guiding Principles

Example 11

Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU)⁷ is an approach that is deployed based on dimensions (Figure 5):

• uncertainty,

• complexity, and

• policy options (theory of change).

Figure 5: Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU)

Closing thoughts

Using the “Power of 3” (or “Rule of 3”) approach helps one summarize concepts and ideas in a way that is easier to remember, use, and communicate. Of course, it’s not always possible, but that’s okay. The process helps you master and communicate material. When the concepts are interdependent, synergistic, and generative, then you want to be working in the intersection (Figure 1) deploying all 3 concepts together. You want to learn and get better, to prevent harm and promote healing, and to make a difference and have impact.

Please share your favorite Powers of 3 and how you use them.

Thanks!

Tomás

1. Alan Alda, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating (New York: Random House, 2017).

2. Chris Arnold. Omne Trium Perfectum (The Power of Three). LinkedIn. June 2, 2020. Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/omne-trium-perfectum-power-three-dr-chris-arnold.

3. Mark Friedman, Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough: How to Produce Measurable Improvements for Customers and Communities (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 10th Anniversary Edition, 2015).

4. Tomás J. Aragón and Grant Colfax, “We Will Be the Best at Getting Better! An Introduction to Population Health Improvement.” (eScholarship.org, December 30, 2019), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9xg5t30s.

5. Adapted from Tomás Aragón. Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust (part 2). Team Public Health, July 6, 2024. Available from: https://teampublichealth.substack.com/p/leadership-is-getting-results-in-2f3

6. John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, eds., Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life, Princeton Studies in Complexity (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2010).

7. Vincent A. W. J. Marchau, Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty: From Theory to Practice, 1st ed (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2019).