The Playbook

The one rule everything hangs off: audience first

Before a single slide, answer three questions in one sentence each:

• Who is in the room? Their role, their level, what they already know, what they care about.
• What do I need them to do or decide when I stop talking?
• What is the one thing they will remember tomorrow if they forget everything else?

Everything after this serves those answers. A deck is not a document you read aloud. It is a tool for moving a specific audience from where they are to where you need them to be.

One message per slide

When a slide carries two or more ideas, the audience is split between them and holds neither. A slide with one clear message consistently beats a slide trying to carry many. If you cannot say what a slide is for in one line, it is doing too much: split it or cut it.

Write the slide title as the message, not the topic

This is the single highest-leverage habit in deck-building.

The topic title makes the audience wait and interpret. The message title lands the point instantly, and the rest of the slide just proves it. If you read only the titles top to bottom, they should tell the whole story on their own. This is the fastest way to pressure-test whether your deck actually has an argument.

The Glance Test and signal-to-noise

Every slide is “glance media”: people take it in, in seconds, while also listening to you. So maximise the signal-to-noise ratio, the proportion of what is on the slide that actually carries meaning. Strip anything that does not earn its place: decorative clutter, stray logos, gratuitous animation, walls of text. Restraint is not minimalism for its own sake; it is what lets the point cut through.

Data on slides: restrain, reduce, emphasise

The only rules for showing data are tell the truth and keep it simple. Three moves turn a cluttered chart into a clear one:

• Colour to lead the eye. Highlight the one data point that matters; mute everything else to grey.
• Annotate the takeaway. Add a short callout or arrow pointing at the number the audience should remember. Do not make them hunt for it.
• Make it readable in two seconds. Cut chart junk (heavy gridlines, redundant legends, 3D effects). Put the “so what” in the chart title.

A chart is not the finding. The finding is the sentence you would say about the chart, so write that sentence on the slide.

Design that supports, not distracts

• Consistency beats decoration. One type hierarchy, one colour system, generous white space. A consistent deck reads as competent before you say a word.
• Contrast creates focus. Size, colour and position tell the eye what matters first.
• Legibility from the back of the room. If you are squinting on your laptop, they cannot read it at all.
• Brand it properly. On-brand colours, fonts and lockups signal that the work is finished and official, not a draft.

Good design makes a deck pleasant. Good framing makes it persuasive. These are the frameworks that do the heavy lifting.

Message down, not up (the Pyramid Principle)

Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle, built at McKinsey, is the backbone of executive communication. The core idea: start with the answer, then support it. Do not build up to it.

Most people present the way they worked: background, then analysis, then options, then, finally, the conclusion. Busy audiences hate this. They want the headline first, then the reasons, then the detail, so they can grasp your point immediately and interrogate it if they want.

If someone only hears your first slide, they should already have the point.

SCQA: how to open so people lean in

SCQA (also Minto) is the opening structure that earns attention before you deliver the answer:

SCQA is the runway; the Pyramid is the plane. Use SCQA to set up the problem, then message down from your answer.

Tell it as a story, not a list

A narrative beats a bullet dump because it creates tension and resolution, and people remember tension. A reliable arc for business:

1. Make the audience the hero, you the guide. It is about their problem, not your work.
2. Open on the challenge they face. Name the real pain.
3. Build contrast between what is and what could be. The gap is the engine of the whole talk.
4. Give them a moment that sticks: a surprising number, a vivid example, a short story.
5. Close on a clear picture of the better future your recommendation unlocks, and the single next step.

Contrast and surprise are what keep a room awake. When the expected thing does not happen, people re-engage. Build at least one genuine “here is the thing you did not expect” beat into every important deck.

The “so what?” test

After every slide and every section, ask “so what?” on the audience’s behalf. If the slide does not change what they think or do, it is background: move it to an appendix or cut it. Ruthless “so what” editing is what separates a tight 12-slide pack from a bloated 40-slide one.

A default structure you can reuse

AI is not a “make me a deck” button. It is a collaborator across the whole workflow, and the value compounds when you use it at every stage rather than once at the start. The biggest mistake people make is prompting once and expecting a finished pack.

Where AI helps most (blank page to finished pack)

How to prompt for good decks

• Give context, not just a command. Topic + audience + tone + length + constraints.
• Attach your source material. Briefs, data, prior decks. Relevance goes up and guesswork goes down.
• Work in stages, and review each one. Outline, titles, copy, build, QC. Steer at every gate.
• State your non-negotiables once, up front. Brand colours, UK English, house structure. Then they apply to everything.
• Ask for options when stuck. “Give me three ways to open this” is better than accepting the first draft.

What AI will not do for you

• Decide what matters. The judgement about your one message and your ask is yours.
• Know the room. You hold the political and audience context; give it to the AI or it will guess.
• Be right by default. Always check numbers, names and claims. AI is confident even when wrong.
• Deliver it. The pack is a prop. The connection with the room is you.

The pattern

A repeatable recipe

1. Brief the AI like a colleague. Audience, purpose, the one message, tone, length, hard rules, source files.
2. Get the narrative first. Approve an outline built message-down with an SCQA open. Fix the story here.
3. Turn titles into messages. Read them in sequence: do they argue the case?
4. Build the branded pack. Keep on-slide text light.
5. Render, look, fix. Loop. Never approve a deck you have not seen rendered.
6. The QC pass. A full review sweep for brand, copy, overlaps, rule breaches.
7. Add companion assets. One-pager, PDF, HTML version as needed.
8. Make it yours. Final human tweaks, then hand over.

Twenty-five prompts across the whole PM job: copy, adapt, reuse. Fill the brackets. Every card copies the full prompt to your clipboard, then open your AI tool of choice below.

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