Showing posts with label McKinsey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McKinsey. Show all posts
Entire story on 1 page
Sometimes it is useful to frame your entire story in 1 table on 1 page. The other day, I had a client in the semiconductor industry. The story centred around 3 things that matter (the column headings). Then, the rows were: first: current product features, next row: why they cause problems, next row: what bottleneck you need to overcome to solve this, next row: how the bottleneck is overcome, next row: alternative product features.
In a written management consulting report, you can stop here. A live presentation requires more work.
The presentation design challenge is now to take this boring table and turn it into a compelling story, spreading it out over many pages and many minutes. The table is a little cheat sheet to make sure you have captured everything.
The 2-line slide heading
In some presentations, I use a template with a 2-line slide title, giving me more screen real estate to spell the key message of a chart. The format is very similar to exhibits I drew at McKinsey, where the message of the slide was written in a paragraph that could span 2-3 lines of text in point 12 font above the chart headline.
When to experiment with this format? Smaller audiences, lots of complicated data charts, chart messages with nuances that are hard to capture in a newspaper-style article heading.
Oh, and when you use the longer headlines, there is not reason to re-write that same sentence in a big bubble or box on the right of the chart.
When to experiment with this format? Smaller audiences, lots of complicated data charts, chart messages with nuances that are hard to capture in a newspaper-style article heading.
Oh, and when you use the longer headlines, there is not reason to re-write that same sentence in a big bubble or box on the right of the chart.
Consultants cannot pitch
The other day I was asked to provide input on a pitch deck prepared by a respected consulting firm. The idea was the result of a consulting project, the results of which for document in a hefty, detailed, and structured document that everyone agrees was great for reading background material, but not really right for presenting/pitching. The team took the first step by cutting down the number slides (not changing them) in an executive summary presentation.
My advice for consultants who want to pitch: start from scratch and design a completely new presentation specifically aimed at selling, pitching, fundraising and leave the big data Bible as back up.
What goes usually wrong in executive summary decks that are created by chopping slides out of a master pack? Some examples.
My advice for consultants who want to pitch: start from scratch and design a completely new presentation specifically aimed at selling, pitching, fundraising and leave the big data Bible as back up.
What goes usually wrong in executive summary decks that are created by chopping slides out of a master pack? Some examples.
- The team has probably been working for months on the project and as a result, they see the discussion of the problem as totally trivial and cut down a lot on the charts that adress the issue, most of them probably generated early on in the project, or even during the project definition phase. The consultants forget that to the outsider who hears about the issues for the first time, it is not that trivial. On the contrary, it is often easier to pitch the problem, than to pitch the solution.
- The problem section usually involves data, and consulting data charts are loaded with facts and figures and tables. Most consultants actually violate one of the cardinal rules of one message per slide. Go back to your drawing board and pick one statistic/trend that is really crucial to sell your problem and make a super clean/clear data chart that just shows that, nothing else
- As we get to the solution the consultant often forget to describe what it actually is. We show histories of how the initiative has been used in other parts of the world, who is involved, but hey: what is it that you actually want to do? To the consultant it is obvious, to the audience not.
- Describing the initiative or its impact can be done in dry text bullets with low emotional appeal. But why not use pictures? Show the project in action. Profile the people that benefited from it in big page filling images. Create human stories. People relate to this much better than dry data. Yes, I want to help this girl in the picture!
- Consultants are always shy, and hesitant to take a strong position. (Yes, you could take option B but it has these disadvantages and it depends on this scenario C panning out that way). As a result, it is actually unclear what is expected from the audience: contribute this amount of money to do X, Y, and Z. Get over your shyness, and spell it out the call of action bluntly.
In short, make your deck more emotional, to the point, and put your own credibility on the line by selling the idea wholeheartedly.
Skip the methodology
As a management consultant (or a scientist) you had to crack a very difficult issue: what approach to take to solve a particular problem or get to some insight. Once the approach was nailed, the rest of the work was relatively easy (sweat work rather than think work).
It is tempting to use this thought process as a structure of your presentation. Here is the problem, here is the theory behind it, here is our methodology, here is the data analysis, and finally, here is the conclusion. Most scientific papers are structured this way and kids get taught this approach in school/university.
This works if your audience also consists of management consultants and scientists. In most other cases, just talk about the problem you tried to solve (the actual one, not the approach issue) and then go straight to the conclusion and results.
It is tempting to use this thought process as a structure of your presentation. Here is the problem, here is the theory behind it, here is our methodology, here is the data analysis, and finally, here is the conclusion. Most scientific papers are structured this way and kids get taught this approach in school/university.
This works if your audience also consists of management consultants and scientists. In most other cases, just talk about the problem you tried to solve (the actual one, not the approach issue) and then go straight to the conclusion and results.
The consulting presentation
As a former management consultant, I can say it: consultants make very poor presentations. But what about these fancy looking documents full of graphs (exhibits as they are called)? Well, they are decks meant for reading, not for presenting to a live audience.
And as documents intended for reading, they are pretty good. Consultants have replaced a word processor with a slide design program, which adds more writing freedom:
Now, this document is great for people who have been deeply involved in the project (consultants on the team, team members from the client). To win over the hearts of people who will see the recommendations for the first time, a whole new presentation needs to be designed from scratch. And unfortunately, most consulting firms do not make this final step.
And as documents intended for reading, they are pretty good. Consultants have replaced a word processor with a slide design program, which adds more writing freedom:
- It is easier to add data charts and data tables
- It is easier to add structure to a text (frameworks in consulting speak)
- It is easier to group edit a document that consists of 1-page-1-topic that can be shuffled
Now, this document is great for people who have been deeply involved in the project (consultants on the team, team members from the client). To win over the hearts of people who will see the recommendations for the first time, a whole new presentation needs to be designed from scratch. And unfortunately, most consulting firms do not make this final step.
Waterfall chart with negatives
My post about how to create a McKinsey-style waterfall chart is one of the most read on this blog. The method I showed breaks down when there are many negative numbers involved. The solution is a manual one, sketch your waterfall on a piece of paper, fill in all the numbers, and fiddle with colours until you get it right. Remove the automated data labels and put text boxes with the values instead. See the example below.
Out with the action verbs
At McKinsey, I was told to write my documents with action verbs: create strategy, draft business plan, begin execution, monitor progress. It is the correct way to write things, but space on a slide is scarce. More and more, I find myself violating the rule and writing the absolute minimum amount of words to get the idea across, every increase in font size is a plus.
The tiny legend
Many consulting charts feature a tiny legend in the top-right corner that explains what the shading in the bar chart means (for example “Have no access to clean drinking water”). Often that is the whole point of the chart and that legend deserve to be made a bit more visible.
1996 presentation training
In the bottom of my office drawer I just found a small card with personalised suggestions for better presenting that I had to fill out after a communication training at McKinsey all the way back in 1996. All the usual things are there: stance, eye contact, etc.
But one things stands out and is so 1996/McKinsey: “Introduce the slide before putting it up” (remember we were still in the time of the overhead projector). McKinsey slides were incredibly busy and filled with data, so plopping that overhead sheet on the projector without warning would overwhelm the audience.
Instead, we had to introduce the message of the slide, show it, talk people through the various elements of the slide (what is on the axes, what the line means, etc. etc.), and maybe repeat the key point one more time.
Now 16 years later, my approach has completely changed. When you put up a slide, it should be completely self explanatory, cutting out unnecessary clutter and spreading out content of multiple slides if needed.
But one things stands out and is so 1996/McKinsey: “Introduce the slide before putting it up” (remember we were still in the time of the overhead projector). McKinsey slides were incredibly busy and filled with data, so plopping that overhead sheet on the projector without warning would overwhelm the audience.
Instead, we had to introduce the message of the slide, show it, talk people through the various elements of the slide (what is on the axes, what the line means, etc. etc.), and maybe repeat the key point one more time.
Now 16 years later, my approach has completely changed. When you put up a slide, it should be completely self explanatory, cutting out unnecessary clutter and spreading out content of multiple slides if needed.
So what?
The first day of your career at McKinsey, you learned about the concept of “So what?”. It meant asking yourself what the real point of a chart full with analysis was, and writing that down as the title.
A so what should be meaningful, and not simply stating a fact for example instead of “We are making a loss in France”, maybe it should read: “It is time to leave the French market”
Once you established what the so what of the chart is, you could then go on an cut down any facts, data, or analysis that was not essential to make the point.
If you identified the key messages correctly you would be able to understand a document by just reading the headlines, the content of the slides just backs up what the title says.
A useful day-one concept, I still use it pretty much every day.
A so what should be meaningful, and not simply stating a fact for example instead of “We are making a loss in France”, maybe it should read: “It is time to leave the French market”
Once you established what the so what of the chart is, you could then go on an cut down any facts, data, or analysis that was not essential to make the point.
If you identified the key messages correctly you would be able to understand a document by just reading the headlines, the content of the slides just backs up what the title says.
A useful day-one concept, I still use it pretty much every day.
Strategy deck <> pitch deck
The other day a client showed me a pitch deck that a management consulting firm had prepared for them. Having been a consultant myself, I recognized it immediately: structured, organized, logical, dense. Great to solve a problem and/or convince an analytical audience with lots of facts.
Not good enough to make the sale: a good sales presentations needs to touch both the heart and the mind. Consulting presentations touch the latter, not the first.
Instead, put the consulting deck aside and start from scratch. What is the story you would like to tell? Sketch visuals without borrowing / Frankensteining / recycling charts from the consulting presentation.
Not good enough to make the sale: a good sales presentations needs to touch both the heart and the mind. Consulting presentations touch the latter, not the first.
Instead, put the consulting deck aside and start from scratch. What is the story you would like to tell? Sketch visuals without borrowing / Frankensteining / recycling charts from the consulting presentation.
Rubber stamping a business plan?
I had a phone call with a potential client yesterday. He needed an investor presentation but also was interested in a full business plan.
There are different documents that both are called business plan. One is a stack of files (spreadsheets, gantt charts, PowerPoint slides) that contains the company financials/budget, competitive analysis, and development mile stones. In short: real content. It does not have to look pretty.
The second one is a long document created in Microsoft Word in which market research data is copy pasted (IDC says our market is $1bn), the company opportunity is described with lots of buzz words, and so forth.
You need the first one, you can forget about the second type of business plan. They take forever to write, they take forever to iterate, and as a result they are always out of date. No one reads long written text. Brad Feld and others have called them obsolete.
My client admitted that the business plan job was simply a matter of writing up material that was already there. He was willing to invest lots of money and 2.5 months of work with a consulting firm to have the document rubber stamped, paying for the logo on the front page.
I think it is a waste of money, time, and effort. If the only thing the consulting firm does is write down stuff that already exists, investors will look right though it and judge the investment opportunity based on your content, not the way in which it is written. If it is market data you are after, pay for the market data directly, rather than by hiring a consulting firm in the middle.
Instead, spend a fraction of the 2.5 months time on creating a running slideument of PowerPoint slides and Excel sheets that is the first type of business plan that I was talking about. Change pages as new information becomes available. This document is the messy business plan that you can send to an investor who has expressed a serious interest and would like to dive deep in round 2 or 3 of the due diligence.
The real investor presentation is written for an audience that does not know you very well yet (round 0). It draws on information from the business plan slide deck, but not fully. This presentation are the visuals you feel you miss when you start explaining your business to someone new in 10 to 20 minutes and should be designed from scratch.
Are consultants always a waste of money? Not always (watch out I am biased having been one myself). They can be useful when there is a very specific problem to crack. For example: should we enter market A or B? And then, a firm is only useful if it adds new insights that cannot be bought from market research. A clever market forecast model, interviews with industry experts.
Another type of consultant who might be worth paying for is not a big firm with a big name, but a retired senior executive in the industry segment you are working. She can provide a very valuable expert opinion. These type of project are usually very short, but worth the money. You are not paying for analytical ground work, you are paying for the judgement of 30 years of experience delivered to you in 2 weeks.
In short, pay for real work, not rubber stamping.
If you are interested, here is an earlier post about why I do not believe in business plans.
There are different documents that both are called business plan. One is a stack of files (spreadsheets, gantt charts, PowerPoint slides) that contains the company financials/budget, competitive analysis, and development mile stones. In short: real content. It does not have to look pretty.
The second one is a long document created in Microsoft Word in which market research data is copy pasted (IDC says our market is $1bn), the company opportunity is described with lots of buzz words, and so forth.
You need the first one, you can forget about the second type of business plan. They take forever to write, they take forever to iterate, and as a result they are always out of date. No one reads long written text. Brad Feld and others have called them obsolete.
My client admitted that the business plan job was simply a matter of writing up material that was already there. He was willing to invest lots of money and 2.5 months of work with a consulting firm to have the document rubber stamped, paying for the logo on the front page.
I think it is a waste of money, time, and effort. If the only thing the consulting firm does is write down stuff that already exists, investors will look right though it and judge the investment opportunity based on your content, not the way in which it is written. If it is market data you are after, pay for the market data directly, rather than by hiring a consulting firm in the middle.
Instead, spend a fraction of the 2.5 months time on creating a running slideument of PowerPoint slides and Excel sheets that is the first type of business plan that I was talking about. Change pages as new information becomes available. This document is the messy business plan that you can send to an investor who has expressed a serious interest and would like to dive deep in round 2 or 3 of the due diligence.
The real investor presentation is written for an audience that does not know you very well yet (round 0). It draws on information from the business plan slide deck, but not fully. This presentation are the visuals you feel you miss when you start explaining your business to someone new in 10 to 20 minutes and should be designed from scratch.
Are consultants always a waste of money? Not always (watch out I am biased having been one myself). They can be useful when there is a very specific problem to crack. For example: should we enter market A or B? And then, a firm is only useful if it adds new insights that cannot be bought from market research. A clever market forecast model, interviews with industry experts.
Another type of consultant who might be worth paying for is not a big firm with a big name, but a retired senior executive in the industry segment you are working. She can provide a very valuable expert opinion. These type of project are usually very short, but worth the money. You are not paying for analytical ground work, you are paying for the judgement of 30 years of experience delivered to you in 2 weeks.
In short, pay for real work, not rubber stamping.
If you are interested, here is an earlier post about why I do not believe in business plans.
Presenting the slide
A decade ago when I just started my career at McKinsey, I always was very excited when I was asked to “present the slide” to the CEO of a client. Presenting the slide: the slide was primary, the presenter was secondary. There is nothing wrong with that. When designing your slide deck, just realize that this is the audience setting you are designing for.
McKinsey slide ruler nostalgia
Look what I found in the box with drawing tools of my children: my old McKinsey exhibit rulers! I would carry these with me 24 hours a day in the 1990s. All charts were sketched by hand before being handed over to graphics assistants who would convert them into computer visuals (first overhead slides, then PowerPoint slide shows).
The sketching by hand is a really good thing. But the limited number of available shapes restricted the creativity somewhat, all charts looked very similar as a result. See that big question mark? In case you did not know the answer (yet) :-).
The sketching by hand is a really good thing. But the limited number of available shapes restricted the creativity somewhat, all charts looked very similar as a result. See that big question mark? In case you did not know the answer (yet) :-).
Re-post: creating McKinsey-style water fall charts in PowerPoint
Waterfall charts can X-ray a complicated story. Here is an explanation about the technicalities of creating one in PowerPoint, here is an example of an application.
In defense of the U.S. Army spaghetti slide
This PowerPoint slide by the U.S. Army is making the rounds on the Internet to ridicule ineffective presentations that stifle creativity and decision making.
The article in the NYT does not actually talk about this busy slide specifically, it attacks the use of bullets points and the fact that the majority of time spent by staff in corporate/army headquarters is wasted on producing PowerPoint slides. Seth Godin is repeating today once more why bullet points are bad for you.
The spaghetti slide itself is not that bad, at least that is my opinion.
It makes the point that things are complex, that issues are related, all contributing to a highly unpredictable cause and effect sequence. Almost like the myth of chaos theory, and the butterfly in China that can cause a hurricane on the other side of the planet. Pretty good slide to visualize that.
I guess the source of the slide must have been some management consulting report that applied the technique of Business Dynamics to a complex problem (I recognize the many loops having used the tool in my previous life as a McKinsey consultant).
What is Business Dynamics? Business Dynamics tries to apply the physics of systems theory (electronic circuits, weather, ocean waves, etc.) to business. Complex problems consist of a number of forces. Forces influence each other. Forces can be good and bad, some cancel each other out, some reinforce each other. Everything is related to everything.
In some cases it is possible to model all these forces in a computer program and you get your hands on a very powerful tool: software can make simulations of what happens if you give the system 1 shock by studying the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th order effect of your action.
My guess is that's what the U.S. Army was trying to do, and the chart cited here is simply a screen dump of the output pages of these Business Dynamics tools. In itself, a sensible approach to the problem. Not sure whether it delivered the solution though.
A better way to present it could have been to start with the overwhelming complexity of the overall problem (serve the spaghetti), after which you pick one counter-intuitive loop and show how a positive action can actually do serious damage to the objective of your mission.
Dusting off the McKinsey business system
McKinsey has been posting a number of classic consulting frameworks under the title "enduring ideas" on the McKinsey Quarterly site. I discussed before: consulting frameworks are great for solving problems, but often less good at communicating solutions.
Recently, the business system was discussed. At McKinsey we used it to analyse the value chain of an industry (manufacturing, sales, distribution, etc.). The basic graphic concept of it (simple arrows) can also be used in another context: communicating a project schedule. See the example below.
Related reading:
- An earlier post on the McKinsey GE 9x9 matrix
- One on the McKinsey cost curve
- One on 2x2's
A daily dose of framework napkins
Yesterday's post about Venn diagrams led me to a blog that I seem to be the last person on the planet to discover: Indexed. Jessica Hagy posts a napkin-style framework everyday. Sometimes funny, sometimes with a valuable insight about life or an unusual way of looking at things. Here is an example:
Venn diagrams, but especially 2x2's, are very popular among McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other management consultants. "We have put the world into 4 buckets, so now we understand it".
Venn diagrams, but especially 2x2's, are very popular among McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other management consultants. "We have put the world into 4 buckets, so now we understand it".
For solving problems they are great, and I have used hundreds of them in my 17 year (oops) as a management consultant. All issues are on the map, how we can we move from one box to another?
But take a step back and think when you want to use these frameworks in a big keynote presentation. To illustrate my point: look at the drawings on the Indexed blog, and check which ones do you get in a second. Tricky isn't it?
My advice: use these 2x2 frameworks only
- if you want to show movement of dots in the boxes. For example you can use the same framework in a few slides to show changes in strategy, or the positioning of a company
- if you want to highlight how your company/idea differentiates itself from the competition (by being in the top right box).
Still, add Indexed to your RSS reader, it's great fun.
What about this: the presentation subtitle?
Here is a new idea. Zen-style presentations with large images and a few words in a big font do not stand very well on their own. Maybe we should apply something from the movies: add subtitles to a PowerPoint slide.
Interestingly, this concept is very similar to the "lead" in the ancient McKinsey exhibit format.
Another problem that would be solved by this is to make the information captured in a presentation searchable. In particular large knowledge firms (such as management consultants) struggle with archiving the knowledge that is hidden in PowerPoint presentations with little text.
- Crammed in a small black box that blends in with the black frame of the projector
- A small font that can be read when sitting in front of a screen, but blurs away when viewed from a distance (when a presenter is explaining the chart)
- Unlike notes pages, the text appears on the slide itself (in PDF, in SlideShare)
It's like reading a newspaper page:
- You read the small print under the images first
- You read the headlines after that
- You read the actual text last
An example below, click on an image to get a larger picture.
Interestingly, this concept is very similar to the "lead" in the ancient McKinsey exhibit format. 
Another problem that would be solved by this is to make the information captured in a presentation searchable. In particular large knowledge firms (such as management consultants) struggle with archiving the knowledge that is hidden in PowerPoint presentations with little text.
We used to have something like this at McKinsey
Information Aesthetics is talking about visualization nostalgia. Hey, we used to have a ruler like this at McKinsey. I will continue to look for one, or a picture. They were blue, had boxes for bar/column charts and pie diagrams, and a few triangles and arrows.
The bad thing is that all your charts sort of looked the same. The good news was that, because you were trained to use this ruler, you always tried to find a graphical way to present your information, hardly ever resorting to bullet points.
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