How to create great slides

Slide-making is a fundamental consulting skill. Any gaps in your skills will hold you back. I learned slowly, and it cost me dearly. Don't repeat my mistakes.

This post is the most popular on my website. It’s the third edition of this post, and I keep updating it based on new insights I gain from coaching dozens of MBB consultants.

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FUNDAMENTAL SKILL

Slide-making is a fundamental consulting skill.

Whether we like it or not, we communicate our ideas through slides, and our clients assess our work through slides.

If you are a consultant, it will be a major part of your daily work for a long time.

Any friction will result in a huge loss of productivity.

But if you learn to do it well, you free up lots of time and gain an unfair advantage for yourself.

1.1. How did I learn slide-making?

I joined McKinsey at 34.

Before consulting, I had never created a single slide in my life. Then, I had to create dozens per week.

Whenever I had to create a new slide, it always turned into a soul-crushing experience.

But it all changed after one project.

Once, I worked with a superstar consultant.

His name was Alex.

He churned out impeccable documents like a machine, and partners and clients adored him.

I had to learn his approach.

Fortunately, we became good friends, and he taught me all his secrets.

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

Finally, I could enjoy working in consulting.

This guide is created based on Alex's secrets. I also synthesized my 9-year experience working at McKinsey and the insights I gained coaching dozens of MBB consultants.

1.2. Ugly slides create stupid work

Every high-performing consultant knows this unspoken rule.

Visual noise prevents people from understanding your ideas. It includes typos, mistakes, inconsistencies, placeholders, stickers, and other out-of-order graphical elements.

You have five seconds for people to decide if they look at a great or ugly slide.

An ugly slide screams:

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

Please, understand one thing. Your managers can't send ugly slides to partners or clients. Your work reflects their performance, so they must improve your slides.

And because most managers are insecure, they overreact and generate dozens of comments. Some are good, some are not, but then you must implement all of them.

Congratulations!

You created new stupid work for yourself that didn’t exist before.

You didn’t just trigger new comments, you also created new unnecessary iterations.

Every new iteration takes up a few hours. While doing it, you can’t focus on new tasks.

That’s how you kill your productivity.

That is why,

Eliminating unnecessary iterations is the biggest lever to improve your productivity.

1.3. First-Time-Right Approach

Imagine if you could create slides that don’t generate new stupid work.

It may seem unreal, but that’s what high performers do. That's how they find time to achieve exceptional results.

Here is the first-time-right approach:

→ Create high-quality slides on the first go.

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

It won't be easy, but merely trying to do so will improve your outputs.

This will lead to fewer iterations. You won’t waste your time.

But be careful!

If you are a junior consultant (0-6 months tenure), producing slides with a first-time-right approach will be extremely difficult. You risk wasting time working on something wrong. During these first months, rely more on your EMs and learn to read their expectations better.

Read this post to learn more: Accept tasks well and Understand expectations.

Essentially, there are three main sources of your struggles with slide-making:

Quality, Process, and Problem-solving.

Let's discuss these points one by one.

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2. QUALITY

Please understand one thing.

You are an MBB consultant.

Clients pay millions of dollars for your work.

Everything you do should scream quality.

That’s what your partners worry about.

That is why producing poor-quality outputs harms you on many levels: productivity, reputation, confidence, sponsorships, performance, lifestyle, and career opportunities.

You simply can’t afford that.

This idea seems pretty obvious, right?

However, many consultants struggle with quality.

Let’s explore them.

Lack of experience

First, if you are a junior consultant, you might not have a frame of reference. You don’t know what is good or bad.

But this problem is relevant only during the first 2-3 months.

Lack of training

Often, in your first year, you don’t get enough coaching. Your managers are too busy to explain how to work.

As a result, you can work for months, accumulating gaps in your toolkit.

Wrong beliefs

I believed I was assessed on speed, not quality, so I sent my slides as quickly as possible. But in reality, we rarely face a life-or-death situation when we need slides in 30-60 minutes.

It’s better to take your time and improve the quality of your work.

All these challenges result in you producing poor outputs.

Here are some ways to fix them.

2.1. MLP vs MVP

Consultants work with the MVP approach (Minimum Viable Product).

Your managers and partners love this approach. They want to see early if you are stuck or doing something wrong.

But this approach hurts you. You create a reputation of someone who always produces crappy outputs.

Instead,

→ Adopt the MLP (Minimum Lovable Product) approach.

Create slides that are high-quality and aesthetically pleasing.

It shouldn’t take much longer, but you will save time, avoiding new comments and unnecessary iterations.

No manager has ever complained about receiving high-quality slides. I promise it always works.

2.2. Formatting

There is a whole cluster of formatting issues.

But they are fairly easy to fix.

Every basic slide-making course covers these things.

But, many consultants still struggle with poor formatting mostly for two reasons.

First, consultants underestimate how many errors partners can see. Partners have developed sharp pattern recognition, having worked with thousands of slides.

Consultants take this lightly without understanding the damage they cause to themselves.

Another problem is that consultants simply don’t have time. They work in reactive mode, always rushing, and their process is not solid enough to catch these mistakes.

2.3. Design and Layout

Consultants obsess about slide design and layout.

Here is the typical approach consultants take.

They find a suitable layout in a library of slides.

Then, they force information into that layout. This process looks like fitting a square peg into a circular hole. As a result, you get a Frankenstein slide. No wonder managers react negatively.

Instead, solve the problem first and define your messages. Then, they will influence the layout you must use.

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3. PROCESS

9 out 10 consultants don’t have a solid slide-making process.

They work haphazardly, making random mistakes.

The problem is that your managers don’t teach you the right process.

They only provide feedback on your outputs. They say your slides are wrong and ask you to fix them.

But they don’t explain why they are wrong, their rationale, or how to prevent these mistakes from happening in the future.

They don’t coach you on how to improve your processes.

In essence, you keep focusing on the symptoms of your problems, not root causes.

But don’t rush to blame your managers.

If you think about it, it’s not their fault.

That’s how they were trained.

Essentially, it’s a never-ending circle of poor training and misconceptions.

3.1. Slide-making process

The best way to improve your work is to

→ Implement a solid slide-making process.

It ensures you produce high-quality outputs and control quality in difficult times.

This process should consist of three main steps:

Research, Production, and Polishing.

Each step has its own purpose. You must compartmentalize your time. Dedicating time to each step is important, regardless of your available time.

Technically, you can squeeze these steps even if you have a 1-2-hour timeline.

To learn how to implement the slide-making process, read this post: Slide-making process.

3.2. Use a Notepad

Consultants rush to create slides in PowerPoint.

If they start a page from a blank page, they don’t have a good idea of a layout and how to position slide elements. As a result, they waste time adjusting those elements, which is not a very effective way of working.

Instead,

→ Do at least 3-4 iterations on a notepad.

This is when the real problem-solving process happens. This is especially important for complex conceptual or analytical slides.

There is some magic in handwriting and drawing. It brings creativity out of you.

Make a few iterations on paper to find the optimal layout, placement, and content of key messages.

Only once you have full clarity do you start creating the slide in PowerPoint.

3.3. Polishing iterations

Creating high-quality slides requires time and iterations.

Make sure you create time for yourself to do that.

→ Do at least 3-5 quality control iterations.

Even if you have one hour, squeeze in a few short ones.

Make improvements, realign visual elements, proofread, and sharpen your messages.

You can get pretty solid slides just after a few iterations.

3.4. Final iteration

I liked to use this trick:

→ Put on ‘manager’s hat’ to review slides before sending them out.

I imagined the most demanding manager I ever worked with.

I tried to anticipate any obvious questions my managers might ask.

If you do that, you won’t be caught off guard by obvious questions.

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4. PROBLEM-SOLVING

You can produce the most beautiful slides, but they will mean nothing if they are incorrect.

Consultants lack a solid problem-solving approach. They think haphazardly, producing random and incorrect solutions.

As a result, we get these typical mistakes:

• Misunderstand the problem;

• Make wrong assumptions;

• Structure incorrectly;

• Make logical mistakes;

• Come up with wrong solutions;

• Come up with obvious answers;

If you make these mistakes, the chances of producing effective outputs are minimal.

Issues with problem-solving are harder to solve.

But here are the things you can do.

4.1. Fix problem-solving

Here are some practical tips that can help you fix your problem-solving skills.

It’s far from being comprehensive. But it covers the most common mistakes.

→ Create time for problem-solving

Consultants often don't create opportunities to problem-solve.

They simply don’t dedicate sufficient time to thinking. They rush to slide production, trying to figure things out as they go.

Allow yourself a good 30-60 minutes to think deeply.

You should do it before you produce slides on your computer. Combine your thinking time with drafting using a scratchpad.

→ Check your assumptions

Consultants often make wrong assumptions. Sometimes, they don’t even recognize it.

Register your assumptions in your thinking process. Be very clear about whether you have any basis for making these assumptions.

→ Check for alternative solutions

If the solution you came up with is wrong, then whatever you do afterward will not matter. It will be a waste of time.

This happens when you run with the first idea without vetting it. The first ideas are generally not great.

That is why it’s important to be diligent when choosing a solution.

Stress-test your thinking. Consider other alternatives. Ask yourself: Is this really the best solution you can think of?

Only when you are completely sure you commit.

→ Check for different perspectives

Consultants are often caught off guard by obvious questions from partners and clients. That’s because they approach the problem only from their own perspective.

That is why, at the solution phase, think about your audience's needs and perspectives.

What concerns do they have? How would they perceive your outputs? Are there any sensitivities you are missing?

→ Solve the problem, not the task

Consultants try to do whatever they are asked to do, not more. That’s limiting their problem-solving.

Then, they come up with theoretical solutions that don’t work in real life.

Instead, solve the actual business problem, where tasks are just small steps.

Go beyond what’s given.

Think of implications, strategic questions, real-life constraints, etc. Only by doing that you can produce insightful outputs.

→ Push beyond obvious

Consultants often come up with obvious answers.

They produce slides that just describe reality, facts, or numbers. But they don’t push the problem forward. They don’t ask the next questions. And they don’t get you closer to any solutions.

Your partners will ask you a ‘so-what’ question. If you hear that question very often, you have a problem.

Instead, push your answer to the 2nd and 3rd levels of implications. What does it mean? How does it affect the problem and solution?

Often, just asking these basic questions will lead you to better answers.

→ Think out loud

Consultants think haphazardly and are unaware of what assumptions, questions, and decisions they make.

Instead, control your thinking process.

For example, scientists use the ‘think out loud’ protocol to understand people’s thinking processes.

You can use the same techniques to expose logical flaws in your problem-solving process.

Also, ask yourself a question:

Is your problem-solving a monologue or a dialogue?

Ideally, it should be an internal dialogue. You ask yourself a bunch of questions and answer them. Sometimes, one good question can crack the problem.

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5. HOW TO LEARN

Learning slide-making is difficult.

Consultants often say: “I need many reps to learn.” That’s because they don’t learn in the right way.

Now you know the anatomy of the process.

Do a post-mortem analysis of every major task you do. Self-diagnose where you make mistakes. And fix the root cause so it doesn’t happen again.

This way, you make high-quality reps. Then, you don’t need too many of them to learn slide-making.

5.1. Practical learning

Slide-making skills are complex.

It’s a result of orchestrating so many steps and skills. Any mistake will lead to poor output, rework, and wasted time.

It’s really difficult to identify these issues yourself. And it’s even harder to fix them.

The best way to do it is by working with an experienced coach and learning by doing.

That is why consultants complete practical exercises in my coaching program, Hero’s Journey. Each exercise is designed to demonstrate certain skills, such as research and conceptual and analytical problem-solving.

They get on-the-spot, precise, and actionable feedback on how to radically improve their toolkit. This accelerates their learning and allows them to realize quick wins at their jobs.

I developed a coaching program for MBB consultants to help them achieve high performance and become successful.

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.

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

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