How To Create Great Documents
Creating documents is a complex skill that requires orchestrating critical skills, such as problem-solving, analytics, storylining, slide-making, top-down comms, and client and leadership management.
I remember myself as a tenured consultant struggling with creating compelling documents. I used to have many work-in-progress pages but rarely finished products ready for discussions.
Then, when we had an urgent meeting with clients, I would panic and try to come up with something decent.
Needless to say, the quality of my outputs was terrible. This resulted in negative feedback and more unnecessary work.
We would go through dummy decks and have endless iterations with leadership.
Then, I had to fix dozens of random comments.
That was a soul-crushing experience that created tension and negative emotions—not great for being a standalone consultant.
The worst case is when partners tear down the document the day before an important meeting. They can add a bunch of new slides that the team has no idea how to make.
This is when teams go into a frenzy mode and pull all-nighters. It’s also when poor decisions and mistakes are made.
This happens because of a failure to organize a proper document creation process.
These mistakes cause consultants a lot of pain and stress.
This is a definition of a reactive way of working.
What Would Be An Ideal Process?
How would we want the process to work if we had a magic wand?
First, we would agree with leadership on what we produce and stick to that plan. Then, we would streamline slide production, avoiding endless iterations.
Also, clients would co-create with us. They would not turn their back on us at the last minute before the SteerCo. They would feel full ownership of their content and present it at the SteerCo meeting.
The document is ready the day before SteerCo. We put our pens down and discuss how to present and emphasize key messages. We could even dry-run the presentation.
Then, we would have a fantastic SteerCo meeting, and the team would feel a sense of achievement.
Seems unrealistic? Let’s see if we can make it happen.
Well, let’s discuss how we can make it a reality.
There are three key principles.
1. Create The Fewest Slides Possible
Imagine the fewest slides you need to deliver your key messages.
Quite often, the number is just 1.
It is hard to consume a lot of new information at once, especially for clients. Discussing more than 3-5 slides within a single meeting is difficult.
Large documents put people under self-inflicted pressure to discuss them all. This results in rushed conversations, more meetings, and unnecessary work.
By making fewer slides, you are making everyone's lives easier.
2. Create SteerCo Slides, Not Backup Slides
As in the story with Ross, can you first focus on creating only SteerCo-level slides?
This simple question will reframe the whole document-making process.
Realistically, you can go through only 15-20 pages on a one-hour SteerCo meeting.
If you have a team of 3 consultants, each consultant must produce only 3 to 5 slides per SteerCo.
Can you do 3 to 5 high-quality slides? This sounds more doable than dozens of slides.
What is the difference between a SteerCo slide and a Backup slide?
I have two categories of SteerCo slides: a Synthesis Slide and a Killer Analysis.
A Synthesis Slide will summarize an important segment or section of work.
It presents several options for proceeding further and provides sufficient information for decision-making.
A Killer Analysis provides a critical deep dive and contains significant analytical insight. There should be only 2-3 Killer Slides for the SteerCo document, not more.
In the beginning, consultants tend to create dozens of random slides. Then, partners ask you to synthesize them into one slide before the SteerCo.
What if you can proactively decide early on your Synthesis and Killer slides?
You will look like a genius in the eyes of your leadership team.
3. Create Clean Documents, Not Messy Dummy Decks
Always strive to create clean documents with clean slides.
No dummies, drafts, stickers, placeholders, or other half-finished outputs. These are the same principles we defined in the ‘How to Create Great Slides’ playbook.
It is harder to find flaws in well-thought-out and crafted pages.
“This looks very good. The content should be excellent, too. I have nothing to add”—our brains love shortcuts.
Thus, if you have a few precise and appealing slides, you will get fewer or no comments and save a lot of time.
You create a virtuous cycle of productivity (the opposite of a vicious cycle).
But what if you have some pages unfinished for the next leadership review?
Instead of dummy pages, you show them only good-quality pages and the storyline for missing pages.
Don’t show the full doc with placeholder pages.
It would look like a smile with missing teeth.
It doesn’t trigger anything other than a cringe reaction.
A Four-Step Process
The key is to move in stages and use the MLP approach (Minimum Lovable Product).
Strive to create a very good document version early in the process.
So you can have meaningful discussions with leadership and clients.
But how can we get to the good version that early without risking doing something wrong?
The key is early alignment with leadership.
1. Storylining
Writing a clear storyline will help you align early with your leadership.
It will also help you draw a mental picture of your whole work. Highlight essential elements and identify potential flaws in the logic.
Also, that's how you avoid future surprises.
Ensure that you work on the right things. If aligned early, it is very rare that leadership tears down the document later in the process.
Some people like to do a dot-dash and call it a storyline. We find it ineffective. It doesn’t allow readers to go on a mental journey with you.
Instead, we recommend writing a storyline like a mini-essay. Explain to readers in plain words what you are trying to do and help them to imagine what they will see on slides.
Assume that people who read your storyline have little or no context knowledge. Your goal is for them to understand the key messages and slides by reading your storyline.
Write each paragraph describing one page in your future document. The first sentence is the title of your future slide. The additional text helps to explain what will be shown on the page, be it a graph, picture, or structure.
Read a more detailed post on how to write storylines - Storylining for First-Year Consultants.
2. Drafting or Sketching
Before starting slide production, ensure you spend sufficient time sketching your future document.
Start by creating a storyboard on a notepad. Split your page into eight squares, each representing a future slide. Draw your slides as screenwriters would draw scenes of their future movies. Ensure that flow works and identify any gaps in logic and required analysis.
The storyboard is a great way to align on work with your team. The team will have full clarity on the overall document and their contribution.
Discuss with your manager to identify ‘Killer’ slides so you are clear on which slides to focus on. Then, fiercely prioritize these Killer Slides and ensure they are ready first. Then, if an ad hoc meeting with leadership happens, you have something tangible to discuss.
Draft each slide in great detail on a notepad. Don’t hesitate to do 2 to 3 iterations, even more for killer slides.
Don't start working with PowerPoint until you have absolute clarity. Only then will you be efficient in creating slides in PowerPoint.
3. Production
If you have an aligned storyline, you can strive to produce the first good MLP version of the document in one day.
Prioritize Killer Slides over Backup slides. Make them yourself manually. Don’t rely on visual services.
In this case, you will have your MLP output after 1-2 hours. Then, you can discuss them anytime with your leadership or clients.
When creating killer slides, it would be best to progress in stages, from basic hygiene to perfection.
The evolution of the slide should be in the following sequence:
Actionable title > Basic layout > Insightful content > Precise wording > Clean visualization (all boxes aligned, correct font size, legends in place, etc.) > Visual enhancement (beautiful icons and pictures, colors, etc.).
You can focus on the remaining pages once you are comfortable with killer slides.
4. Syndication
Technically, syndication is not a step in a sequence. It should be performed throughout the whole document creation process.
Let’s use a simple one-week timeline for document creation to explain the syndication sequence. You can adapt this for a shorter or longer timeline.
The first syndication point on day 1 is storyline alignment.
A clear storyline will comfort leadership that you know what you are doing. It will also give some operating space and time for focusing on the next step.
Sometimes, clients can work with storylines. It would be great to bring them on board early in the process and align.
On the second day, you should have all your critical slides created—not the whole document, but two to three killer slides, the most essential slides of your document.
If leadership is anxious, you can show slides and get early alignment. I would also start syndicating with clients here. It’s important to get them onboard earlier in the process.
On day 3, you would want your whole document to be ready, with good quality, no drafts, and no half-prepared slides.
At this stage, you can have a proper problem-solving session with your leadership. Go through the whole document in preparation for the SteerCo. You can also send it to your leadership team for offline review.
Then, you leave the last few days for final polishing and visual improvements.
These principles and steps will help to create any complex documents.
You might need to modify this approach, adapting to different timelines and requirements.
But, focusing on critical slides is an absolute necessity for productive work.
The consulting journey is complex and treacherous.
Walking it alone is extremely difficult. It’s helpful to have the support of someone experienced who has gone through this journey and helped many others.
That is why I developed a coaching program for MBB consultants to help them achieve high performance and success.
If you are an MBB consultant and sick of struggling with performance and development, I would like to speak with you.
Book a Free 1-1 Consultation to discuss whether I can help you through my coaching program. There is no commitment, and you can ask any burning questions in a risk-free environment.
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