How to create presentations like a consultant (ex-BCG consultant explains)

You should be able to go into that

presentation and speak to whatever ideas

that you want to convey without the

slides. Now the reason why you want to

take a top- down approach as opposed to

a bottoms up approach where you would

start with evidence first and then talk

about how it led to reason one and two

and then finally the concluding idea is

because in executive communication now

storylining is a technique that

consultants at firms like Mackenzie Bane

and BCG do all the time and it's

basically drilled into the junior

consultants especially as they get

promoted into manager roles because

most slide decks put people to sleep and

think about the last time that you sat

in a presentation where somebody was

presenting something to a group and

there was so much going on in the

presentation, so much words on the

slides, maybe they had some images and

the presentation droned on for 30

minutes, 45, maybe even an hour. And by

the end of it, you can tell everyone's

kind of zoned out. And maybe you

yourself, you've been started checking

your laptop, your phone because you're

bored and you've lost all attention.

Now, how do we make sure that that is

not you if you have to present a slide

deck at work? Well, today I'm going to

share with you three key steps that I've

learned from working at strategy roles

in companies like BCG, which is a top

management consulting firm, and Google.

And these are principles that have taken

me years to figure out through trial and

error and really learning from some of

the best presenters out there. And so

today, I want to explain to you in a

video that's less than 20 minutes, how

you can level up your presentation

skills, especially in executive settings

where you really need to nail the

presentation. Hi, if you're new to the

channel, my name is Matt and I currently

work in strategy and ops at Google, but

before that, I was a management

consultant. And I make these videos

because I enjoy it, but I also want to

share with you all of the lessons that

I've learned over the years so that you

don't have to make the same mistakes

that I did. But without further ado,

let's get right into it. So, broadly

speaking, there are three steps that you

should be thinking about in your head

when you are preparing for a meeting

where you need to present something and

you need to prepare some slides. Step

one is before you even open up

PowerPoint or Google Slides or whatever

tool you're using to make your

presentation,

understand what the goal of the meeting

even is. Say for example, it's a meeting

with a vice president or a director of

sales. What is the goal of that meeting?

Are you trying to convince them of your

point of view? Are you trying to say,

"Hey, we should do things differently

than how we did them last quarter

because x, y, and z." Or are you simply

trying to go in there to inform them on

the last quarter's performance, and it's

more of a routine update. There's less

convincing that needs to happen

depending on the situation and what kind

of goal you have. That's going to

dictate how you run the presentation and

how you build out the presentation as

well, the slides. And so understanding

the objective first is major key because

the next step that you're going to do is

something called storylining. Now

storylining is a technique that

consultants at firms like Mackenzie Bane

and BCG do all the time and it's

basically drilled into the junior

consultants especially as they get

promoted into manager roles because you

are making slide decks every single week

for every client that you ever work for.

And storylining is basically when you

simply think through what story you want

the presentation to tell. And based on

that story, you write the titles of

every single slide in the presentation

before you've even made any slides or

even done any analysis. Now, I know some

of you listening are probably like,

"Wow, that sounds crazy. How can you

make up a story line for the slide deck

when you don't even know what the data

is going to say?" But the reality is

often times you can adjust the story

line, but it's important to go in to

starting the presentation and starting

to build out the slides with at least

some kind of hypothesis of what you

think the story is going to tell. And as

you uncover data and new pieces of

information throughout the project, you

can always change the story line, right?

It's not permanent. And so the key here

though is you need to go through and try

to write the titles of every single

slide individually. And the titles

should not be just like one word.

Ideally, these titles should be key

takeaway titles. And so, they should

tell a story and they should actually

tell the person reading the page if it's

their first time looking at the page.

They should be able to tell instantly,

okay, what's the key takeaway from the

page? And if they can't, then you've

failed because they shouldn't have to

look at every single detail and piece of

data on the slide in order to get to

their own conclusion. You want to make

their life as easy as possible. This is

something that consultants get drilled

into their minds that I think a lot of

people in corporate settings don't

understand, which is that the point of a

presentation is to supplement whatever

words you're saying. It's not to add an

additional layer of mental cognitive

load onto the listener where they have

to be doing most of the work of

processing all the data and disperate

pieces of information that you have on

the slide and coming up with their own

conclusions. You should tell them, hey,

this is the conclusion. And by the way,

if you want to understand how we got to

that, here is all the data on the page

below. Especially in executive meetings

where these people have really short

attention spans, you can't expect that

they're going to read every single thing

on the slide. And so write the titles

first. And the second thing here with

storylining is it's really important to

not add more slides than is absolutely

necessary to get the point across. every

single slide, especially in the main

flow, which is all the slides before the

appendix, should fight to exist in that

presentation. If you're kind of

questioning whether or not it's

necessary, then I would instantly move

it to the appendix, and you can always

move it back later. But this brings us

to step two, which is once you've

understood the goal and you've

storylined your deck, so you have all

the titles written out now and you have

a good idea of what kind of pages you

want to include, it's time to actually

build out the slides. Now, there's a

whole other video that I could make on

slide design and how you can best

leverage PowerPoint or Google Slides to

create beautiful presentations that

impress your boss, your co-workers, what

have you. But the main principles that

you should keep in mind today are that

each slide should build on the last one.

There should not be a confusing moment

where you're like, "Wait,

why is this slide coming after that

slide?" The reader and the viewer

shouldn't have to ask themselves that

question because every slide should

logically follow the slide before it.

Let me give you an example. So,

framework slides are used extremely

often in consulting presentations and in

strategy roles. Now, a framework slide

is just a fancy word for a page that

basically lays out at a high level all

the main buckets of whatever it is

you're talking about today. So, for

example, if we're talking about next

year's plan for the division that you're

consulting for, the framework slide

would be like their plan on a page. And

so, they would say, "We have three

pillars that we're focusing on for next

year." And so, your framework slide is a

great example of a initial upfront

slide. And the slides that follow it

should all build on that framework. So

for each of those three buckets, you

could have a deep dive slide. You have

deep dive one, two, and three. And each

of these deep dive slides is basically

just going in more detail, a level

deeper than the framework slide. So it's

not confusing to a listener or to a

person in the meeting why those slides

are there. Now, some other general slide

design principles though that you should

keep in mind that are all consultants at

McKenzie and when I was at BCG, but we

were drilled, this was literally burned

into our minds was that first of all,

less is always more on a slide. I think

we have this tendency and especially if

you're a student or an early

professional, there's this tendency to

feel like you don't have enough on the

page, especially if there's a lot of

space or you feel like you don't have

enough data. You try to start filling it

in with as much stuff as you can find

online and before you know it, the whole

slide is just like a wall of text. And

for you, you're like, "Wow, yeah,

everyone's going to look at my slide and

think, "Dang, that guy Matt, he did so

much work." But the reality is that

nobody is actually going to read all of

that. They're just going to fall asleep

and you're basically presenting a poorly

written, poorly designed slide. The best

slides have less on them and are able to

convey the key idea quicker because they

have less. So less is more. Only include

exactly what you need. And when it comes

to things like data, only include the

most relevant data to the main idea on

the slide. Resist the temptation to

throw every single piece of data onto

there. Make sure you're citing your

sources. This is kind of housekeeping,

but you'd be surprised people don't do

this. and recognize that all slides are

split into four quadrants. A slide is a

rectangle. And so in those four

quadrants, you always have the

opportunity to design the slide in such

a way where it's either a single slide

or it's separated into a left-hand side

and a right hand side or it's separated

into quadrants. Now there are other ways

that you can do it too, right? Like

where you can have three columns for

example in the slide. But it's going to

depend on what the main idea you're

trying to convey is and what the purpose

of that slide even is. Now, as I

mentioned earlier, slidem design and

principles are a really interesting

topic that we can unpack in a completely

separate video. And there really is so

much to creating beautiful

presentations. But honestly, if you

don't want to get bogged down formatting

every single detail and font in a

presentation, especially when you are

under a tight deadline at work,

something that I've actually been using

in my own personal projects that has

been insanely helpful and saved me so

much time is Gamma. It's an AI

slidemaking tool. I've already been

using them for the past year, and they

just came out with their 3.0 version,

which is actually insane. Now, basically

with Gamma, you can upload a Word doc or

you can even just describe to the chat

what you want it to build and it'll do

it in seconds. You don't have to worry

about formatting or any of that stuff

that normally would take a junior

analyst at BCG hours. And with the 3.0

version, there's an agent mode which

basically acts as your design partner to

help you format the slides exactly as

what you envision in your mind. And if

you're extra cracked and you like

building out your own automations and

workflows, they even have an API that

allows you to plug Gamma into other

tools that you use. So, you can

literally build out automations that can

help you do research and build beautiful

presentations in minutes. It's been a

massive timesaver for me. There is a

free plan. You can check it out at

gamma.app or I'll also include a link in

the description below. So once you've

prepared the slides, the last step is to

actually present them effectively in the

meeting. And the key here is to remember

that slides are really just a tool. They

shouldn't be a crutch for you to lean

onto in the presentation. You should be

able to go into that presentation and

speak to whatever ideas that you want to

convey without the slides. And with the

slides, it's only going to enhance the

message that you're trying to get

across. It's a communication tool, not a

crutch. Now, the number one thing I want

you to remember that has made the

biggest difference in my career when it

comes to presenting in meetings is

what's known as the pyramid principle.

Now, the pyramid principle was developed

by a woman named Barbara Mento. I

believe she was a former McKenzie

consultant. And this is taught at pretty

much every top management consulting

firm today because it's such an

effective executive communication

technique. The way it works is you

always start by presenting the core idea

and you then work your way down in a

top- down manner, which means your core

idea is supported by, let's say, two

reasons. After presenting the core idea,

you talk about those two reasons. And

then within each of those reasons,

you'll move even further down and you'll

have supporting evidence backing each

up. Now, the reason why you want to take

a top- down approach as opposed to a

bottoms up approach where you would

start with evidence first and then talk

about how it led to reason one and two

and then finally the concluding idea is

because in executive communication,

people have short attention spans. And

it's really important to get the main

idea across ASAP before they tune out or

before they get distracted, what have

you. And so, to give you an example of

how I might present an idea using the

pyramid principle, let's take the

country of Japan. So, I went to Japan

for almost a month last year. Had a

great experience. And if, for example, I

wanted to present to a friend or to a

co-orker why I think Japan is such a

great country to visit, I could say,

"Hey, core idea, Japan is the best

country to visit." Because two reasons.

One, the food is amazing. And two, the

public transit system is phenomenal.

Now, how do I know the food is amazing?

Well, I went to a bunch of restaurants.

Let me show you this picture, by the

way, of this amazing sushi restaurant I

went to. It's it's three Michelin stars.

Uh, excellent service. And evidence,

too. You know, I also went and had some

Wagyu A5 Wagyu beef when I was in Japan.

Tasted amazing. And to support reason

number two, which is that the public

transit system is amazing, look at this

website with the historical train delays

in Tokyo versus in New York City. In New

York City, trains are delayed all the

time, every single weekend for 5, 10,

15, 20 minutes at a time. But in Japan,

they rarely have delays. They're very

infrequent, and when they are, it's only

for say 30 seconds to a minute. And so

that's kind of a rough and dirty way of

presenting an idea in a top- down

manner. But notice how basically I

convey the main idea first and I say

Japan is the best country to visit

because reason one and two. And then I

have supporting evidence. And this is

effective not just because it's getting

the main idea across first. So if they

tune out later, it doesn't matter. They

still got the main idea, but also

because it's providing a level of

context that the later pieces of

evidence and reasons are framed with. So

they understand, okay, we're talking

about why Japan is the best country to

visit. Okay, that makes sense why he's

talking about food. Makes sense why he's

talking about public transit. Right?

Whereas if you do it bottoms up, you

basically force the person listening to

come up with the conclusions themselves

as you explain it and then at the end

try to figure out whether or not their

conclusion matches yours. Now the last

thing I'll say here is that the other

thing you should focus on is always

always always remember even though it is

a presentation and even though you are

doing a bunch of work and you're

bringing this great presentation and

ideas to your boss or your manager for

example, you always want to invite

people to ask questions and it's a

two-way conversation. It's not just you

talking to a wall. You should invite

their input and their feedback. And so

after every slide or after every

section, create ways for them to chime

in and to give their reactions or

thoughts even if they don't have

questions. And you can do this really

easily by saying things like, "Awesome.

So this is how we are thinking about it

and this is the analysis that we did,

but want to pause here now in case

anyone has any questions." And doing it

just like that will invite people to

give you input. And so you'll get a

little bit more insight into your

audience's mind and what they actually

are thinking and caring about and how

they're reacting to the analysis that

maybe you have on a slide. And so if you

make sure to one follow the pyramid

principle in your approach to presenting

and two invite the audience to actually

engage with your presentation, what

you're going to find is that the

meetings that you lead are going to run

a lot smoother. People are going to be

impressed by how prepared you are and

you're going to have a better

understanding of what your audience

thinks, which is the number one most

important thing to keep in mind. But

anyways, as a recap, step one is always

understand what your goal is and then

storyline the deck. Step two is to

actually build out the deck using the

key slide design principles that we've

talked about. And step three finally is

once you've built that deck to present

it in a way that is tops down while also

inviting the audience for input during

the meeting. If you have any questions,

let me know in the comments below.

Otherwise, I'll see you guys in the next