HOW CONSULTANTS MAKE SLIDES - Management consulting insights from former McKinsey consultant — Transcript

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1. 0:00- There is a special technique that consultants use
2. 0:03to draft their slide presentations.
3. 0:05This is a technique that I've never seen
4. 0:08anybody use outside of consulting.
5. 0:10In this video I'm going to spill the tea
6. 0:13on a technique that I used almost every day
7. 0:16when I was a project lead at McKinsey.
8. 0:19And when I needed to draft the presentations
9. 0:22that then I wanted the whole team to work on.
10. 0:24Welcome to another coffee break
11. 0:26here on my channel Firm Learning.
12. 0:29My name is Heinrich, and here on my channel,
13. 0:32I want to help you become successful
14. 0:34in the first years of your career.
15. 0:36On this channel, I'm sharing my tips and strategies
16. 0:40that I learned at McKinsey
17. 0:41and now working in a C-level role at a German retailer.
18. 0:45But now let's jump right into it.
19. 0:47How do consultants draft their presentations
20. 0:51and to give you a sneak peek what the end product will be,
21. 0:55I will show you a slide presentation
22. 0:57that I recently drafted, where I use this technique.
23. 1:01So this is how it looks like guys,
24. 1:03so I'm holding this now in the camera,
25. 1:05I hope that you are able to see this.
26. 1:07This is something that is called a Mickey Mouse Master,
27. 1:10also strawman, it is a draft of a presentation,
28. 1:14that typically the project lead
29. 1:16or the partner in a consulting context creates.
30. 1:19I remember in one of the very first weeks
31. 1:22I was working at McKinsey,
32. 1:24the project lead of that study asked me to sit with him,
33. 1:28he would just take a piece of paper
34. 1:30and he would create a master just like that
35. 1:33of the presentation.
36. 1:34Then he gave it to me and then this was
37. 1:36one of my very first tasks at McKinsey,
38. 1:39just to create a whole slide presentation,
39. 1:42just following exactly this technique.
40. 1:46So how exactly does it work?
41. 1:47How do you create such a Mickey Mouse Master
42. 1:50or such a strawman?
43. 1:52So in order to show you now I have my computer
44. 1:54here in front of me, usually you would rather do it
45. 1:57on a piece of paper but just for recording purpose,
46. 2:00this is a bit easier.
47. 2:02And you will always start by creating a basic grid
48. 2:05on your paper, just to resembling the slides.
49. 2:09And now of course, the idea is that each of these squares
50. 2:12resembles an individual page later in the presentation.
51. 2:15So what you will always start with
52. 2:17is to come up with the action title of the slides.
53. 2:21The action titles are very special types of titles.
54. 2:25If you have no idea what action titles are,
55. 2:28these are key concepts
56. 2:29when creating PowerPoint presentations,
57. 2:32and I will insert a link somewhere above
58. 2:34where I explain exactly what an action title is
59. 2:37and how you set it up.
60. 2:38If you don't know what it is really check it out
61. 2:40because it's super important to create
62. 2:42consulting style presentations.
63. 2:43So once you do that number writing it here,
64. 2:46and let's now for instance, just talk about a company
65. 2:48that wants to improve costs or anything like that.
66. 2:51Then the first slide could for instance say,
67. 2:54company
68. 2:58is in market
69. 3:02with x percent growth.
70. 3:07So just in the beginning,
71. 3:08you maybe want to lay the scene and just say okay,
72. 3:10actually the market environment is doing quite well
73. 3:13and the market is growing.
74. 3:14And what do we usually do is just to do
75. 3:16a brief version of the action title,
76. 3:18it doesn't need to be the perfect version already,
77. 3:21just a brief sketch of what the action title
78. 3:23is supposed to be in the end.
79. 3:24And then what you also do is just do
80. 3:26a basic sketch of the type of chart,
81. 3:29the type of graph that you want.
82. 3:31So here for instance, you could do a bar chart
83. 3:33maybe with a CAGR inserted
84. 3:36just to give you a gist of what is going on.
85. 3:39Then the next one could maybe be that you want to highlight
86. 3:41that the company actually is under competitive pressure.
87. 3:44So market share of company is decreasing due to competition.
88. 3:48And here for instance, you could do some relative bar charts
89. 3:51where they are all 100% just to show how the market share
90. 3:55of a company changed over time.
91. 3:58So this is now the market share you might want to depict.
92. 4:01Then this is now going down.
93. 4:02Next, maybe we want to show how the profitability
94. 4:04of the company will be affected in the long term.
95. 4:08So for instance, you could now do a waterfall chart
96. 4:10from 2020 to 2021,
97. 4:13say profitability will go down by 200,000.
98. 4:17And then maybe next to propose a couple of measures.
99. 4:20So for instance, there could be three areas now, right,
100. 4:23where you believe that the company needs to improve on
101. 4:26in order to survive and to make a shift
102. 4:29in this new environment.
103. 4:30And the next maybe there will be some backups
104. 4:32for these three parts one, two, and three explaining
105. 4:36how exactly these measures are supposed to look like.
106. 4:38And then you can here insert a couple of notes
107. 4:41on what exactly is supposed to be inserted here.
108. 4:43Next, maybe there's a timeline for the project,
109. 4:46when will this be completed?
110. 4:47And then you write the project timeline
111. 4:49goes on to end of 2021.
112. 4:52This probably not the best action title,
113. 4:54but just something of this line,
114. 4:56then you maybe draft a Gantt chart,
115. 4:58if this is now, possibly to understand
116. 5:00how this might look like, and so on, and so forth.
117. 5:03So I hope you get the idea what I'm looking for.
118. 5:06This is then how you will draft the whole presentation.
119. 5:09And then of course, this is then a piece of paper
120. 5:12that you give on to your associate
121. 5:14or if you're the partner, maybe you then share it with a team
122. 5:16or with a project lead,
123. 5:18asking them to create the presentation like this,
124. 5:20but you can also use it the other way around.
125. 5:23So if you are an associate and you have an idea
126. 5:26of how to structure a document that now you want to create,
127. 5:30now instead of really writing it all out,
128. 5:32instead of already creating the whole document
129. 5:34and only then getting the feedback
130. 5:36that maybe your project lead
131. 5:37actually wants to do it the whole other way around.
132. 5:40What I always found is super great way to do,
133. 5:43is just briefly sketching your presentation
134. 5:46in such a way, sketching it in this way,
135. 5:49where you have then the whole document,
136. 5:51the whole presentation on paper,
137. 5:53you then go to your project lead with this piece of paper
138. 5:56and then you discuss the presentation,
139. 5:58the whole flow of the pages, the whole storyline.
140. 6:01Just as you have it in your head
141. 6:03based on such a piece of paper.
142. 6:05And this will always lead to a very great
143. 6:07and constructive discussion with your team lead.
144. 6:10And the best thing is drafting something like this
145. 6:13will only take you a couple of minutes,
146. 6:15so you haven't really invested a lot of work.
147. 6:17And if you find out that your project lead
148. 6:20would like to do it completely different,
149. 6:22would like to tell the story in a completely different way,
150. 6:24you haven't already wasted the time creating slides
151. 6:28that in the end will not even be used.
152. 6:30And this is something that unfortunately,
153. 6:32happens quite a lot in consulting
154. 6:35but I trust many corporate jobs as well.
155. 6:37While editing this video, I just wanna use this opportunity
156. 6:40to make you aware of my online course
157. 6:43on slide writing presentations.
158. 6:45I created an online course that already has
159. 6:48over 10,000 students enrolled in it,
160. 6:51teaching you all the things I learned at McKinsey
161. 6:54of how to create consulting style slide presentations.
162. 6:58So if you think this is something that might interest you,
163. 7:01check out the link in the video description
164. 7:03with a link to that course.
165. 7:05Thank you guys but now let's continue with the video.
166. 7:08I hope this was clear and you found
167. 7:09this little introduction into drafting presentations
168. 7:12in the style of top management consultancies helpful.
169. 7:15Of course as always, if you have any questions,
170. 7:18let me know, write me a comment below in the comment section
171. 7:22and I will do my very best to answer every single one.
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182. 7:48below in the video description.
183. 7:50Thanks for watching,
184. 7:51I really enjoyed this very much appreciated
185. 7:53all of you took this time on the Saturday.
186. 7:56See you next week,
187. 7:57I release at least one video every week on Saturday.
188. 8:00Until then, great weekend to all of you.