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Table of contents

Section 1: frontpage, section 2: executive summary, section 3: body of slides, section 4: conclusion/recommendation, section 5: appendix.

This article covers the structure of a McKinsey presentation, its key elements, and formatting tips and tricks. The principles are nearly identical to those found at BCG, Bain, or other top consultancies, although there are differences in terms of design and style.

As a note, the type of presentations we are covering in this post are what you would call ‘corporate’ or ‘management consulting’ presentations. These types of presentations are typically longer, data-heavy slide decks that serve as the foundation for complex decisions and recommendations. We are not referring to decks for keynotes, college projects, or design presentations.

The structure of a McKinsey presentation

A complete consulting presentation typically contains the following five overall sections: 

• Executive summary 
• Body of slides
• Recommendation / Next steps

Let's dive into each section one by one.

The front page consists of a few simple elements: a title, a sub-headline, name of company, date and time . The title is usually less than 8 words long. A sub-headline is an optional second description line, used for further elaboration.

In consulting the 'name of company' and the template theme typically depends on whether the client wants to position the work as internal or external. If the client wants to position the work as external, then the front page will have McKinsey’s name and use its signature design template and color scheme. Vice versa, if positioned as internal work, the slides will be branded with the client organization's logo and design.

The executive summary, sometimes called 'At A Glance', is the presentation's first slide and usually the single slide that takes the most time to write and perfect. 

The executive summary summarizes the key arguments, storyline, and supporting evidence of the body slides. This helps the reader get a quick overview of the presentation and take away the most important insights and recommendations.

Executive summaries written by McKinsey, Bain, and BCG usually follow the Situation-Complication-Resolution (SCR) Framework , which is a straightforward and effective approach to communicating the complete storyline of your slide deck .

See our post on How to Write an Effective Executive Summary for tips and tricks.

This is the central section of the presentation. This section often contains 50+ slides filled with quantitative and qualitative content. To avoid 'death-by-powerpoint', it is crucial to structure both the overall storyline and individual slides in a clear and engaging way. 

Let’s start by taking a look at the way McKinsey consultants create individual slides.

The anatomy of a slide  

At its most basic form, each slide must consist of 3 main parts:

(a) Action title - a sentence that articulates the key implication or insight    (b) Subheadings - what data are you using to prove the insight?   (c) Slide body - the actual data used to prove the insight (text, numbers, visuals, footer).

As a rule of thumb, there should be nothing in the action title that's not in the slide body, and nothing in the slide body that is irrelevant to the action title.

a) Action title

When you become a management consultant, one of the first things you are taught is that the title of a slide should always be an 'action title' that articulates the key takeaway or 'so-what' of the slide.

Often presentations are read by busy executives. Action titles make your slides easier to understand because your reader doesn't have to dive into the detail of the slide body to understand the key takeaway of that slide.

As an example, imagine you are creating a slide showing yearly development in revenue and costs for a business unit.

A passive title for that slide could be:  "Historical development in Revenue and Costs".  As a reader, you need to study the chart to deduct the 'so-what' of the slide.

An action title would be:  "Over the last 5 years, costs have grown 10% per year, which is double revenue growth" As a reader, you immediately understand the message of the slide. You can now choose to look at the data on the slide more closely, if you want the details.

See our blog post on Action Titles for a more comprehensive guide.

(b) Subheadings

Subheadings are meant to give a clear summary of the data used to prove the insight in the action title, or alternatively add some nuance to the main takeaway. Keep it crisp and short.

Here are a few examples:

• Sales of personal luxury goods, US Market, $ billions
• Forecasted evolution of battery cell costs by 2030 ($/kWh)

(c) Slide body

A clear and concise slide body is essential for effectively communicating insights to an audience. The slide's main insight, articulated in the action title, should be supported by all relevant information presented in the simplest possible way.  You have likely done a lot of research, and it is tempting to include all the interesting data you have found. Avoid this. Instead, try and remove all facts and figures not directly supporting your key insight stated in the title.  

Here is an example: 

In this case, the title is clear, and the content of the slide only serves to prove and support the slide's main insight.  

When building your slide, you may only sometimes start with the title and then fill in the data to support it. Often it is more of an iterative process where you try out different titles to capture the data you have collected and the flow of the overall storyline.

Now that we have covered the building blocks of individual slides, let’s move on to how McKinsey, BCG, and Bain consultants construct a storyline.

Horizontal flow: The structure of a storyline

‘Storyline’ refers to the way the slide deck is built up or in other words the ‘flow’ of slides. The exact storyline created by McKinsey, Bain, and BCG consultants is typically tailored to that specific use case. But in general consulting storylines follow an SCR (situation-complication-resolution) framework.

The SCR framework is a way of structuring your findings in a clear and concise way that is engaging and intuitive. Here is what each part of the framework means:

• Situation: The situation is the starting point or context of the problem or issue you're addressing. It might include information about the current state of affairs, the background of the problem, or any other relevant details that help set the stage. The situation can also focus more narrowly on a specific opportunity or threat.  
• Complication: The complication is the specific challenge or problem that has arisen within the situation. It might be a roadblock, an unexpected development, or a major hurdle that needs to be overcome. It can also refer to gaps in capabilities needed to capture an opportunity.  
• Resolution: The resolution is the proposed solution to the complication or problem. It should be a clear and actionable plan for moving forward and overcoming the challenge. This might involve specific steps to be taken, resources needed, or other details that help ensure success. We cover this in more detail in the next section.

Your storyline should be clear at the slide title level, which is why action titles are so important. Your audience should be able to read only your action titles all the way through the presentation and a) understand what the main conclusions are and b) understand how you got to those main conclusions through analysis. In other words, your action titles should flow like a story and be readable on their own.

In practice, when starting a new deck it can be helpful to sketch out your overarching sections on paper. Then follow them up with empty slides using just action titles (or fill in the slides with rough notes on which analysis or sub-conclusion goes on that slide). Print out your slides and lay them on a table or put your slides in ‘Slide Sorter’ mode in PowerPoint and see if the flow of slides makes sense.

You can also choose to write your entire storyline in a word document focusing first on the action titles of each slide and then supplementing the action titles with underlying bullets describing the data or information that will go on the slide to support that action title.

McKinsey consultants have a library of old cases to use, which helps create a skeleton or inspire a new deck and allows them to make better presentations in much less time. Build your own library by saving excellent presentations you come across in grouped categories and creating an ongoing general PowerPoint where you collect good slides to reuse.

Take a look at our templates to find specific storylines to match your needs , complete with multiple real client examples.

A crucial part of any consulting presentation is the conclusion/recommendation section. These slides outline the actions or responses required to address the situation and complication you've covered earlier in your slide deck. They often also include a suggested implementation plan and immediate next steps.

While there is generally flexibility in how you lay out your conclusion/recommendation slides, the following three guidelines will help you create effective recommendations that are easy to understand and follow:

• Groups: Group your recommendations into categories to make your reader's understanding easier.  
• Labeling: Label or number your groups and/or individual recommendations to help your reader follow the structure when you discuss your recommendations across multiple slides.  
• Active voice: Write your recommendations in active voice starting with 'action words' (verbs), such as "Grow...", "Minimize…", "Improve…", "Increase…", "Target…", "Increase…", etc.

Here are a few examples of recommendation slides from McKinsey, BCG, and Bain:

It is not uncommon for the appendix, also called backup pages, to be significantly longer than the main deck. The main deck tells the story, and the appendix contains details and all supporting evidence that might be relevant but is beyond the scope of the main storyline.

In other words, keep the storyline of the main deck as crisp and clear as possible and move all supporting documentation and details to the appendix. Here they will be out of the way but available for reference. 

Formatting tips

Presentations from top consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain, and BCG tend to feel very different and convincing compared to other corporate presentations. A part of this is the ability to effectively structure both individual slides and the full deck, which we have talked about in this post. But another part is the rigorous training in slide design and formatting details that ensure the output is of the highest quality.

Below we have gathered some common formatting tips for designing compelling and consistent slides:

Color: Color matters. Keep the color pallet simple and use bright colors selectively to draw attention to key data or insights. Create a color hierarchy and apply it consistently across your deck.  

Fonts: Pick one (or two) font types and stick to it. BCG only uses the font 'Trebuchet MS'. McKinsey’s new 2020 template uses 'Arial' for slide body content and 'Georgia' for titles and select visual elements.

Margins: Never go outside of the slide margins. Use 'Powerpoint Guides' to clearly view margins when in design view.

Titles: All titles throughout the presentation should be two lines or less and use the same font size.

Lists: Only used numbered lists if the numbers themselves are relevant (e.g. if you are ranking items). In most cases, use bullets instead of numbers.

Icons: Icons are simple but can completely transform a boring text slide when used correctly. Replace bullets with icons that represent the bullet item if your slide is otherwise relatively simple. Ideally, use icons in places where the icons ‘have meaning’ and can be used later in the presentation when referring back to or going into detail around a certain topic. Use icons in the same style and boldness. Buy access to a large premium icon set like Streamline Light or Streamline Regular if you can. https://www.streamlinehq.com/icons/streamline-light .

Align, align, align: Content on all slides should be aligned. Titles and subheadings should have the same exact position across all slides. When you flip through your slides, the position of the headline should not move, and the font size should not change. This also goes for other common repeated elements (logo, source, page number etc.), as well as similar items on a slide (column headers, graphs etc.) Using a well-designed master template is the easiest way to keep alignment accuracy.

Animations: Refrain from using fancy graphics and animations in the slides.

Slide number and source: Each slide should also have a slide number and a source in the bottom section that provides the source of the data used.

Text: Review the text on each slide to ensure that it is clear, concise, and well-structured. Eliminate unnecessary words and sentences. Keep it as simple and short as possible.

Visuals: Ensure that visuals in the form of graphs, charts, diagrams, tables, and images are high quality and add value. Add call-outs, highlights or similar wherever it makes sense to make the so-what of that visual more clear. Colors, fonts, and layout should be consistent with the rest of the presentation.

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How to structure your slides like McKinsey: A step-by-step guide with screenshots and Examples

Structuring and building your slides effectively can be the difference between landing major projects and struggling to find clients. Luckily, there are eight simple steps you can take to swiftly transform your slides - without doing a lot of extra work.

Why It's Important: Making Your Slides Shine

Slides play a pivotal role in million-dollar projects. They serve multiple purposes, including:

• Breaking down complex ideas into easily understandable portions
• Providing strategic insights that guide companies over the years
• Uncovering research and insights from multiple data sources

IIn simpler terms, your communication needs to be crystal clear. By following the principles below, you'll be on solid ground.

Section 1: Embrace the Pyramid Principle

The Pyramid Principle, introduced by Barbara Minto's bestselling book, is a cornerstone of the consulting world. First published in 1985 and updated several times, its central message remains just as relevant today:

• Lead with Your Headline/Key Message
• Organize and Theme Your Arguments
• Include Supporting Points

Why it matters

This framework is time-tested across generations. In addition, using this framework is a subtle way to let others know “I am in the know”.

How to do it

Usually when creating a slide, we work backwards through this structure. 

• We start by conducting the analysis that forms the basis for our supporting points.
• As these supporting points take shape, we can group them into categories or themes.
• Once we have a clear picture of all the supporting points, we can use our headline to craft a compelling narrative around the slide's content.

Worth noting: It's worth mentioning that sometimes we might enter the slide creation process with a fairly solid conclusion in mind. Other times, we may need to do more groundwork before even beginning the slide.

1a: Use your headline for a key message, not as a label

The marketing guru David Ogilvy said: “When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents of your dollar” .

The headline is the most precious real estate of any slide. It is the first thing an executive sees and it should be used for storytelling. In fact, a busy executive should be able to read only the headlines in a presentation and still grasp the key conclusions.

Many, especially younger analysts, use labels in their headlines. But here's a better approach: let your headlines encapsulate clear conclusions and actionable steps. This sets the stage for your audience and makes your slide a breeze to read. Here are a few examples:

• Key facts about Australia -> Australia is a highly developed country in the South-Eastern hemisphere with 27 million inhabitants
• Key findings from our analysis -> Company X can minimize supply chain issues by nearshoring widget production

Remember, it all boils down to the "bottom line upfront."

1b: Group and label items to create a natural flow

If you throw 9 supporting points on a slide without any clear categorization you are already overwhelming and losing the reader.

Throw the same 9 supporting points on a slide in groups of 3 and the flow is suddenly highly structured and the reader knows where to go next.

This isn't just about helping your reader; it's also a fantastic tool for you as the slide creator to emphasize what matters most. When you categorize or give themes, remember to:

• First, pick the most vital theme, then the second most crucial, and so forth.
• Second, arrange the sub-points by importance.

The bottom line : This categorization method makes slides much easier to digest and understand quickly.

1c: Create your supporting points and data

Your headlines and categories must be backed by solid evidence. This is where you showcase the data from your in-depth analysis, which, again, can be supported by appendix slides.

When you present facts on your slide, remember, it's another opportunity to weave a compelling story while emphasizing the most crucial points. As an example, take a look at this from Roland Berger. Pay attention to how all their supporting points contribute to the narrative introduced in the headline.

This is an executive summary slide, and I would expect the following slides to provide data for each of the points made.

Here is a more classical example from McKinsey. Notice how they provide context with callouts to augment the supporting data, all while the headline conveys the entire story.

1d: One message per slide

In consulting decks without any punch, we often see multiple topics crammed into one slide. 

When too many topics squeeze onto one slide, crafting a compelling headline becomes challenging. Moreover, it blurs your main message - what's truly important here?

The solution is simple: Stick to One Message per Slide.

Before you even start your slides, know what you are going to say. Don’t write your headline yet, but think about topics as you design your slide outline. Page 1 focuses on topic A, page 2 on topic B, and so on. 

For instance, let's look at this slide from a McKinsey presentation as an example:

In this slide, the spotlight is on the expected global payments growth. The left side provides a macro-level view globally, while the right side drills into the regional breakdown of this growth.

Section 2: How to make your slide stand out visually

Now that we've tackled section 1 and mastered slide structure, let's dive into section 2, where we'll explore crucial steps to ensure your slide shines visually.

2a: Box things up

Many PowerPoint slides consist of a headline, a graph, and some boring bullet points. To make your slide stand out with the exact same content, there’s a simple solution: Box It Up . This not only makes it more interesting for the reader but also gives a more professional appearance.

Same content, and a brand-new slide.

2b: Use images and icons

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but icons, well, they're at least a hundred words each. With images and icons, you can convey more using less.

Caution: Avoid going overboard with images and icons; use them strategically to provide additional information when it's relevant.

Let’s see some examples of good icon use

Looking at the earlier slide from Roland Berger, they augment the categorization with icons. 

In the image above, the icons are used cleverly. The icon on the left highlights one of the driving forces, namely the technological advances. The icon on the right highlights the other driving force, which is the change in consumer preferences.

Another good example is from this BCG slide. While the design is dated, the icons serve as a quick guide to understanding each of the driving forces.

2c: Remove chart junk

As a rule of thumb, if a chart element serves no purpose, delete it. We refer to this as chart junk. 

In the example below, we've eliminated the left axis and the gridlines because they're not needed. The data labels on the individual bars provide all the necessary information.

2d: Order your chart data (logically)

Take a glance at the chart above. Can it be improved? Absolutely.

In the initial chart, the data is presented in a seemingly random order. New York is followed by California, followed by Florida, and so on. In this case, it makes sense to arrange the data by size.

As shown above, we've reordered the data by size, making the chart much easier to comprehend. Typically, we sort data using one of the following parameters:

• Time : When illustrating a trend over time, we sort it by month, year, or a similar timeframe.
• Logical/Pre-determined : In scenarios like creating a waterfall chart, there's usually a natural order for presenting individual items. For example, to move from Revenue to Net Income, you start with Revenue, then factor in Variable Costs, followed by SG&A, and so on.
• Size : When there's no clear sorting logic, we often opt for size-based ordering.

If you use one of these 3 orderings, you are on safe footing.

Now there’s only one thing left!

Start implementing the tips above in your slides. 

If you enjoyed this article or have any questions or comments, please let us know at [email protected] .

And if you want more tips like this, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

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Presentation skills are essential to success in any business. This article explains how to structure a McKinsey-style business presentation, step by step, from a single slide to a complete deck. We discuss how to prepare… ... read more Presentation skills are essential to success in any business. This article explains how to structure a McKinsey-style business presentation, step by step, from a single slide to a complete deck. We discuss how to prepare for a presentation, how to structure the material, and how to deliver the presentation. close

What can we learn about presentations from the most successful management consulting companies like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain?

Prezlab has had the privilege of working with some of the best management consulting firms in the region and has helped a slew of consultants and consulting companies with their presentations. We thought it would be a great idea to jot down what the most successful management consulting companies such as McKinsey, BCG, and Bain do in their presentations to make them such a success. Their presentations are elegant, articulate, well-organized, engaging, and pack a mighty punch.

Great consultants are problem-solvers. In our opinion, this is a must for consultants. When this ability is coupled with the ability to design a great presentation, that’s when the magic happens. Because with the power of effective communication and delivery, they can change minds and convince their audience that their solutions are the most effective. Unfortunately, a lot of management consultants lack this ability. This blog is meant to bring you a little closer to becoming an effective communicator of solutions via presentation design .

Think of a great presentation like a movie; storytelling is the most central aspect. The idea of your presentation as a management consultant is to present and unpack complex ideas in the most simplified and easy-to-understand manner. Apart from storytelling, the other aspects of your presentation would be data and analysis. All of these elements should work in unison and be coherent with each other to make one singular point, the solution. If you want to learn more about this aspect of a presentation then read our blog: Effective remedies to dull and boring presentations .

Before you start, ask yourself the following questions:

01 Who is my target audience and what is their level of understanding of the problems?

02 How long should your presentation be?

03 How much time would your audience like to spend on your presentation?

04 What do they care about?

05 What action would you like them to take after your presentation?

The typical elements of a management consulting presentation

1 – executive summary.

The executive summary is a situational summary of the problem at hand and the gist of your presentation. This is mostly written for top management who don’t have the time to go through the entire presentation and just want a powerful summary.

2 – Table of Content

A table of content helps spark interest and give your audience an idea of what is to come. This is usually shown right at the beginning before you begin presenting your material.

3 – Action Title

The action title is your single point or key idea that you will be proposing in the rest of the presentation. Every point you introduce should connect back to the action title.

4 – Chapters and Body of Slides

The chapters and body of slides are the slides that conform to the narrative. You can split the presentation into chapters to break it into more palatable sections. Use the slides to present your story backed by the data and analysis.

5 – Conclusion and recommendations

The conclusion reinforces and reiterates your final point or your solution. This section summarizes all your main ideas and condenses them into a central theme.

One aspect that makes sides from McKinsey and other top management consulting firms stand out is the use of engaging visuals that go side by side with the data being presented in the slides.

Another aspect of McKinsey slides is the constant and conscious attempt to keep the number of slides to as few as possible. This default instinct is to present as much data as possible. The false impression that most management consultants have is that if they say more, they have a better chance of winning their audience over.

Nothing can be further away from the truth. Once you start thinking this way you would be surprised how you can chop down 20 slides to 2 slides without losing any real impact. Presentation formats such as the PechaKucha or Guy Kawasaki methods limit their slides to a certain number and work within that specific parameter to tell a story.

McKinsey consultancy slides also do not use a lot of bullet points – it is a surefire way of losing your audience’s interest. Studies have shown that people are more likely to remember information presented as images and pictures rather than bullet points. Steve Jobs, one of the greatest presenters of all time, never used bullets in any of his presentations, and we wrote a blog on  5 Presentation Lessons You Can Learn from Steve Jobs  if you are interested in learning more .

Key features from McKinsey slides worth keeping in mind:

01 Choose a professional font like Arial or any other professional font

02 Keep colors to a minimum and keep the color scheme consistent across all the slides

03 Highlight the key points

04 Avoid clutter, give your slides enough breathing space

05 Ensure proper and correct alignment

06 Have a “source” section at the bottom of each slide

07 No fancy graphics or animations

And most importantly: make sure each side has an action title that encapsulates the key idea of that slide in a one-liner (maximum two sentences). The idea is that if someone reads just the action titles of each slide, they should get the gist of your presentation.

If you want to see some of McKinsey’s presentations in action then check out the links below:

Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation

Reinventing Construction

Laying the foundations for a financially sound industry

If you would like to get your McKinsey-style slides designed by Prezlab, get in touch with us .

Let us design your presentation!

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The Advanced Guide to McKinsey-style Business Presentations

Introduction to business presentations, why we wrote this guide.

350 PowerPoint presentations are given per second. The vast majority of them suck.

They are too long, too dull, too full of useless detail, too generic. And these bad powerpoint presentations matter a lot.

They are how we represent ourselves and our work to the world, they are the culmination of our analysis and our thinking. They are our value-add.

And they are terrible.

FREE  eBook

Receive a pdf copy of this 10,000-word ' Advanced Guide to McKinsey-style Business Presentations' as part of our Accelerator Kit .

The disturbing challenge for many of us is that 'terrible' simply isn't good enough. Our careers depend on our business presentations not being terrible.

We wrote this guide in the hopes that, in our own way, we can have a disproportionate impact on your success - your success in presenting yourself, your ideas, and your value add. We hope you find this guide useful.

Our goal was to create the most comprehensive online guide to writing McKinsey-style business presentations on the web. At over 10,000 words, we think it is safe to say - job done!

Who is this guide for?

If you need to write a business report, update a team, complete a consulting assignment, or develop an investor pitch deck, and you are not sure where to start, this guide is for you.

If you need to write a senior executive presentation and are struggling to collect your thoughts, then this guide is for you.

If you are looking for tips, tools and resources to create your presentations faster and make them better, you are going to love this guide.

From PowerPoint newbie to strategy consulting veteran, you'll definitely learn something new that you can use to make your presentations sing.

How to use this Guide

Use The Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations in the way that works best for you. We have formatted and structured the Guide to take advantage of the web. You can use it for reference, inspiration, or as a how-to-guide. Be sure to bookmark the guide so that you can reference it in the future.

If you feel that you have a handle on writing business presentations - and just want to learn a new tip or two - then jump to the relevant section of the guide and dive in! We’re sure you'll find some new tricks and tips to add to your arsenal.

If you have a basic grasp of writing business presentations, but are looking to add a layer of depth to your knowledge - then you should read the guide in order.

Here is an overview of each of the chapters in this Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations.

Chapter 1: One of the Most Valuable Business Skills You Can Master

Presentation writing skills are under-rated. They have, in fact, a profound effect on your career success. 

In Chapter 1, we will layout the reasons why developing presentation skills can accelerate career advancement and explore why writing presentations is such a deceptively challenging task. 

We'll also introduce a framework for thinking about the skills one must master to become truly proficient at writing business presentations.

Chapter 2: The Many Schools of Business Presentation Design

There is a lot of conflicting advice out there. And a lot of fantastic presentation styles which one can emulate. In the end, as with much in life, the answer to 'which style should I copy?' or 'which advice should I follow?' is 'it depends'.

In this chapter we expand on the general 'horses for courses' answer. We'll introduce you to a number of alternate schools of presentation design and layout the precise circumstances under which each is powerful. We’ll explain how you select the presentation style and approach that matches your purpose.

This is your one stop shop for understanding the various presentation ‘schools-of-thought’ and for determining which high-level presentation approach you should adopt.

Chapter 3: The Consulting School of Presentation Design

The dirty little secret of presentation writing is that the vast majority of presentations that we write are not presented! At least not in a formal, auditorium kind of way.

This has profound implications on the style of presentation which you should adopt.

In this section we will explore the characteristics of the McKinsey (or consulting in general) style presentation and identify the things it does well and why this style is so useful.

Chapter 4: The Five Disciplines

There are five disciplines one must master to become great at writing killer business presentations. This is the heart of our process and of the SlideHeroes course:

•   The Power of Logical Structure
•   The Art of Storytelling
•   The Science of Fact-based Persuasion
•   The Harmony of Design
•   The Drama of Performance

Chapter 5: The Power of Logical Structure

Your job is to communicate an answer to a question. When the audience cannot follow your answer, when they cannot follow the logical steps that flow through your argument, they become frustrated.

Logical structure helps comprehension.

But sometimes it can be difficult.

In this chapter we will dive deep into several business writing techniques you can use to help structure your presentation.

•   How to group your ideas (the right number and nature; the right level of abstraction)
•   Inductive and deductive arguments
•   The special role your Introduction plays in establishing context and framing the question you will ultimately answer

Chapter 6: The Art of Storytelling

At their heart, all presentations are stories.

Our brains are wired to learn from and remember stories. Presentations that effectively make use of storytelling techniques are easier to understand and remember.

In this chapter we explore the hows and whys of storytelling within business presentations.

Chapter 7: The Science of Fact-based Persuasion

The focus of this chapter is on the need for facts and data, and how to present them.

To better understand how to present facts in the form of data we will start with Edward Tufte and a theory for the visual display of quantitative information.

We will also explore the differences between tables and graphs, and how to know when to use each.

The chapter will conclude with an overview of the standard graphs that are most commonly found in business presentations.

Chapter 8: The Harmony of Design

 How do I make my slides look good?

We get this question a lot. Usually the implicit assumption underlying that question is that it is a PowerPoint (or Keynote) question.

I don’t know how to use this stupid tool to make my slides look good.

In fact, creating good looking slides is, in the main, not a question of PowerPoint skills (it is a basic tool, pretty easy to learn). It is a design question, not an IT question.

And design is a little trickier.

The good news is that the basics of slide design are not difficult to master because, in general, less is more.

This chapter focuses on straight-forward design strategies you can employ to create amazing looking slides. We will also discuss tips and techniques that you can apply to improve the delivery of your presentation.

Chapter 9: The Drama of Performance

One of the things we emphasize strongly at SlideHeroes is the need to focus on the creation of the presentation material - the content, the structure, the story and the data.

But you better believe a presentation is a performance. Delivery matters, even if you are sitting down.

This chapter focuses on the kind of preparation and practice that is required to take a well written deck and deliver a great public speaking performance.

Chapter 10: The Process

At SlideHeroes we have a step-by-step process for applying each of these five disciplines, in the right order, so you can quickly go from a blank sheet of paper to ‘congratulations!’ on a job well done.

This chapter lays out that process for you.

Chapter 11: The Tools

We list a set of recommended tools that you can use to help create a great business presentation.

Chapter 12: Final Thoughts & Next Steps

In the final chapter of the Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations we provide some thoughts on where to go for more help and how the SlideHeroes course builds on the material contained in this Advanced Guide.

Who are we?

This post is the most popular on our site and, as a consequence, a lot of readers discover SlideHeroes for the first time via this Advanced Guide.

So who are we and what do we do?

SlideHeroes provides online, video-based business presentation training .

We help students become top-tier consultants, top performing sales people, superstar analysts and highly successful business professionals.

We help teams improve their corporate communication skills.

In our free course trial, we offer free video lessons that teach:

•   Our full Who, Why, What and How process for creating killer presentations
•   How to identify the key question your presentation must focus on answering
•   How to structure the introduction of your presentation to plant this question in the mind of your audience

FREE  Course Trial

Start improving your presentations skills immediately with our free trail of the Decks for Decision Makers course.

Chapter 1: One of the Most Valuable Business Skills you can Master

The ability to write clear and impactful PowerPoint-based McKinsey presentations is, for young and mid-level professionals, one of the most valuable skills you can master.

Here’s why:

•   PowerPoint (Keynote) is the de facto paradigm for internal corporate communication today
•   The ability to present ideas and results in an understandable and compelling way can be a key differentiator (frankly many people are simply not very good at it)
•   Strong communication skills make professionals more effective - being understood the first time, saves time

The problem many young professionals face is that unless they luck out early in their career and learn the craft of creating business presentations from someone pretty exceptional – they probably suck at it.

Becoming awesome is harder than most people realize

Becoming exceptional at crafting board-level presentations (presentations that kick ass) is tough. Much harder than most people realize.

Most of us initially dismiss the challenge as a PowerPoint formatting challenge - a time consuming technical challenge that should be delegated.

In fact, crafting successful presentations is a multi-disciplinary challenge that requires the mastery of a broad SET of distinct skills:

•   The ability to order ideas in a logical and structured way
•   The skill to utilize words succinctly, powerfully, accurately
•   Numeracy, and the ability to communicate data effectively
•   Taste - the appreciation for and ability to create aesthetically pleasing design
•   Charisma and executive presence

Only some of these 'presentation skills' are taught in schools or formally in organizations. Many from this list are either very challenging to master, or are seen (by many) as simply innate.

‘How to use PowerPoint’ courses do not teach these skills either.

And to master all of them? Well, that is the challenge.

Chapter 2: The Many Schools of Business Presentation Design

There are many, many different 'schools' of presentation style. Different approaches to crafting and delivering a business presentation.

Here are a few to give you a flavor:

The ‘Pecha Kucha’ School

Pecha Kucha is a presentation style in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (six minutes and 40 seconds in total). It is a format designed to keep presentations concise and fast-paced and is often adopted for multiple-speaker events (PechaKucha Nights). PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

Here is an example from the author Dan Pink of a Pecha Kucha presentation. Dan briefly explains the format and then goes on to give a Pecha Kucha about a favorite topic of his. It is a pretty good example. Unfortunately Dan messes up the pronunciation of Pecha Kucha (lots of people do). If you are curious as to how to pronounce Pecha Kucha, have a look at this video .

When to use Pecha Kucha

•   Oral ‘stand-up’ presentations only, good for conference presentations
•   When you only have 6 minutes and 40 seconds
•   When a focus on fast-pace, conciseness and entertainment are paramount

The ‘TED Talk’ School

TED Talks are, quite simply, some of the most fascinating talks you will ever hear. The power of the ideas, and the skill of many of the presenters in the delivery of these ideas, has popularized an 18 minute presentation format that emphasizes story and big ideas.

Listen to Andrew Stanton from Pixar talk about what makes a great story:

When to use the ‘TED Talk’ style

•   Oral ‘stand-up’ presentations only
•   When you want to tell a story
•   When the focus is on big ideas
•   When you are presenting at TED (of course!)

The Lessig School

Larry Lessig is a Harvard Law Professor, founding board member of the Creative Commons, and strong proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum.

He is also an amazing speaker. Lessig has, over the years, developed a very unique style that he has continued to refine. Have a look:

Interesting characteristics of Lessig’s unique style include:

•   Many, many slides; sometimes pausing for only a moment between each
•   Slides contain either a single, compelling image or simple text
•   Talks built around compelling stories or anecdotes
•   Variable speaking pace, with an almost preacher like cadence
•   Passion (righteousness even)
•   Strong narrative core (don’t be distracted by the novelty of the slides). These are very, very well written talks

When to use the ‘Lessig’ style

•   When story plays a major role in communicating your message
•   When the focus is on big ideas and themes
•   When your narrative is where the power is coming from

Guy Kawasaki School

Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist at Apple and a silicon valley venture capitalist, evangelizes the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint presentations. The rule states that a presentation should have no more than 10 slides, take no longer than 20 minutes, a contain no font smaller than 30pt.

When to use the ‘Guy Kawasaki’ style

•   When you are pitching to Guy Kawasaki (or other VCs)
•   When your audience already has a good understanding of the content and likely structure of what you will say (as Kawasaki's VC-pitch examples illustrate in the video above)

Sit-down style presentations

There are many other styles. You may have noticed that these approaches to presentations have one thing in common; these Schools are all oriented towards the ‘stand-up in front of a crowd and give a speech’ type of presentation.

When we say presentation, we often mentally picture ourselves standing in front of a crowd. And this is a problem.

The majority of business ‘presentations’ are not made standing-up in front of a crowd. Instead, they are made sitting down, around a table, updating a project team, or presenting our thinking/ideas/suggestions to our boss.

The context of these types of ‘sit-down’ meetings has a profound effect on the style of the presentation we need to give.

These types of meetings and presentations:

•   Will be more detail oriented (performance to-date, operational reviews, financial reviews, project-plan updates, etc.)
•   Consist of small groups, in a more intimate setting
•   Are more likely to result in discussion, going off on tangents or drilling-deeper
•   Likely have the participants holding a hard-copy of the presentation in their hand, inches from their nose
•   Can cause similar levels of public speaking anxiety as speeches

Speeches, in this context, are, shall we say… inappropriate.

Yet the vast majority of the 'presentation training' literature is focused on teaching what we should do when we are standing up in front of our audience (to give a speech). Some of it focuses on the creation of the presentation, but for presentations in a forum type setting.

Learning to give a presentation is not the same as learning to create a presentation

Our focus here is on what to do when you are sitting down. Our focus is on the creation of content for the presentations we give everyday. The project update / status report / executive board business presentation.

These types of business presentations require a specific presentation approach that the consulting school of presentation design is tailor made for.

McKinsey & Co. are universally regarded as the gold standard in strategy consulting. McKinsey's multi-million dollar advice is delivered in a very specific way.

There are a number of factors that make the McKinsey presentation, or Consulting style of presentation, unique and powerful:

•   Clear, logical structure: The presentation takes you step by step through an argument
•   The logic is sound (bullet proof!), the argument is complete
•   Strict, consistent slide format - minimalist in design
•   Data intensive: Assertions are proven with facts; and facts are data-driven whenever possible
•   Quantitative data and other evidence is displayed and structured in simple and clean charts
•   The key messages are contained on the slides of the presentation
•   Can be read in advance, forwarded to others without losing meaning

This is not an exhaustive list of the characteristics of this style of presentation, but these are perhaps the most material. Hopefully you can see how they distinguish the consulting business presentation style from other approaches.

Zen-style presentations popularized by Garr Reynolds, for example, stand in stark contrast (reliance on imagery; focus on conference-style presentations).

Below is a BCG presentation, which is a good example of this type of presentation. We have annotated it with comments on how it could be even better, but, in general, it is a good example.

Fine, but does this approach work outside of consulting?

This approach to business presentation design applies across a range of different business situations:

•   Board meetings, senior executive meetings
•   Solution selling
•   Project updates / status meetings
•   Start-up investment pitches
•   Financial performance reviews etc. etc. etc.

If you are still in doubt as to when to use this style of business presentation, here are a few tests to apply:

•   Is it a business situation?
•   Do you need to communicate information in some depth?
•   Is it a ‘sit-down’ type setting (almost intimate)?

Have a look at the following presentation for an example of why the first test above is important ;-)

To create great presentations requires skills across a wide range of areas.

There are 5 disciplines one must master to effectively write and present impactful business presentations:

•   The Power of Logical Structure

The rest of this Advanced Guide to McKinsey-Style Presentations will dive deep into each of these disciplines.

Structure is a beautiful thing.

It brings order, clarity. It enables understanding. We know it when we see it (even if it is just subconsciously) because comprehension immediately becomes easier. Our mind is automatically sorting information into distinctive groups and establishing hierarchies of relationships between these groups (semantic network model) all the time.

Effective structure is the first commandment of presentation creation.

But what is logical structure? How do you create a presentation that has logical structure?

There are half a dozen or so tricks, which when employed obsessively, can allow you to quickly cut through most of the pitfalls (and fairly unhelpful theory of logic) to produce a structure that works.

Group your ideas together to form an argument

Your mind is automatically imposing order on everything around you, all the time. You are grouping, classifying and imposing relationships on all the information your brain processes.

The goal in crafting a presentation is to facilitate the mental processing that is going on in the mind of your audience. To make this processing as easy as possible.

We can do this in two ways:

1. Rule of 7 Updated: Limit the Number of Your Groups to 4

George Miller, a Harvard psychologist, published a famous study in 1957 entitled ' The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two '. This led to a well know rule of thumb that stated people only had the capacity to process 7 chunks of information at a time. Further research has enabled us to refine our understanding of how this rule changes depending on our definition of 'chunks' of information. More recent conclusions state that people can really only process 4-5 concepts - and only one at a time.

As a consequence, we should seek to structure our ideas into groups of 4-5 or less.

Put simply - there is no such thing as 7 or 9 of anything. If you have a list of 9 things, then you need to go up a level of abstraction and group them into 3-4 buckets.

It is easy to take this insight too far. There is no magical number of bullets per slide. Edward Tufte has some interesting things to say about this here . At its core, this is about a relatively self evident truth: Your audience will struggle to process information. Help them out by being aware of the number of discrete ideas you are sharing at any one time.

2. MECE: Ensure your Groups are Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive

MECE stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. It is terminology that today is synonymous with McKinsey and other top-tier consultancies.

The term refers to the idea of structuring lists of ideas in ways where the list is:

•   Collectively Exhaustive (collectively, the ideas in the list cover all possible components of the idea)
•   Mutually Exclusive (individually, each idea in the list is distinct from each of the other ideas, there is no overlap between ideas)

The easiest way to get your head around these ideas is with an example.

The following list of the 7 dwarves is not collectively exhaustive:

We are missing Doc!

The following list of options for where to go for dinner is not mutually exclusive:

•   Restaurants East of our current location
•   Italian restaurants
•   Restaurants with music
•   Restaurants South of our current location

There is overlap within this list. There could be Italian restaurants east of us. Some restaurants south of us could have music.

This 'test' (is this list MECE?) is extremely powerful technique in ensuring logical structure and improving the clarity of your presentation.

You will be surprised at how many groups of ideas you will create which will fail this test - and result in you thinking about additional, great points and ideas that make you argument even more powerful.

Inductive vs deductive arguments

Deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion.

The scientific method uses deduction to test hypotheses and theories. The deductive argument presents ideas in successive steps. An example of this type of argument is:

•   John is ill
•   If John is ill, he will be unable to attend work
•   Therefore, John will be unable to attend work

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning (know also as induction or 'bottom-up' logic), is a kind of reasoning that constructs general arguments that are derived from specific examples. Inductive arguments can take very wide ranging forms. Inductive arguments might conclude with a claim that is only based on a sample of information.

Here is an example of an inductive argument.

•   Two independent witnesses claimed John committed the murder.
•   John’s fingerprints are the only ones on the murder weapon.
•   John confessed to the crime.
•   So, John committed the murder.

Generally, our advice is to construct inductive-based arguments. They are easier for an audience to absorb because they require less effort to understand.

The challenge is that our instinct when writing a presentation is to present our thinking in the order we did the work, which is usually a deductive process.

DON"T DO THIS. No one cares what you did. How hard you worked. They want an answer to a question, not a tour of what you were up to for the last month!

Pay special attention to the Introduction

The start of a presentation requires special attention from a structural point of view.

It contains many traps which can lead unsuspecting authors astray. The purpose of the presentation is to address a question in the mind of the audience. The objective of the introduction is to establish the groundwork to plant this question, so that the rest of our presentation can focus on answering it.

The best approach for achieving this is Barbara Minto's SCQA framework. Buy Barbara's exceptional book The Pyramid Principle .

Context (or starting point): Where are we now?

Financial performance last year was fantastic, but growth has stalled in the first quarter…

Begin at the beginning. The Situation/Context or Starting Point is the background or baseline that anchors the rest of the story that will subsequently unfold. It is comprised of facts that the audience would be aware of and agree with in advance of reading the presentation. This helps to ground the presentation and establish a common starting point.

Typical situations are “we took an action”, "performance was good", "we have a problem".

Soon the audience will be asking themselves “I know this – why are you telling me?”. This is where the complication comes in.

Catalyst (or Complication): Something has changed...

A strategy for returning to growth has been proposed...

What happened next? The Complication creates tension in the story you’re telling. The key objective of the complication is to trigger the Question that your audience will ask in their mind.

Typical complications: “something is stopping us performing the task”, “we know the solution to the problem”, “a solution to the problem has been suggested” and “the action we took did not work”.

Question: The Question in the Mind of the Audience

Is this the right strategy?

The Question arises logically from the Complication and leads into the Answer. It is not explicitly stated in the introduction, it is implicit.

Typical questions: “what should we do?”, “how do we implement the solution?”, “is it the right solution?” and “why didn’t the action work?”

Answer (or Solution): Your answer to the Question

Yes, it will drive growth because…

The Answer to the Question is the substance of presentation and your main point. It is your recommendation. Summarize it first – completing your introduction – then break it down into details and write the main body of your presentations. This is where we develop our inductive argument, deploying groups of MECE ideas on the way to proving our point.

Call to Action (or Next Steps): What you want the Audience to do

We need to do this next

The call to action is the list of next steps that you want your audience to do.

You need next steps.

In fact, the next steps are the objective of your entire presentation. You want to identify these next steps early in the process of developing your presentation so that you can be sure to design a presentation that drives your audience to the action you desire.

Don’t leave the thinking around what the next steps are until the end.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. Robert McKee, Author and Screenwriter

Storytelling is a timeless human tradition. Before the written word, people would memorize stories that shaped cultures for generations. We are wired for communicating through and learning from stories.

All presentations are, at their heart, a story.

Via storytelling techniques we can elevate our presentations to something that moves people. Sometimes, it is obvious that this is our goal. We are presenting at TED. We are making a speech to our employees about our new strategy. We are delivering our first State of the Union address...

Often, it is not.

Our topic may feel mundane - lacking the grand themes that great stories seem to require. When this happens, often our mistake is in framing the objective of our presentation as an exercise in conveying information - to update.

Rather, the objective of our presentations should be to persuade. To, in-fact, establish in the minds of the audience an important question, and persuade that audience of the validity of our answer.

When we need to update - we need to identify the question the audience should have in their minds as a consequence of the update. In many case it will be ‘what do I need to do next’.

As a rule of thumb:

If you don't have something to say, why are you presenting? If you are presenting, know what you have to say.

Why stories are effective.

There are a couple of reasons why stories can be more effective than fact-based arguments at persuading audiences.

1. While some opinions people hold are rational and thought-out, many others are emotional

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Your favorite sports team?

You cannot change an emotionally charged opinion with a rational argument, but you can get your audience to empathize with a hero in a story and thereby affect the emotions they have connected to that subject.

Presenting a rational argument immediately activates the audience's critical mind, inviting him or her to analyze and counter-argue. By immersing your audience in a story, you bypass that resistance.

2. Stories are memorable and, as a consequence, are easier to repeat

As we have discussed, our brains think in terms of stories. We find it easier and more efficient to process stories. In fact, we have a pronounced bias towards stories.

As a consequence your audience is much more likely to remember the stories you tell them (and the messages those stories contain) and more likely to repeat them to others.

What makes a great story?

As a primer, have a listen to Academy award nominated documentary film maker Ken Burns (The Civil War, Jazz) talk about story (especially the fist half). In the video Burns explores what makes a great story. The '3' Burns references is what we are seeking to capture in any great presentation.

Nancy Duarte does a fantastic job of exploring how story is critical to the creation of a great presentation.

In this video, Nancy makes the point that stories and reports occupy opposite ends of a spectrum.

She makes the case that in order to convey the meaning behind your report, you need to introduce elements of story, in order to engage with your audience on a more human level. The appropriate balance you need to strike between story and reporting will be entirely driven by the context of your own presentation.

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts. John Dewey, Pragmatist philosopher (1859 - -1952)

The Bare Assertion

CEO: So you are saying that I need to invest $100 million now or we will go out of business?

Presenter: Yes.

CEO: And why is that again?

Presenter: Because I said so…?

To convince and persuade in today’s corporate world business people must construct evidence-based arguments. They must demonstrate, not simply assert.

Edward Tufte makes a great case for what he calls informational depth.

Executives are not dumb. When you are presenting to them they need informational depth. When people are presenting to you, you need to figure out what their story is, but also need to decide whether you can believe them. Are they competent? … Detail helps credibility. Edward Tufte, Author, statistician & professor

This, unfortunately, requires significant effort, work, and thinking to pull-off.

The effort required to do this is also a key reason why so many poor presentations lack a fact-based approach to persuasion. There are no short cuts. This is where real effort pays off with discriminating audiences.

Often discriminating audiences (senior executives, investors, advisers, challenging customers) will see their role being a ‘stress-tester’. They will test your assertions. Challenge your data. Poke, probe and dissect your analysis.

Your audience does this because they suspect what you are saying is important. And if they act on what you are saying, and it turns out you were wrong… well this would reflect negatively on them. So, in a way, receiving the third-degree in a presentation can be a good sign.

If you pass the test.

It is for situations like this that you need data, facts and proof. You will be eaten alive if you simply assert.

But your data, facts and proof should be in support of your structure, your story. The goal is not to squeeze in all the analysis you have done. Inevitably much of your analysis will not be required to make your central argument. Be equally ruthless in sorting and prioritizing what analysis is required to make your point.

Tables and Graphs

They are fundamentally different.

When you have data that you would like to present, resist the urge to throw it into the sexiest 3D pie chart you can create.

Instead, think first about how you intend to use the data and what point you are trying to make with the data.

Graphs and tables excel at different things and depending on your purpose, one will be a better choice than another.

The primary benefit of a table is that it makes it easy to look up individual values. There are four uses of data for which a table is a good option:

•   Look-up individual values
•   Compare individual values (but not entire series of values)
•   Present precise values, and
•   Present both summary and detail values

Business Charts, on the other hand, present the overall shape of the data. Graphs are used to display relationships among and between sets of quantitative values by giving them shape.

Use charts and graphs when:

•   The message or story is contained in the shape of the data
•   The display will be used to reveal relationships among whole sets of values

Common Graphs

Quantitative values can be represented in graphs using the following:

• Shapes with varying 2D areas
• Shapes with varying color intensity

When determining what type of graph to select, it is absolutely critical that you first consider what you are trying to say with the data.

When you are in the diagnostic phase of your work, you may not know what the data has to say, so you will try a few different approaches. But once it comes time to creating your presentation, the data on the page exists to support the message you have in your headline. You will have a very specific message you will want the data to convey. You will have a specific relationship that you will want to represent.

And here are what graphs are best to illustrate each type of data relationship:

Design is thinking made visual. Saul Bass, Graphic Designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker

Some people don't see the same way you do

Some people's visual processing thought routines are more word oriented, others are more visually oriented.

Visual thinking is the phenomenon of thinking through visual processing - it has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures.

Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that about 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words.

This research has a profound impact on how we need to think about communicating our ideas. It is the principle reason (although most people don't really recognize it) why there has been a shift from the vertical memorandum (written in word, exclusively text), to the horizontal PowerPoint presentation (written in PowerPoint, containing text and visuals) - modern presentations are easier to understand!

It demands of us as presentation creators to continually think about how our ideas and concepts can be represented both verbally, but also visually.

Design is important, but can be challenging

Design, for many, is a challenge. Many attempt to solve this problem by hiring an agency to design a PowerPoint template for them. Or outsourcing the entire presentation design.

We recommend a different approach, one rooted in investing a bit of effort and in applying a good understanding of the type of design that works best for presentations.

Invest the time to make the presentation look decent

Many people believe (or use an excuse) that 'it's the content that counts'.

Spend the effort to make the presentation look good (it isn’t that hard).

Sign-up for our free trial and download our free template to get you started:

Practice a simplicity design ethos - not simple thinking

The very basics of slide design are not difficult to master because, in general, less is always more.

The very best presentation design eliminates the excess. It is a minimalist strategy to focus on only what matters, and to avoid distracting the reader away from the central point.

This minimalist design approach is not an aesthetic preference. It is a design strategy to support our presentation goal - the communication of our message. The design of our presentation, of each slide, should be solely focused on supporting that goal.

Focus on what your point is, and the key evidence required to prove that point - design around this.

You do not need to be a graphics designer to create very effectively designed presentation slides.

Here are some basic design rules of thumb to get you started:

Rules of Thumb (applied aggressively, obsessively)

1. adopt a message-driven slide layout.

•   Have a single, primary idea per slide
•   Put this main idea in your headline that spans the top of the page
•   Make your headline no more than two lines long
•   Put content in the main body of the slide that contains the proof of the main assertion / idea that is in the headline

2. Align all elements on each page neatly

•   Make sure the position of the headline on each slide is in the exact same spot on every slide
•   When you flip through your slides (like with those old picture books that created moving images when you flipped through them) the position of the headline should not move, the font size should not change
•   This also goes for other common design elements on each slide (logo, copyright notice, page number etc.)

3. In many instances, a picture is worth significantly more that 1,000 words

•   Use powerful, relevant images
•   Do NOT use stock photography
•   Do NOT use clip art
•   Use images judiciously, don’t go over board

4. Colors should be muted; Brighter colors used for emphasis

•   Don't use bright colors like red, orange or yellow, except to highlight an important point
•   Use a tool like Adobe Kuler to design an attractive color scheme that won't give your audience a headache

5. Use whitespace, use contrast

•   Be careful to use enough spacing – whitespace between lines and paragraphs is good
•   Whitespace improves legibility, increases comprehension, increases emphasis, and creates the right one
•   Use contrast to emphasize difference
•   Ways to create contrast include using contrasting colors, sizes, shapes, locations, or relationships

6. Don't use crazy animations, 3D, or random special effects

•   Just don't. Emulate modern 'flat' design style (think Metro interface, google design refresh etc.)
•   The wow of your presentation comes from the power of your ideas. Spiral animation entrances are not going to help

7. Don't use pie charts

•   This is a pet peeve of mine, but pie charts are visually difficult to interpret - other chart types (bar charts) are significantly more effective
•   Serious presenters know this and don't use them - when you do it makes you look like an amateur

8. Use typography

•   Custom fonts give your presentation a nice distinctive look that allows it to stand out in a sea of Arial
•   Many great custom fonts are now available for free - check out Google Fonts, they can be downloaded and used on your desktop within PowerPoint

The passions are the only orators that always persuade. Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Author, moralist (1613 - 1680)

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe. Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1874 - 1965)

The presentation has been written. The work has been put in. It is time to start thinking about the act of delivering the presentation.

Our view is that ‘winging it’ tends to not be a good strategy.

Preparation

Preparation, once the deck has been written, means practice.

We suggest the following approach:

1. Develop a script

Write down a formal voice-over script of what you will say. Write this down in advance.

Adopt simplified language. You want to be interpreting the content on the slide, not reading it!

2. Memorize the script

Rehearse until you have memorized your script. We know this is boring. Try speaking the script out loud. In our experience it is very difficult to memorize a script simply reading it to yourself.

3. Finally, abandon the script

Once you have spent enough time memorizing the script you will start to feel comfortable deviating and embellishing.

Use your script as a road-map during delivery, rather than a crutch. It is your safety net.

This robust approach takes time and, to be honest, may only be appropriate for the most important of meetings. But it works.

Deliver with Conviction, Passion and Drama

You must believe in your material for others to believe in you.

A fact-based approach to persuasion, and logical structure are techniques that, when applied, position you to have a very high degree of confidence in your material.

The standards are high (and sometimes unforgiving). By meeting them in advance, you can enter the room with a high level of confidence in your material.

Enthusiasm is contagious.

Show your passion for the material. If the topic is as dull as dishwater, show passion for the elegance of your thinking and the power of your recommendations. This is killer.

A little drama (mixed in with some storytelling) can really elevate a presentation.

This drama can be inherent in the complication/catalyst. It is also embedded in the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Play this up and occasionally reference the implications of what you are saying to this.

Chapter 10: The Process to Write a Killer Presentation

What follows are a set of presentation tips in the form of a step-by-step list of what you need to do to create a killer presentation. The SlideHeroes course includes an interactive checklist that allows you to keep track of each step as you progress.

Before you start, determine where in the thinking process you are.

Ask yourself the following key questions:

•   Have you finished your analysis, and are now embarking on the final phase of summarizing your findings? 
•   Or are you still trying to figure out the question you should be answering?

Often people will turn to PowerPoint long before they have completed their thinking – try to resist this urge, use paper instead.

Once you are finally ready to write your presentation - stop.

Consider crafting your elevator pitch instead.

Imagine: your meeting has been cancelled, but you manage to catch your audience in the elevator on the way out of the building. You have 1 minute – what do you want to say?

Often we are better at ‘getting to the point’ orally. As soon as we start thinking in terms of a presentation, we can sometimes lose the plot. This exercise will help you capture the main thrust of what your presentation is meant to convey early on in the process.

Apply our 'Who, Why, What, How' process

Begin the process of writing a business presentation by reviewing our 4-step process. This process is your roadmap of what you need to do. Briefly review what you need to do at each step:

•   Identify WHO your audience is
•   Determine WHY you are speaking with them
•   Determine WHAT your answer is to your audience's question
•   Decide HOW to best communicate that answer

Once you have taken stock, determined where you are in your thought process, and are ready to proceed.

The first major step is to identify WHO our audience is.

This sounds easy. But there are critical nuances that you need to be aware of which we will explore.

A. Identify Who your Audience is

Determine who the hero of your presentation is (hint it is not you - it is your audience).

A nuance to be aware of is that sometimes the true target of your presentation may not be obvious. You may be speaking to a group you don’t know well and, as a consequence, may not have a full understanding of the political dynamics at play. Who are the true decision makers? Who can truly help you progress to the next step?

During this step you need to take the time to identify who within your audience you are truly speaking to – who matters.

B. Profile your Audience

Once you have identified your Audience, spend some time profiling them.

Ask yourself the following questions about your audience:

•   How much will the audience know about the situation/topic before we start the presentation?
•   How do they prefer to consume information?
•   Visual bias? Numerical bias?
•   Pre-read in advance?
•   What is the best timing of messages?

The second major step in our process is determining WHY you are presenting and your goal for the meeting.

A. Determine the Context of the Presentation

The next three tasks in our process are focused on building our Introduction and isolating the question we are answering for our Audience.

The reason we are creating a presentation, is always to answer a question that is in the mind of our audience.

The context is the background to the presentation. It contains information the audience already knows.

B. Identify the Catalyst of the Presentation or meeting

The Catalyst is the complication in the story that has resulted in the problem we are here to answer.

What happened, changed or was realized that is causing us to meet today? What led us to do the analysis or work to answer your question?

C. Determine the Question

Determine the question you are there to answer.

Most questions will fall into one of these 4 types:

• I have a problem: Why did it happen? or,
• I have a problem: What should we do?
• I have a problem, someone has suggested a solution: Should we adopt that solution?
• I have a problem, someone has suggested a solution: How should we implement this solution?

D. Determine the Objective / Next Step for the Meeting

You need next steps. You need a call to action. The objective of your presentation should be for your audience to DO SOMETHING as a result of you presenting your material.

What do you want your audience to do?

What do you need your audience to understand to achieve the meeting’s goal?

The third major step is to determine and write WHAT your answer is to your audience’s question.

The Power of Logical Structure

A. gather existing work; develop new thinking.

Do the work.

This is where your own domain expertise comes in. Suffice it to say, you need to do the work, the analysis, the thinking to answer the question.

•   Gather existing content (improve on it)
•   Conduct new analysis

Create ideas first, slides second.

B. summarize and organize your ideas.

•   Organise your argument into logical groups
•   Bucket arguments into MECE groups
•   Use visual thinking tools to capture and organize your ideas

The Art of Storytelling

A. storyboard the presentation.

Storyboarding is a technique for writing that was first developed by Walt Disney for use in the creation of animated movies.

Have a listen to Pixar describe how they use storyboarding in film:

Storyboarding is a fantastic technique for developing presentations because it allows you to work on text, visuals and structure simultaneously.

The Harmony of Design

B. develop a slide template, c. develop content for each slide.

•   Write out each heading for each slide
•   Write out each sub-heading for each supporting piece of evidence/chart
•   Design charts and supporting visuals
•   Open PowerPoint!
•   Populate slides with supporting evidence

The Science of Fact-based Persuasion

D. develop graphs and tables for your data.

•   Determine what tables or chart types are best for the data you wish to show
•   Create the tables or charts
•   Reduce and eliminate chart-junk
•   Design tables and graphs to emphasize the key data elements that support your story

The Drama of Performance

A. practice.

Practice makes perfect. So practice.

•   Do an initial run through of the presentation. Speak the presentation out loud and improvise
•   Write this version down as a formal script
•   Run through the presentation two or three more times working on length, simplifying language
•   If the length needs editing, revise the presentation, eliminating or combining slide ideas
•   Present to someone else to solicit feedback and simulate a ‘live’ presentation
•   Run through the script a few more times and then park it
•   Get a good night’s sleep; review the script once or twice just before the presentation
•   Conduct a pre-presentation flight-check to ensure you have everything you need
•   Deliver with conviction, passion and drama
•   Focus on just a few things to ensure a great delivery:
• Manage your stress - quite your mind, breathe, relax
• Adopting the right ‘tone’ and approach
• Being yourself. Relax!
• Communicating both verbally and physically (kinetically)
• Answer your Audience’s questions

Below are the set of presentation tools we recommend to create fantastic business presentations.

Presentation Creation

I know everyone rags on PowerPoint. It just isn’t PowerPoints fault.

It is still the best we have got.

Pretty cool 'zoom' transition effects. Kind of hard to use, places huge emphasis on design skills.

Chart Design

We can do so much better than PowerPoint and Excel…

Plotly charts look great. The interface is easy to use and there is a good variety of chart types to select from.

RAW (open source)

Similar to Plotly, RAW produces great looking charts. There is a wide selection of chart types (you can also create your own). Powerful.

Image Design

Web apps that help create fantastic graphics, easily.

Image design tool. Very, very easy and quick. Pretty Awesome.

Poor man's Photoshop. Particularly good at retouching photos.

Productivity

PowerPoint plugins that can turbo charge your productivity

Plugin that enables you to quickly create complex Waterfalls, Marimekkos, Gantts and Agendas within PowerPoint. A favorite.

PowerPoint Add-In to improve visual quality and help with proofing.

Presentation Distribution

The YouTube for presentations.

If you have made it this far, well done! ;-)

If you are still hungry for more here are some great books, blogs and courses(!) that may pique your interest.

I recommend the following great books:

•    The Pyramid Principle , Barbara Minto
•    Slideology , Nancy Duarte
•   The Visual Display of Quantitative Information , Edward Tufte
•   Show Me the Numbers , Stephen Few

The following blogs are among my favorites:

•   Storytelling with Data , Cole Nussbaumer
•   Presentation Zen , Garr Reynolds
•   SlideMagic , Jan Schultink

Our course (Decks for Decision Makers)

The Decks for Decision Makers course takes the concepts covered in this Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations and drills deeper into each. In the course, video lessons and PowerPoint slide examples allow you to fully explore all of the many concepts discussed in this Guide.

Try our Free Trial to get a flavor of the course.

How to make McKinsey-style slides

In the business world, slides are the default communication method. There are some notable exceptions to this rule — Amazon is well-known for their six-page memos . 

In most companies, you will need to use slides to

Make a business case or proposal

Report on the performance of a project, initiative or business unit  

Explain a concept 

When slides are circulated as pre-read material, they are the first impression that executives have of your presentation. Hold yourself to a high bar when it comes to making and presenting clean and professional slides. 

Management consultants are infamous for the quantity and quality of their slide-making. Especially top tier management consultants like McKinsey.

We created a 6-slide McKinsey-style PowerPoint template to democratize the consulting know-how.

Download template.

Plus, here are 4 strategies to succeed with this template:

Aim for one concept per slide.

Leverage the Pyramid Principle. 

Optimize your titles.

Lead with charts, graphs and visuals.

Below, we’ll dive deeper into each of these steps and share best practices. Before we get started, two reminders:

We cover the management consulting playbook and strategy in-depth in our Business Intensive , a 6-week “micro MBA” program that also covers finance, marketing, sales and more.

Do you have suggestions for topics that you’d like us to cover in this newsletter? Please hit reply to let us know.

Thank you for reading brunchwork. You can support us by sharing this post.

1. Aim for one concept per slide.

As the presenter, you are the main attraction. Slides are just a prop.

Your audience has a short attention span (just 5-10 minutes on average). They should be listening to you, not trying to decipher a busy slide.

Clutter is distracting. 

Make it easy on your audience. One “main idea” per slide. The max is two.

2. Leverage the Pyramid Principle. 

Consultants leverage the Pyramid Principle to make effective slides and presentations. 

The Pyramid Principle is a framework that defines a pyramid structure for communication. With this framework, you will start each slide (and the corresponding section of your talk) with the conclusion / main point. Then, you will follow with your supporting arguments and finally the details and data. 

Essentially, you first deliver the main idea succinctly and expand with each subsequent layer.

Executives are top-down thinkers who appreciate the directness of the Pyramid Principle. Learn more here . 

3.  Optimize titles.

Make each title powerful and punchy. After all, the title is the prime real estate on any slide. 

When you first encounter a presentation (or any document or website for that matter), your eye usually starts at the top right corner and scans across the top bar. So, your title is the first item your audience will absorb.

This is the F-shared pattern for reading content. Once you read the title, your eye moves down vertically and once again scans across the second part of the page, and so on and so forth until you reach the bottom left part of the page.

Pro tip: Someone should be able to grasp your entire narrative by reading only the titles! That sets a very high bar for titles, which comes in especially handy for slides that are circulated as a pre-read.

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4. Lead with charts, graphs and visuals.

It’s difficult to read slides and listen to a presentation at the same time. Make it easy for your audience by leaning into visuals.

Management consultants utilize well-designed graphs like these:

You can easily make these graphs with the right PowerPoint add-on. think-cell is a great tool for ~$250 per year (there's a free trial period).

We cover these topics and more in the Business Intensive , our top-rated MBA alternative that builds business acumen.

Ready for more?

Database of 50+ Downloadable McKinsey Presentations

Table of contents.

It’s great to learn the techniques that strategy consulting firms like McKinsey & Co use to build compelling slide decks. But sometimes you just want to see McKinsey presentations to see how those techniques are applied in the real world.

In fact, we think that reviewing presentations from real-world strategy projects is one of the best ways to improve your own slide skills — along with joining a high-quality presentation course.

The problem is that it’s quite hard to find good-quality McKinsey presentations. Most of them are commercial in confidence and, even if they’re not, they’re scattered all over the web.

You can download the full set of McKinsey presentations (plus an additional 100+ presentations from BCG, Bain & Co, Kearney, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K, and more) using this form:

Download 120+ strategy consulting presentations for free

Looking for slide inspiration? Download 120+ consulting slide decks from top strategy consulting firms, such as McKinsey, BCG and Bain!

Or if you’d rather download the McKinsey presentations individually, you’ll find a list for you to download below:

McKinsey Presentations

• McKinsey – A Blueprint For Addressing The Global Affordable Housing Challenge (2015)
• McKinsey – Accelerating Hybrid Cloud Adoption In Banking And Securities (2020)
• McKinsey – Addressing The Global Affordable Housing Challenge (2016)
• McKinsey – Attracting Responsible Mining Investment In Fragile And Conflict Affected Settings (2014)
• McKinsey – Capturing The Data & Advanced Analytics Opportunity In Capital Markets (2017)
• McKinsey – Capturing The Full Electricity Efficiency Potential Of The U.K. (2012)
• McKinsey – Challenges In Mining: Scarcity Or Opportunity? (2015)
• McKinsey – Context For Global Growth And Development (2014)
• McKinsey – Covid-19 – Auto & Mobility Consumer Insights (2020)
• McKinsey – Current Perspectives On Medical Affairs In Japan (2018)
• McKinsey – Digital And Innovation Strategies For The Infrastructure Industry (2018)
• McKinsey – Digital Luxury Experience (2017)
• McKinsey – Digitally-Enabled Processes In The NHS (2014)
• McKinsey – European Banking Summit (2018)
• McKinsey – Fab Automation – Artificial Intelligence (Unknown)
• McKinsey – Fintech: How Financial Institutions In Europe (Should) Prepare For The Future (2017)
• McKinsey – Five Keys To Unlocking Growth In Marketing’s “New Golden Age” (2017)
• McKinsey – From Poverty To Empowerment: India’s Imperative For Jobs, Growth And Effective Basic Services (2014)
• McKinsey – Helping Global Health Partnerships To Increase Their Impact (2019)
• McKinsey – How Companies Can Capture The Veteran Opportunity (2012)
• McKinsey – How Unconventionals Are Changing Global Oil And Gas Markets (2013)
• McKinsey – How Will Internet Of Things, Mobile Internet, Data Analytics And Cloud Transform Public Services By 2030? (2015)
• McKinsey – Insurance Trends And Growth Opportunities For Poland (2015)
• McKinsey – Investment And Industrial Policy (2018)
• McKinsey – Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions (2017)
• McKinsey – Laying The Foundations For A Financially Sound Industry (2013)
• McKinsey – Lebanon Economic Vision – Full Report (2018)
• McKinsey – Manufacturing The Future: The Next Era Of Global Growth And Innovation (2013)
• McKinsey – Modelling The Potential Of Digitally-Enabled Processes, Transparency And Participation In The Nhs (2014)
• McKinsey – Moving Laggards To Early Adopters (2019)
• McKinsey – New Horizons In Transportation: Mobility, Innovation, Economic Development And Funding Implications (2020)
• McKinsey – Outperformers: High Growth Emerging Economies (2018)
• McKinsey – Overview Of M&A, 2016 (2016)
• McKinsey – Perspectives On Manufacturing, Disruptive Technologies, And Industry 4.0 (2014)
• McKinsey – Race In The Workplace: The Black Experience In The U.S. Private Sector (2021)
• McKinsey – Refueling The Innovation Engine In Vaccines (2016)
• McKinsey – Reinventing Construction: A Route To Higher Productivity (2017)
• McKinsey – Restoring Economic Health To The North Sea (2015)
• McKinsey – Technology’s Role In Mineral Criticality (2017)
• McKinsey – The Changed Agenda In The Global Sourcing Industry (2019)
• McKinsey – The Five Frames – A Guide To Transformational Change (Unknown)
• McKinsey – The Future Energy Landscape: Global Trends And A Closer Look At The Netherlands (2017)
• McKinsey – The Future Of The Finance Function –Experiences From The U.S. Public Sector (2019)
• McKinsey – The Internet Of Things And Big Data (2013)
• McKinsey – Us Productivity Growth: The Company And Sector Story (2015)
• McKinsey – Using Artificial Intelligence To Prevent Healthcare Errors From Occurring (2017)
• McKinsey – USPS Future Business Model (2010)
• McKinsey – What Makes Private Sector Partnerships Work (2011)
• McKinsey – Women In The Workplace (2022)

Other Presentations

If you’d like to download more consulting decks from BCG, Bain, L.E.K Consulting, Oliver Wyman, Kearney and more, then check out our free database of 221+ downloadable consulting presentations .

How McKinsey creates clear and insightful charts

By Paul Moss

Charts are not meant to make you look smart, they’re meant to help your audience better understand your message..

McKinsey sits firmly atop the consulting firm food chain, where it enjoys the benefits and drawbacks of being the world’s most recognized and prestigious seller of PowerPoint presentations. 

As the world’s oldest *strategy* consulting firm, they have decades worth of institutional knowledge and resources that help them deliver world-class insights to their clients. On top of that, they’re able to draw from a pool of talent that includes some of the smartest and most accomplished students, academics, and industry professionals in the world.

With this sweet (and expensive) concoction of resources and talent, McKinsey is positioned to create some of the world’s most insightful reports and presentations. As a result, they are often looked to as a north star for slide-based communication.

That’s not to say that they’re perfect. I’ve seen mistakes aplenty on McKinsey’s materials over the years. But more often than not their presentations and reports are remarkably clear, insightful, and engaging. In particular, they’ve mastered the art of data visualization. Using a set of basic tools and techniques, they’re able to represent data in a way that has attracted high-paying clients in major cities around the world for nearly 100 years.  

In this post I’m going to review and analyze five charts from a McKinsey report titled, “India’s turning point: An economic agenda to spur growth and jobs” ( source ). I’ll cover what each of these charts means, and what makes them so clear and effective. Plus I’ll also highlight key takeaways from each chart that you can apply to your own chart building and slide creation. 

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Chart 1: Waterfall Chart

The first chart in the report is a waterfall chart, and the title says, “India needs to create at least 90 million more nonfarm jobs by 2030”.  The purpose of a waterfall chart is usually to show how you get from one value to another.  In this case they’re showing how to go from total employment in 2020, represented by the column on the left, to the 2030 employment targets, both the lower and upper targets (shown on the right).

There’s a whole lot to like about this chart, starting with the chart title. Rather than just giving me a topic for the chart (e.g. Total Employment Goals), it tells me exactly what the takeaway is. This is the number one mistake I see people make when it comes to charts.  For a chart like this you don’t want to just say what information is in the chart, you want to say very clearly what you want your audience to takeaway from the chart.  Charts are complex, and there’s a lot of interpretations that can be made, so by telling the audience exactly what they should know, you make it more likely that they’re going to understand what you’re saying – which is really your ultimate goal.

Another great thing about this chart is how clear it is, from the simplicity of the colors to the consistent and simple labeling. Notice how they don’t use a legend to distinguish farm and nonfarm jobs. Legends can sometimes be tricky because you force the reader to look back and forth between the chart and the legend to really understand the data. It’s not that big of a deal here with only two colors, but little things like this still make a difference.

I also like how they’ve decided to bold the important text, which is supposed to connect with the information in the title. It helps me cut through the noise a bit to understand what I should be looking at.

And then lastly notice how they’ve included extensive footnotes and sources down at the bottom. This is something you’ll see with most consulting firms, because it gives them support for claims that they’re making to executives. It’s important to not only provide sources for all the information in your charts, but also to explain each aspect of the chart in detail wherever you think it would be helpful.

Chart 2: Multiple Column Charts

This one says, “India’s GDP could expand at 8.5 percent per year, with a sharp rise in jobs and sustained productivity; the low-growth path implies negligible job creation”. And again the descriptive title is helpful in knowing what I should takeaway from the chart. There’s a lot of numbers on the chart, and this tells me the main one they’re talking about (circled in the picture).

The chart type they’ve decided to go with is a basic column chart, except they’ve split it into three separate charts, which is an excellent choice. Sometimes I see people with clustered column charts that have 5 or 6 columns in each cluster, which is just confusing most of the time.  By separating them out like this you can really focus on each individual chart.  But the other benefit here is that it allows them to show the relationships between each section. In other words, it’s a lot easier to see that net employment, plus productivity, equals GDP.

This one also does a good job of using color to help focus my attention. Notice how the only columns they’ve colorized are the two on the end, which are clearly the most important to the story. They’ve kept the columns on the left black so they don’t stick out quite as much, and the one in the middle is light grey so it sticks out even less.

Then once again there’s a great attention to detail with exhaustive sources and footnotes down at the bottom.

Chart 3: Mekko Chart

Chart number three is a Mekko chart, which in my experience is a chart consultants just love to use. The title says, “Three growth boosters, spanning 43 high-productivity business opportunities, can contribute $2.5 trillion to the economy by 2030.”

The three growth boosters they’re referring to are up at the top: Global hubs serving India and the world, Efficiency engines for India’s competitiveness, and New ways of living and working. As it says in the title, each of these will contribute an amount to the economy that totals $2.5 trillion by 2030.

Mekko charts can be confusing to some people, but really  they’re just column charts that show an additional dimension of data.  In this case they show the breakdown of each of the three growth boosters listed at the top of the chart. You can almost think of them just like stacked columns, but then they can also show the total size of each booster as well, which is represented by the width of each column.

In the black column for example, you can get a sense for what portion of the top box (Globally competitive manufacturing hubs) makes up of the total column. But then you also get a second dimension, which is the width of the column, which represents the size of the booster ($990 billion, which is listed at the bottom).

By combining these two dimensions together, and this is the important part, you can get a sense for how much each category makes up of the total chart. It’s clearly the biggest opportunity by area in the entire chart, so it’s expected to contribute most to the total.

So in other words, the message is that through the three growth boosting areas, India can contribute $2.5 trillion to the economy, and the chart shows very clearly how each business opportunity contributes to that growth.

This is really the main lesson to be learned from this chart, which is, the importance of choosing the right chart to fit the message. McKinsey wants to be able to show how  much each individual opportunity contributes to the total, but they also want to be able to distinguish between the three different growth boosters and compare the size of the categories against each other. And a Mekko chart allows them to do this very well.

Let’s say they tried to use a bar chart instead.  They would be able to see how the opportunities contributed relative to each other, but how much they contributed to the total is not quite as clear.

Or they could have used a pie chart.  This would have shown the size of each opportunity relative to the total, but comparing them against each other would have been a lot more difficult.

With a Mekko chart they could do both: compare categories within each column, and compare them to the total. 

Chart 4: Bubble Chart?

Chart number four is the most unique chart in the report, but in some ways it’s also the most simple. The title says, “India has only about one-half to two-thirds as many midsize and large firms, compared to other ‘outperformer’ emerging economies, per $1 trillion of GDP.” It somewhat resembles a bubble chart, but it’s not exactly a chart (more of just a simple visualization). 

I don’t really have a whole lot of commentary to add with this one, except to say that I like that it’s even a visualization at all. It would be really tempting to just leave this in a table because it has so few numbers, but instead they’ve decided to make it easy on our brains and give us a visual sense for how much greater other economies are in each category.

Arguably a bar chart or a column chart could have worked better here, because it would have been easier to compare the total number of firms within each category, but the circles are a little more interesting to look at. Plus it helps that they’ve included numbers on the circles themselves, which helps me understand the relative scale more quickly.

One quick word of caution:  If you’re going to use circles like this to show the relative size of something, make sure that you are scaling them based on the total area of the circle, not on the radius of the circle.  It’s a mistake I see far too often.

Chart 5: Stacked Column Chart

Alright now on to our fifth and final chart, which is a stacked column chart with some modifications. The title says, “Just 2 percent of India’s state-owned enterprises have the potential to yield as much as 80 percent of total value from privatization”. Again here I want to emphasize the importance of having the takeaway clearly spelled out in the title. It’s especially important for a chart like this with lots of numbers and lines, because it helps you know what to look for.

Really you can split the chart into two different parts: the part represented by the top line of data, and the part represented by the bottom line. At the very top it says, “India has about 1,900 state-owned enterprises, of which…” and then the first line below it explains how 400 of the state-owned enterprises could represent $140 billion in book value, yielding $540 billion in proceeds, across 10 different sectors. 

The tricky part with this line is understanding how it’s represented visually in the chart itself. In the leftmost column the 400 potentially privatized SOEs are represented by the blue section that says “21%”. But then the rest of the highlights in the top line are represented by the entire columns themselves. For example, $140 billion is supposed to be the total of the column below it (the blue section is for the bottom line). 

Then they take the same approach with the bottom line. “2% of India’s state-owned enterprises”, shown in the small box at the bottom, constitute “80% of book value in 2018”, which you can see represented by the blue section of the column, yielding 80% of potential proceeds, again shown in blue, across 6 sectors. 

So the whole point of the chart is to show you what kind of impact comes from just 2% of all state-owned enterprises that would potentially be privatized. And of course you can see this reflected in the title.

This probably wouldn’t be my first choice for a chart. Or at the very least I would try to simplify it a little bit because I think it’s kind of confusing. But, McKinsey has done a few things here that are really really smart.

The first, is that  they’ve drawn attention to the important parts of the chart.  Notice how the numbers are extra big, and the blue section of the chart represents what comes from that 2% of state-owned enterprises that could potentially privatize.

Then the second thing they’ve done is they’ve set up the chart in a way that guides the audience along and really helps them understand the key takeaway. That’s what they’re doing with the top and bottom lines. And not only that, but they’ve spelled it out in a way that flows from one point to the next, kind of like a story. It’s almost like the chart is secondary to the text. It’s just there to give you a little visual boost as you read the data points.

And this really connects with the major takeaway from this report, which is that  charts are there to help your audience more clearly understand your main message.  They’re not there to make you look smart, they’re not there to show off your design skills, they’re there to make your information more readable.

Anything you can do to accomplish that goal, whether it’s including a descriptive title, providing full footnotes and sources, choosing the correct chart, or drawing attention to the important parts of your chart, is going to help your audience, and in turn help you and your organization.

Source Information: McKinsey, August 2020 “India’s turning point: An economic agenda to spur growth and jobs” https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/india/indias-turning-point-an-economic-agenda-to-spur-growth-and-jobs

You can watch a video version of this article on YouTube .

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