The Epidemic of Pretty Slide Syndrome
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You're receiving this StrategyU weekly newsletter after signing up for our free mini-course. If you'd only like to receive select deals & promotions, or want to unsubscribe, you can change your preferences here. Hey there, You've likely sat through many bad presentations. But why are they bad? Surely these people don't intend to torture you. Over the last year, I've been coaching business leaders on presentation and storytelling skills. I've worked with them on pitch decks, board presentations, and CEO strategy updates. Even at this level of business, there are three main pitfalls that people fall into and are just as prevalent at more junior levels:
Let's dive into each of these. #1 Buried PurposeA few weeks ago someone was walking me through a deck and by slide 14 I had no idea what the point of this entire presentation was. I asked, "what is the point of this presentation?" "It's towards the end, you'll see." "No, really, what is the point?" Sometimes people don't think about this question. Who is the presentation for? Is it to update a senior manager on the status of a project? Is it to get more people to agree with your path forward? Is it merely just a simple weekly update? Is it to improve other's perception of you at work? Sometimes we don't even realize we are being vague. People hide behind phrases like "align the team." You may think this sounds professional but it doesn't mean anything. Instead say, "The goal is to get the CMO and COO to commit to implementing phase two of the plan by the end of October." One of the biggest tricks I use in presentation coaching is to ask people "What are you really trying to say or achieve here?" "Okay let's write that." This helps to clarify our message earlier in the presentation rather than waiting around until slide 74. #2 Information SoupPeople working at strategy consulting firms are not immune to these pitfalls. At BCG the culture was more academic than at McKinsey. People loved digging into every last detail AND assumed everyone else shared this trait, resulting in slides like this: While this can make sense in some occasions, especially in a final handover document in which you want the client to have all of the data, in most cases a simpler slide would do. The root cause behind these slides is a hidden belief: "I worked for 20 hours on this slide so I need to show how hard this work was." This can result in 147 slide decks which can throw the client or audience into such a state of information overload that they end up not remembering anything. Another reason is that creating a simpler slide is hard. Figuring out what to eliminate can be more challenging than creating the slide in the first place. This requires an intuition for what will resonate with the audience and what pieces fit together to tell a compelling story. Here is an example of sharing the information versus trying to create a memorable message: People often say "Show, don't tell" but with presentations, it is reversed. Tell, don't show. #3 Pretty Slide Syndrome 📊Most people who can achieve career success in the business world figure out how things are supposed to look and sound. There is a "good enough" way of formatting information in e-mails, PowerPoints, and during However, people often stop there. They fill out templates rather than doing the deeper work to get to what I call the "so what?" in my course, Think Like A Strategy Consultant. This can get you surprisingly far but since you've signed up for this e-mail list I know you want to be better than that. Here is a PowerPoint to show what I mean: The first table on the left is fine. It is neatly formatted and gives useful information but the second table on the right tells the audience what to think. It gives them the takeaway and helps them understand that lower price-to-rent ratios are probably better for homeowners. 🤚 Pause Before CreatingTo avoid these pitfalls you need to figure out how to create a "space" between the information consumption and the output. You need to ask yourself hard questions like "Why am I showing this information?" "Does this matter to the audience?" or "Am I just trying to show how smart I am rather than creating a great presentation?" The tools of strategy consulting will help you with these. Here are some deeper dives:
And if you want to go deeper?
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Paul Millerd
Freelancer, creator & writer
I started StrategyU to teach knowledge workers the tools, frameworks, mindsets, and approaches that I learned in strategy consulting. When I started this, I thought that my audience would be people in big companies stuck inside strategy, finance, or analytics groups that didn’t have access to training. This was one of the segments that have found value in my work but a second segment that surprised me has been small and medium-sized consulting firms ranging from 5 people to 200. Over the last...
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