Personal, Tangible, Intangible (PTI Triplicate)

The 60/30/10 Rule of Performance Balance

The PTI Triplicate is a structural framework used in the THPS (Training Hub for Public Speaking) methodology to balance the types of information presented in a speech or conversation.

Most speakers suffer from "Intangible Overload," where their content is too abstract for an audience to process. PTI provides a specific ratio: 60% Personal, 30% Tangible, 10% Intangible.

This ratio often converges when you analyse the best edu-tainment presentations, like TEDx Talks, Royal Institute Science Communication Presentations, or Keynote Presentations.

The 60/30/10 PTI Ratio ensures a good balance of audience Decision, Restatement and Liking Outcomes and Reactions.

The Three Components of PTI

 1. Personal (60%) – The Perspective: This is content delivered from the eyes of a real or hypothetical person. It utilizes SWYS Level 3 to place the audience inside a character's experience. In a children's book like The Tortoise and the Hare, the bulk of the story is told through the Tortoise’s first-person perspective (e.g. Personal: “The Tortoise heard the starting gun and turned to see the Hare had already left a rabbit sized dust cloud as he raced out of sight“).

 2. Tangible (30%) – The Picture: These are visual descriptions of frameworks or general concepts. It is not a single story, but visually descriptive language of the idea (e.g., Steve Jobs’ X/Y axis or a product roadmap). It allows the audience to see the "Logic" of the room they are in through verbalising diagrams, pictures or infographics (e.g. Tangible: “The racetrack was a 10km winding track cut through the 100 acre forest“).

 3. Intangible (10%) – The Point: This is the abstract "Idea" or "Moral" in its purest form. It is the conclusion you want the audience to reach and may be in intangible language to make it a universal idea with application in different situations (e.g. Intangible: “The moral of the story is: Slow and steady wins the race“).

The "Color Theory" Analogy: 60/30/10

When analysing the best web designers creating stylized slides and pages, they often converge on using 60% dominant color (background), 30% secondary color (pop), and 10% accent (call to action).

Speakers can do the same thing when composing a script:

  • Writing a Balanced Script (60/30/10): Mostly dominanted by Personal narratives, supported by Tangible frameworks, accented by the Intangible point.

  • Writing a Boring, Info-strained, but Technically Correct Script that no one will understand (1/9/90): Most first-draft presentations are 90% Intangible "walls of text," 9% blurry Tangible data, and 1% Personal connection.

Success in the Field

This ratio has been the engine behind the success of Lynda McDonald, Julia Ewert, and various TEDx speakers and C-Suite candidates. By reducing the "Intangible" noise and increasing "Personal" signal, these speakers bypass the Cognitive Load bottleneck and achieve Decision Outcomes with surgical precision.

This concept is one of many core concepts under the THPS Glossary and THPS Standard for elite-level public speaking skills and training.