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(1) Slide clean-up: have your align, distribute, and get size buttons handy on the ribbon
(2) Storylining: put the slide headers, sub headers, and chart / box titles first. Check to make sure your vertical and horizontal logic make sense before doing anything else.
(3) Know your stuff: I can't stress enough the importance of memorizing key numbers, whether it's market growth, major SKU margins, or the spans & layers of different functions. If you can't find your facts (or worse yet, don't know them), it's hard to populate good slides.
(4) Attention to detail: do your page #'s make sense? Color scheme correct? No "jumping" boxes? That will save you a turn or two (and your manager's / partner's trust)
(5) Keep a repository of good slides that you and others make. Minimize the number of slides you make from scratch on any given run.
As an associate, I try to avoid storyboarding directly with partners. Usually, I'll work with my manager or director to craft the approach, lay out potential hypotheses to prove or disprove, and then find some data, whether from secondary research or from my client contacts, that might off the bat derail the potential story.
Once we've settled on those items and have headers and high level points in place, we try to build out the story as much as we can in whatever time we have before sharing with the partner. A lot of the time, my sections and the deck in general resemble PowerPoint vomit in terms of boxes, flows, graphics, and points, but the story is hopefully quite visible by then and gives us something to run with as we develop the next couple iterations.
^"Comestically attractive?" Hope I never have an SA on my team whose redeeming quality was having a gene pool predisposed to aesthetics and not intellect
Ask for very specific feedback. Get example decks and make sure you get the Pwc marketing deck w our images. Also a big part of consulting is accepting that you are never going to get it right, what you really want is to get it ahead. I used to spend days on my deliverables because I wanted them to be absolutely perfect. The reality tho is that the client is always gonna have feedback.
Use tables, saves a ton of time aligning stuff, especially when you change things. When you need to add a column, split an existing column instead, doesn't resize all the other columns.
This thread becomes so much more interesting when you replace "deck" with "dick."
"Recently received kudos from a principle for my dick! Keep putting yourself in situations where you have to work on a dick and you'll get there"
Yes I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old 😂
Read "Slideology." It's abstract/about slide theory, but it made me love building decks, and loving something makes it easier to be motivated to learn it. (It does have a few good practical tips.) Learning only because you're getting bad reviews will make this even more stressful for you.
@C1: i guess.. need to be quick with turning around slides
YouTube
S&2 With you in principle, but I have seen even partners struggle with getting the Storyboard right. Aspirationally, if you get to do it all -great you are set.
Thank you guys, these are great suggestions. Will work on these to get better!!
Start in outline or slide sorter, get the shape and flow right first. It will start to write itself after that
If you're ACN look up the Accenture Interactive deck for slide inspiration. It saves lives.
I've made maybe 3 slides from scratch in the last year... ask around for good examples and use their slides with your numbers and takeaways - time is money
QPT bruh
Outsource slide work.
Dont forget to take advantage of "Smart" option in the PowerPoint
Alt+ everything. Google the shortcuts, print them out and hang them in front of your face. Hopefully your firm has ribbon macros that also speed things up.
Three components to slides:
1. Make sure the analysis behind the numbers is correct
2. Make sure the words tell the right story
3. Make it aesthetically appealing so people actually want to look at it
@OP, follow s&2's advice. Put some of the most frequently tools on the ribbon (such as left align, group, etc). If you're staffed on a S& project, most likely they will want you using s& templates so don't waste your time with other template from other firms. Learn the hot keys (google it), learn to steal from other S& slides and learn to use the S& tool bar (it's at the top and has useful templates, icons, diagrams and more).
Also, S2 - storyboarding with partners = THE WORST. Now try to escape it at all costs. They aren't up to date on the latest stuff, tell you what to do - and then when you build what they want they yell at you for it.
Also use ascii symbols in the tables (like check marks and arrows) instead of using logos