How To Create Great Slides

Any gaps in slide-creating skills will hold you back. I learned that slowly and it cost me dearly. Please don't repeat my mistakes.

𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐚 𝐣𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬.

As a lateral hire, I always struggled with slides. It always turned into a soul-crushing and stressful process.

Once on my team, I had a superstar consultant. His name was Alex. He churned out beautiful and insightful documents like a machine.

I had to learn his approach. But it was difficult to ask for help because I was his manager.

So, I had to eat my ego and admit I needed help. Luckily, we became good friends, and he taught me all his secrets.

Soon enough, I experienced a step change in my performance.

Here are the main principles of his playbook.

The Most Fundamental Skill

We communicate our ideas through slides, both internally and with clients. They assess our work through slides, whether we like it or not.

Creating slides will be a major part of your work for a long time.

The faster you learn to do it well, the more time you'll free up for other important activities.

Push your skills beyond average to create an unfair advantage.

Ugly Slides Generate New Stupid Work

Every high-performing consultant knows this unspoken rule.

Visual noise, such as stickers, placeholders, and typos, prevent people from understanding your ideas.

You have five seconds for people to decide if your slide is ugly or great.

Ugly slides scream:

I'm a very ugly slide. Don't take me seriously. Feel free to crap on me.

Managers can't pass them on to partners or clients.

They subconsciously want to improve them, generating dozens of comments. Some are good, some not, but then you must execute them.

This starts a new cycle of iteration. You could have spent that time doing something else.

This is a waste of productivity.

Simply put,

Don't send crappy slides to your leaders! Stop hurting yourself!

Cut your leaders some slack. They have to sift through hundreds of half-baked, ugly slides.

You condition them to see you as someone who produces poor-quality slides.

Is that the reputation you want?

If you are an MBB consultant and want to improve your slide-making process and achieve high performance, book a free 1-1 consultation to discuss how exactly I can help you. There is no commitment, and you can ask me any burning questions you might have.

A First-Time-Right Approach

What if you could create slides that don't generate new stupid work?

It may seem unreal, but high performers do that. They don't do unnecessary iterations. That's how they find time to achieve exceptional results.

By killing unnecessary iterations, you radically improve your productivity.

Their secret is simple:

→ Aim to create top-quality slides on the first try.

Your first version should be clean, well-structured, and well-written.

Imagine you create a slide to present to senior clients without any quality check.

It won't always be easy, but even attempting this will improve your output. This will lead to fewer iterations.

You'll have more time to focus on quality, kickstarting a virtuous cycle.

How To Avoid Waste Work?

Some might object that perfecting slides early on will lead to wasted effort.

This is a fair objection.

But this often happens to new joiners who are still learning the ropes. They misunderstand expectations and waste time doing something else.

To eliminate waste work, you should

→ Align expectations when accepting a task. Ask clarifying questions. Understand leadership intent, audience, and timelines. Playback your understanding.

Please read more on how to accept tasks well in the following post: Eliminate Work Waste.

Reasons People Dig Themselves Into a Productivity Hole

Unhealthy habits and behaviors kill productivity.

1. Send Slides Prematurely

We rarely face a life-or-death situation when we need slides in 30-60 minutes.

Junior consultants tend to ship their outputs immediately after production without quality control. They believe they're assessed on speed, not quality.

I once believed this foolish misconception. I was completely wrong.

Take your time. Produce your best work.

2. Believe It’s Okay To Create Dummies And Iterate A Lot - NOT OKAY!

Making lots of unnecessary iterations kills productivity.

Your leaders may insist you to iterate heavily because that's how they were trained.

But they'll resent you for sending ugly slides without even realizing it.

Go against the system. Push for well-designed, clear, and concise slides.

They'll appreciate the quality and think you are a genius.

3. Lack Of Internal Iterations

Creating great slides requires multiple iterations.

But you can do them internally and eliminate the unnecessary iterations you do with your managers.

For example, I used to take a mentally lazy approach.

I'd hastily throw something together and send it to my managers, assuming they'd know better.

Most of their comments could have been avoided with more common sense and diligence on my part.

As a manager, I hated receiving these half-baked slides. They overloaded my mental capacity and frustrated me.

I wondered why consultants couldn't think a bit more critically. What was their added value in this process?

Trust me, you don't want your manager questioning your value in this way.

4. Misuse Of Visual Graphics (VG).

New consultants are taught to use VG to save time. But this time-saving often compromises quality.

Consultants often follow the wrong sequence.

Consultants are tasked to create an important slide. They spend a few minutes on it before sending it to VG for formatting.

While VG works on the slide, consultants cannot make further changes. After a few hours, the slide looks better visually. But it still lacks depth and clarity.

Consultants waste half a day without a solid slide to present to leadership.

Some consultants even send the VG-formatted slide directly to leadership without refining the content.

Then why do we need such consultants?

That is why his sequence is fundamentally flawed.

→ Consultants must develop the skills to create client-ready slides independently.

If you don't have the capacity, you might be working on too many slides. Prioritize the most impactful ones and execute them well.

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Tips and Tricks

1. MLP Instead MVP

Partners love the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach.

They want to see quick results and identify early if consultants are stuck or doing something wrong.

But this approach hurts consultants.

→ Instead, adopt the MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) approach.

Create slides that are high-quality and aesthetically pleasing.

Managers would be the first to appreciate receiving high-quality, impeccable slides. I promise it always works.

No manager has ever complained about receiving impeccable slides from consultants.

2. Iterate Using A Scratchpad

→ Do at least the first 3-4 iterations on a scratchpad.

This is especially important for complex conceptual or analytical slides.

Boost your creativity and shorten your product timeline by using this approach.

There is some magic in handwriting and drawing; it makes us think better. Don't underestimate it.

Usually, consultants start creating new PowerPoint slides from scratch.

They most likely don’t have a good idea of how to position slide elements. As a result, they will waste time adjusting those elements, which is not a very effective way of working.

Instead, I’d make a few iterations on paper to find the optimal layout, placement, and content of key messages. This is when the real problem-solving process happens.

Once I have full clarity, I start creating the slide in PowerPoint. This makes the process much more efficient.

Showing this sketch to a manager for quick feedback is often a good idea. Managers appreciate this proactive approach.

3. Polishing iterations

For me, editing slides is a meditative experience.

For a 5-10 page deck, I review the slides from top to bottom several times daily.

I make small improvements, realign visual elements, and rewrite text.

This allows me to consider how readers will consume this information, how I will present it, and whether it can be further improved.

It becomes a personal problem-solving process.

So, you get a solid document after a few iterations.

4. Final Iteration

I liked to use this mental trick.

→ I'd put on my ‘manager hat’ before sending my slides.

I try to anticipate any obvious comments or questions.

I reviewed the slide as if I were my manager. I imagined the most demanding and sharpest manager I ever worked with.

Also, I’d prepare answers to questions such as ‘So what?’, ‘What are the implications for our project?’ and ‘What are the next steps?’

These are obvious questions, right?

Many consultants are often caught off guard.

They were busy executing tasks and didn’t dedicate time to thinking about what it meant. Remember case interviews? It's the same. Without so-whats, it means nothing.

Another mental trick I used was to imagine what would happen if I didn’t have a Manager as my last line of defense.

What if my slides go directly to the CEO or senior partners?

This created the pressure to produce high-quality slides.

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Other posts related to slide-making:

Boost Your Slide-Creating Skills

The most common mistake in the slide-making process

Simply 'putting in more reps' is not the best way to learn slide-making skills.

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If you are an MBB consultant and want to achieve high performance, I would like to speak with you.

Book a Free 1-1 Consultation to discuss whether I can help you through my unique coaching program. There is no commitment, and you can ask me any burning questions you might have.

Read this post to learn more about the Hero’s Journey coaching program.

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