Consulting Presentation Tips from former McKinsey Consultant — Transcript

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1. 0:00thank you to skillshare for being the
2. 0:01sponsor of this video
3. 0:03one of the topics that i'm really
4. 0:05passionate about is slight writing and
5. 0:07slide writing is the science or the art
6. 0:10of creating slide presentations
7. 0:12in the style of leading consulting firms
8. 0:14like mbb
9. 0:15and this is mckinsey bcg and bane as you
10. 0:18probably already know if you're a
11. 0:19regular watcher of this channel i worked
12. 0:21at mckinsey for six years
13. 0:23i taught slight writing inside the
14. 0:25firm's two junior colleagues but i'm
15. 0:27also giving trainings on slide writing
16. 0:29to corporations and also serve as a
17. 0:31lecturer
18. 0:32on communication and slide writing for
19. 0:34instance at the university of zangala
20. 0:36and mba program
21. 0:37so today i will help you to build your
22. 0:39slide writing skills as well and i will
23. 0:41do this by reviewing slide presentations
24. 0:44that you sent me so i asked you on
25. 0:45instagram to send me some of the
26. 0:47documents that you're working on for
27. 0:48instance from university projects and i
28. 0:50received several submissions from you so
29. 0:52we're going to look into this in a
30. 0:54moment but before we do that i just want
31. 0:56to be
32. 0:56really clear on one thing so maybe some
33. 0:59of you are asking yourselves now
34. 1:01where did all my hair go and due to the
35. 1:03special situation in germany
36. 1:05all the hairdressers are closed at the
37. 1:08moment so no
38. 1:09i did not bribe any professional to cut
39. 1:12my hair
40. 1:13i just asked my sister to do it and if
41. 1:16you follow me on instagram you know
42. 1:18exactly what happens and you also know
43. 1:20why this
44. 1:20maybe was not the best idea but let's
45. 1:23not talk more about this right now
46. 1:25welcome to another coffee break here on
47. 1:27my channel from learning it's already
48. 1:29pretty late here in germany so i'm
49. 1:31drinking tea
50. 1:32please help yourself to a cup as well
51. 1:33but now without further ado
52. 1:36let's jump in so i'm looking now at the
53. 1:38screen in front of me where open several
54. 1:40of the presentations that you sent me so
55. 1:42of course you won't go over every
56. 1:44presentation slide by slide but i always
57. 1:46selected a couple of slides that i
58. 1:48believe will be most educational to
59. 1:50discuss
60. 1:51so just bear in here with me i trust
61. 1:53there are some very very important and
62. 1:55valuable slide writing lessons that we
63. 1:57will not jointly identify and find while
64. 2:00looking at these pages
65. 2:01and here let's start with this one this
66. 2:03seems to be some type of university
67. 2:04presentation about an economics class
68. 2:07the
69. 2:07turkish growth miracle so frank have no
70. 2:10idea about the topic so let's just
71. 2:12look at this page what do we see here so
72. 2:15my first impression is that this page
73. 2:18looks kind of messy but of course the
74. 2:20question is why does it look messy what
75. 2:23makes this page look messy and if you
76. 2:25look into this probably the main reason
77. 2:27is that this page uses all kinds of
78. 2:30different
79. 2:31font sizes and this is really a problem
80. 2:33that you see quite often so let's look
81. 2:35here of course the action title
82. 2:3628 here this title 24 red curve
83. 2:40depreciation 18 this 120
84. 2:43this one 18 18 here in the chart
85. 2:4612 but here also in the chart 18 so it's
86. 2:49really all over the place and i believe
87. 2:51this
88. 2:51really significantly adds to this
89. 2:54unclean
90. 2:55to this weird unorganized look so the
91. 2:57key rule that you always want to follow
92. 2:59when doing these types of presentations
93. 3:00that the body of your slide
94. 3:02so everything except for the title maybe
95. 3:05some footnotes
96. 3:06should be the same font size so now
97. 3:08let's look at the chart let's look at
98. 3:10how this
99. 3:11chart is created and the first thing
100. 3:12that pops into my eye are these very
101. 3:15thick dotted lines so usually if you
102. 3:17make dotted lines you don't want them to
103. 3:19be so dominant you want them to be light
104. 3:22and in the background but here because
105. 3:24these are one of the thickest lines in
106. 3:25this chart they're very dominant right
107. 3:27and this just doesn't look right
108. 3:29next is here the different colors so
109. 3:31this is a green line a red line a blue
110. 3:33line
111. 3:34the general rule is that whenever you
112. 3:36use colors on your page it either has a
113. 3:39direct meaning
114. 3:40or there needs to be a legend and again
115. 3:42this will look cleaner
116. 3:44nicer more sophisticated my last comment
117. 3:46is just switching here between these two
118. 3:49slides so what you see here is that
119. 3:50several elements are
120. 3:52jittering are moving this is also
121. 3:54something you want to avoid so
122. 3:55let's look at the action type you see
123. 3:57this is moving this means that this
124. 3:59isn't nicely and properly aligned and of
125. 4:01course this will be noticed if you save
126. 4:03this as a pdf or whatever and you just
127. 4:04scroll through it and you see all these
128. 4:06elements moving from page to page this
129. 4:09just
130. 4:09looks not aligned not professional the
131. 4:11same of course here also with the text
132. 4:13with
133. 4:14these bullets and same thing here with
134. 4:15the footer why is this moving again make
135. 4:17sure that you have no
136. 4:18gearing on your pages this just looks
137. 4:20unprofessional next presentation so this
138. 4:22is apparently a deck about
139. 4:24rockefeller so some information some
140. 4:27facts on him and here my first
141. 4:28impression is that this
142. 4:29does already look a bit more organized a
143. 4:32bit more clean than the slides that we
144. 4:34saw before and if you look at this you
145. 4:36can
146. 4:36see some good slide writing principles
147. 4:39followed here and if you're more
148. 4:40interested in that because i cannot now
149. 4:42go into every little piece of that
150. 4:44i actually created a whole course on
151. 4:45slide writing on how to create
152. 4:47powerpoint presentations in the style of
153. 4:50leading consulting firms so if you're
154. 4:52interested to that and want to learn
155. 4:53more check out the link in the video
156. 4:54description
157. 4:55have over 10 000 students taking the
158. 4:57course i trust that
159. 4:58might be interesting for some of you now
160. 5:00i want to focus on this specific page
161. 5:02and again it looks not too bad so it has
162. 5:04a proper action title
163. 5:06or the text here is of the same text
164. 5:09size so one thing that you could do to
165. 5:10further improve is add
166. 5:11separator lines so for some reason this
167. 5:13still looks a bit unfinished to me it
168. 5:15seems like something is
169. 5:16missing here on this page and i believe
170. 5:18one thing is these separator lines that
171. 5:20you could include between these elements
172. 5:22to make it look a bit more organized
173. 5:23then the next question is also
174. 5:25so what exactly is this so these
175. 5:28elements are introduced here what
176. 5:30elements are these exactly what
177. 5:31am i looking at right now what is the
178. 5:33title or the organizing principle of
179. 5:35these elements so if i understand this
180. 5:37correctly also from inferring it from
181. 5:39the action title this is probably
182. 5:40something like the competitive
183. 5:42advantages that rockefeller had or the
184. 5:44things that he did the measures that he
185. 5:46undertook to increase its market share
186. 5:48and if this is what it is then also add
187. 5:50this as a little subtitle
188. 5:52here just to make it more clean next one
189. 5:54let's look at the chart
190. 5:56and again here basic slide writing
191. 5:58principles are
192. 5:59followed the one thing that i want to
193. 6:00give you as a general tip and this is
194. 6:02that whenever you use percentages
195. 6:05always add the percentage of what
196. 6:08are you looking at the percentage of
197. 6:10what one question that you could
198. 6:12potentially ask yourself when you look
199. 6:14at the market share is that whether this
200. 6:15is the market share measured in
201. 6:17units or the market share measured in
202. 6:20u.s dollar
203. 6:21so this here just remains unclear and
204. 6:22this could be easily fixed just by
205. 6:24making yourself a habit of always
206. 6:26writing percentage of
207. 6:27what so of the market units or the
208. 6:29market in dollars so let's move to the
209. 6:31next presentation this looks like some
210. 6:33type of
211. 6:34business pitch of a product which seems
212. 6:37to be a chair
213. 6:38that is included in a backpack so
214. 6:40interesting idea for sure again let's
215. 6:42just pick one slide to this one let's
216. 6:44just focus on this and this apparently
217. 6:46is the page in this document where the
218. 6:48market and industry for this product is
219. 6:50supposed to be explained so here the
220. 6:52first thing that you see is that it's
221. 6:54really hard to understand what the
222. 6:56message of all of this really is
223. 6:57supposed to be
224. 6:58what is not really the thing that i
225. 7:00should take away from this page and here
226. 7:02the clearest
227. 7:03thing that is missing is the action
228. 7:05title so you see the title is just
229. 7:07market and industry this is pretty much
230. 7:09just a header but a clear action title
231. 7:11is missing and this is exactly why it's
232. 7:13just
233. 7:13super difficult to really understand
234. 7:15what the message is if you have no idea
235. 7:17what i'm talking about if you don't know
236. 7:19what an action title is then check out
237. 7:21my video that i made specifically on
238. 7:22action titles where i explain
239. 7:24what it's all about action titles are
240. 7:26fundamental piece of
241. 7:28every slide presentation check out the
242. 7:30video here to learn more about it where
243. 7:32discussed this in the past and now if
244. 7:33you look into this you see again
245. 7:34different font sizes used this is font
246. 7:3720 this is font 18.
247. 7:38of course this here is something that
248. 7:40you can barely read neither general
249. 7:42rulers especially for professional
250. 7:43presentations never just copy paste
251. 7:46charts like that but especially if you
252. 7:47already have the numbers as they already
253. 7:49apparently present here
254. 7:50just recreate the chart in powerpoint it
255. 7:53will always look much better and much
256. 7:55cleaner but here's so much remains in
257. 7:57the dark so
258. 7:58pains of the industry what industry
259. 8:00exactly are you talking about here so
260. 8:02this
261. 8:02the sports and outdoor market is this
262. 8:05the industry
263. 8:05as far as i can see this was also not
264. 8:07properly introduced on the pages before
265. 8:10so really hard to understand same thing
266. 8:11here for this chart so what exactly is
267. 8:14this chart supposed to tell me so
268. 8:15understand that here below there's some
269. 8:17type of market sizing for the portuguese
270. 8:19market
271. 8:20but here this chart has user penetration
272. 8:23worldwide so the user penetration of
273. 8:26what and here as far as i understand
274. 8:27portugal seems to have a rather low to
275. 8:30medium user penetration so what does
276. 8:32this mean is this good is this bad
277. 8:34so again i really have no idea at all
278. 8:36what this page is supposed to tell me
279. 8:38what i'm supposed to take out of this
280. 8:40page so our next presentation this is a
281. 8:42set of slides that apparently talk about
282. 8:44networking
283. 8:44and overall i must say they look
284. 8:46professional they look very well done
285. 8:48one thing though i just want to put your
286. 8:50attention is that on a page like that
287. 8:51there is just
288. 8:52lots of text and in almost all
289. 8:55situations
290. 8:56people will never read this much text
291. 8:58even if they get this handed as a report
292. 9:01or handed as a business presentation
293. 9:03this is just something that will not be
294. 9:05read what you could easily do here is
295. 9:07just to de-word the whole page so take
296. 9:09out lots of words by keeping the full
297. 9:11meaning of what you see here because
298. 9:13indeed
299. 9:13your full sentences are used as if you
300. 9:16would
301. 9:17read a book so on these live
302. 9:19presentations you usually want to say
303. 9:20as much as possible with as little words
304. 9:23as possible
305. 9:24just to declutter it to deword it and
306. 9:26the main way to do this is of course
307. 9:28rather use bullet point style instead of
308. 9:31full sentences so just one little
309. 9:33example instead of writing the
310. 9:36value of this information depends on the
311. 9:39trust within the network
312. 9:40just write a bullet saying information
313. 9:43value depends on network trust so one
314. 9:45little thing that you can often do to
315. 9:47take out words is to delete articles
316. 9:49like the
317. 9:50to dework the page and indeed another
318. 9:52way to improve your communication and
319. 9:54business skills is to take classes on a
320. 9:56platform like skillshare
321. 9:58skillshare is an online learning
322. 10:00community with thousands of classes for
323. 10:02creative and curious people you can
324. 10:04explore new skills
325. 10:06deepen your passions and get lost in
326. 10:08creativity there are classes on
327. 10:10marketing personal branding presentation
328. 10:12skills and many more all of these are
329. 10:14topics that are highly applicable to a
330. 10:16career in consulting
331. 10:18banking or corporate and the best thing
332. 10:20is that i made a slight writing class
333. 10:22for skillshare so you can access and
334. 10:24enjoy it as a skillshare member
335. 10:26personally i recently took the class
336. 10:28productivity masterclass
337. 10:29principles and tools to boost your
338. 10:31productivity from the fellow youtuber
339. 10:33ali abdal it's a great class it taught
340. 10:36me many new aspects of productivity and
341. 10:38i very much enjoyed how you applied the
342. 10:40pareto principle or the 80 20 rule to
343. 10:43productivity
344. 10:43classes on skillshare are specifically
345. 10:45curated for learning there are no ads
346. 10:48they're always launching new premium
347. 10:50classes so you can stay
348. 10:51focused and follow wherever your
349. 10:52creativity takes you and the best thing
350. 10:54is that it's
351. 10:55less than ten dollars a month with an
352. 10:57annual subscription
353. 10:58skillshare created a special offer for
354. 11:00subscribers of this channel film
355. 11:02learning and so the first
356. 11:03thousand subscribers of me click on the
357. 11:06skillshare link in the video description
358. 11:08we get a free trial of the skillshare
359. 11:10premium membership i hope this helps you
360. 11:12to explore your creativity
361. 11:14check it out link in the video
362. 11:15description so now to the next
363. 11:17presentation here the one thing that i
364. 11:18want to point out is how
365. 11:20too much graphical things how too many
366. 11:23animations
367. 11:24can really take away from the content of
368. 11:26the slides and can
369. 11:28even also look unprofessional to some
370. 11:29extent so here if you go over there are
371. 11:31so
372. 11:32many animations so many colors that do
373. 11:35not really add much
374. 11:36to the actual content to the actual
375. 11:38meaning that the things that you
376. 11:39actually want to say with your slides
377. 11:41get completely
378. 11:42diminished so here just be sure that you
379. 11:44use graphical elements like this and
380. 11:46bold colors like this
381. 11:48very very selectively usually less
382. 11:51is more and the same is true for
383. 11:53animations usually there are no
384. 11:55animations and presentations like this
385. 11:56one of the reasons being that often
386. 11:58these presentations are not even getting
387. 12:00presented but they're just printed out
388. 12:02as documents and then you just go over
389. 12:04these documents in a meeting and
390. 12:06everybody just has a handout of this
391. 12:08presentation document in front of him or
392. 12:10her but even if you are presenting it
393. 12:12on a display animations is just not the
394. 12:15look and feel that you should go for for
395. 12:17c-level presentations it will be
396. 12:19perceived as unprofessional
397. 12:21this is just not what is expected from
398. 12:23you in these environments so now next
399. 12:24one and again this seems to be from a
400. 12:26university project and the reason why
401. 12:28included is just because i wanted to
402. 12:29show you the bit different
403. 12:31type of style that this presentation is
404. 12:33using this is a presentation style that
405. 12:36you will see
406. 12:36more frequently in banking so in most
407. 12:40consulting contexts
408. 12:41pages like that would never go into the
409. 12:44main deck
410. 12:44just far too much text things like this
411. 12:47would go
412. 12:48in the backer but for whatever reason
413. 12:50bankers just like to put even more words
414. 12:52in their presentations than consultants
415. 12:54but this
416. 12:55is indeed what you will find if you join
417. 12:57a bank and just want to also make aware
418. 12:58of one other specialty that you often
419. 13:00find in these banking presentations
420. 13:02and this is the so-called football field
421. 13:05chart and this is exactly what you see
422. 13:07here bankers use this all the time to
423. 13:09display spreads and company valuations
424. 13:12coming from different valuation types
425. 13:13but the problem is
426. 13:14nobody understands this outside of
427. 13:17banking i tried to make charts like this
428. 13:19several times
429. 13:20in a consulting context and i've yet to
430. 13:22meet a client
431. 13:23that can understand and read this type
432. 13:26of chart so my takeaway here is that
433. 13:28there are some differences in consulting
434. 13:30compared to banking presentations though
435. 13:32i would argue if you
436. 13:34want to learn the presentation style
437. 13:35that will make you successful
438. 13:37in c-level environments in boardroom
439. 13:39environments of large corporate firms
440. 13:41then i'd argue that the consulting style
441. 13:44probably will be a bit more successful
442. 13:46for you
443. 13:46this is at least from my experience what
444. 13:48works much better if you want to
445. 13:50communicate your insights to your
446. 13:52leadership
447. 13:53in most business situations and
448. 13:55environments i hope you found this
449. 13:56helpful and i want to say a big thank
450. 13:58you to everybody who volunteered to send
451. 14:00me their presentations here for review
452. 14:02in this video this of course is much
453. 14:04appreciated and i hope
454. 14:05there were some learnings for many of
455. 14:07you out there but of course i also want
456. 14:09to be clear that there is no such
457. 14:11thing as the law of slide presentations
458. 14:14right so after all everything that i
459. 14:16said you is from my personal opinion of
460. 14:18course if you ask other people they
461. 14:20might have a different opinion and of
462. 14:21course if you see something differently
463. 14:23very happy to discuss this with you just
464. 14:25leave me a comment below in the comment
465. 14:27section
466. 14:28very happy to interact here with you and
467. 14:30also to learn from you
468. 14:31from your perspective and your
469. 14:32experiences now if you took any value
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478. 14:49description thanks again to skillshare
479. 14:50for being the sponsor of this video
480. 14:52there is a link to skillshare in the
481. 14:54video description and i can only
482. 14:55encourage you to make use of the free
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484. 15:00to that as always of course a big thank
485. 15:02you to all the members of firm learning
486. 15:05as well you are the ogs you're really
487. 15:06supporting here the course on from
488. 15:08learning so thank you so much
489. 15:10my name is heinrich i'm releasing videos
490. 15:12every single week on saturday here on my
491. 15:15channel from learning so looking forward
492. 15:16to see you again next week
493. 15:18until then good weekend to all of you
494. 15:20keep learning
495. 15:21cheers heiner here