Is it really about the presentation?

“My boss wants me to make a presentation about our strategy next Wednesday, help!”.

What does she mean? In most of cases (especially for an internal audience), she probably does not want you to focus all your energy on making the slides as pretty as possible (that would be a nice-to-have).

Instead, she needs to have the strategy itself ready and nailed. And the process of designing the presentation-that-presents-the-strategy might reveal holes, inconsistencies, and ambiguities in the strategy itself.

Your boss wants the strategy to be ready by next Wednesday. (Help!)