Industry sign banking alabama ppt easy
- During the six years I worked
in consulting at McKinsey, I created literally thousands
of PowerPoint slides, while working on several
client presentations. By doing that, I learned lots
of little tips and tricks, specific elements that consultants use to give their presentations the special
professional look that makes it ready for board room and just distinctive. When I flip through a
presentation, I can directly tell you if this is a
presentation from an MBB consulting firm. So from McKinsey, BCG or Bain, or if it's not. In this video, I'd like to share
the little things with you. The little tips and tricks,
the little elements that top consulting firms use to
make their presentations look like the way they do. I trust this will really help
you improve your presentations as well, and give them
the professional touch and feel that you're looking for. Hi guys, my name is Heinrich
and welcome to another coffee break with Firm Learning. If you're new to this channel,
on this channel I try to help you become successful
in the first years of your career by teaching you both the soft skill and the hard skill to excel
in your first business role. One of the things I frequently
talk about on this channel, is how you can excel you skills in both PowerPoint and Excel. Because, the truth is that
especially PowerPoint is one of the tools you will use
most frequently in most business roles out there. So, if you're taking any value
out of this video at all, please let's destroy
the like button for the YouTube algorithm and also
let's leave a comment below. And of course, please subscribe
to this channel and hit also the notification bell
to stay up-to-date on all the content I have planned for you. I will release at least one video for you every single Saturday, and on many weeks there are going to be two videos coming out for you. If you're not following
me on Instagram yet, my Instagram handle is
@firmlearning as well. On Instagram I'm releasing
new content every single day. Just giving you a bit
of a behind the scenes into my personal life and how I prepare all this content for you. And on my Instagram I share
even more content that will help you succeed in the
first years of your career. Today, I am talking to you
about lots of little tips and tricks that I learned
as a consultant working at McKinsey for six years. I share design principles
that consultants apply for literally every single
presentation that they use. Little elements that typically
appear on slides that almost every consultant use every day, but that I rarely see on
presentations outside of the consulting world. So if you're interested to
learn lots of little tips and tricks that you can use for your slide presentations as well. Look at this video until the end. And if you're one of those people that are really interested to take
your slide presentation game to the next level, I even released a multi-hour
course and all the tips and tricks that I learned
at McKinsey on how you make top management style presentations. There are already over 10,000 students taking the course. If you're interested in that, I leave a link to the course in the description down below. So, if you'd like to learn more about that and also read lots of student reviews, feel free to have a look
and check out the course. But, now let's dive into that. I prepared a bunch of
slides for you that just illustrate my points. Let's now switch to my
computer to have a look how this looks like. Alright, let's jump into it. So let's start with some basics. Some basic elements
that should be included on every single page. So let's start here on the bottom. What you see here is the date. The current date. And pretty frequently
you put here the date either when the presentation happened, where you present your pages, or when you created a document. Because what you will also
find is that many documents in professional contexts, many presentations, many slides, are not actually created
for actual presentation, but rather as a document
that is then circulated, sent around in a company. And a date is just important, because when in retrospect, you're able to actually know, to understand when the
document was created. Which of course, is
important in many ways. The second thing that you'll include on pretty much every page, is a page number. This of course, is very useful if you sit in a meeting and just a colleague wants to refer to a specific page. Then to be able to say okay, this is a page 18 and then everybody knows what page 18 exactly is, because there is a page number
included on the document. Then of course, is very important. Next thing you should
look at is the source. So here you can include a source, such as Firm Learning. Of course, you can even
then include, just your name or your department as a source, but even better would be
especially if you refer to a specific data, then also
give the source of the data. So what date are you using? Where is the data coming from? When was the date collected? Some specific information
on what data you're using is what you can likely
include here in the source. The next element that you
can use are footnotes. So, footnotes, one, two, three,
this is just a part where you can give specific
details on certain things. But maybe just not fit in the regular text on your page. Then you would just
include it in the footnote to give you some extra space, because it's often a smaller font size than the main page. Just to show additional remarks. And of course, one of the most important elements of every page is the action title. The action title is the title of the page. And creating a good action
title is an art form itself. Now, I will not go into much of detail in this video, what a good
action title looks like, because, I already
created a specific video only focusing on action titles. The video even includes
an exercise how you can improve your action title creation skills. If you're interested in that, have a look. I will include a link
to the video above so that you can directly look into it. So far, so good. So this was some just really bare basics that should be included in every page. Let's jump into something else. And this is the creation of charts. So what you will see in consulting, is that almost every slide that you use, contains a chart. So some kind of diagram
where you depict data. The reason is that in consulting, very frequently, your argumentation
will be based on data. You can just expect from you, that you will back up your findings and your recommendations with
some date-driven analysis. And if you do these kind of data analysis, of course, you will
frequently use charts to then show the results of your analysis. And these are just the
charts that you can create with the think-cell expansion. If you do not know think-cell, it's a plugin that very frequently is used by consulting firms to create the charts. So, almost every consulting firm uses it. Of course, if you do not have it, you can just also work with the regular PowerPoint built-in charts. If you have the opportunity
to use think-cell, I can highly recommend it, because it really improves your workflow. If you now go over this chart tiles, many of them you will already know and probably frequently use yourself. Such as, stacked bar charts,
or the 100% bar charts, clustered bar charts, and so on. Right now, I'd just like
to put your attention to the waterfall chart type. So the waterfall chart
type is a chart type that in consulting, especially at McKinsey, you
will use all of the time. So, there's almost no presentation without a waterfall present. But, outside of consulting,
I really rarely see it. Just from my observation. The fact alone that a
presentation includes a waterfall chart, very often
is a clear, telltale sign that a MBB consulting firm worked on it. And actually, most of the
cases, it has been McKinsey, because, for whatever reason, waterfall charts are just so commonly used by McKinsey consultants. So, let's look at an example. So, this is just a basic example of what a waterfall chart looks like. And I'd just like to use
this example to show to you what I believe the waterfall
charts can just be so helpful in so many business presentations. So, this of course is
just a stylist chart, an illustrative chart, so let's not care about the specific numbers. But, this is now a bridge chart. Actually, many people,
instead of using waterfalls, they also just call them bridges. So, bridge chart. Because, waterfall charts are very helpful to show a bridge. To show how one number
relates to another number. One way that this is frequently used is to show bridges
between financial figures. So, here we compare the EBITDA. So, the earnings before
interest text depreciation amortization of 2019.
To the EBITDA in 2020, and we like to understand the difference. And if you just look at the numbers, here it has been 1.59,
and here it has been 1.67. So, at first glance, it
could look like the numbers are pretty similar. So you could infer, that actually the company
has been quite stable, there were many things
that actually changed. If you don't break down
the difference of these two numbers, into all the effects, that actually changed, from 2019 to 2020. You'd see that there are quite some things going on. So here was one effect that if you use the EBITDA by 700, but then this is compensated
by another effect that increased it by 730. And there's another positive effect, further increasing it by 450. And a reduction by 650, and then another increase in 250. So what you can see is
that the waterfall chart really enables you to breakdown something into the
different sub components that were driving it. And then enable it to
make changes visible, that were just not visible. Just looking at the total difference between two numbers. Let's now look into another very ambiguous chart element. This is a so-called, callout. This is this element right here. So, this is an element that you can just include in a chart. Gives details about this specific element. So as I wrote here, it
can include remarks on specific elements of
a chart or other relevant contributions that you wanna make. A callout is something
that you can easily use, just add details, add information, add context to one specific element. This is a frequent way how you can do it. So, this element just
consists of one line, and then another line
with a special ending. So, if you has never
created this yourself. I just broke down here the elements here, you see the line and that this is just another line, then it's you
can know in the line settings, you can just add also
such an endpoint to it. Then if you combine it,
this is what it looks like. So, this is just an easy way to create this kind of callout elements. And believe it or not,
but, callouts like this will be used in pretty much every single consulting presentations that you see. Another element that
might have catched your attention is something
that is called a sticker. And this is what you see
here in the top right. So, a sticker is a qualification of the page that you use. Here, you see the preliminary sticker. So, let's now just go over
some examples of stickers that are frequently and commonly used. Then what the context is how you use them, in the consulting context. So, for discussion sticker, the preliminary sticker, highly preliminary, indicative, and then illustrative. So, these are probably the five most commonly used stickers. Of course, you could write
other things as well. And stickers are elements that are pretty much used to protect yourself. So, why could this be important? Why would you need to protect yourself? So, let's imagine you make an analysis, which might be a bit controversial, you know that their resides, will not please everybody. And what you can do is, to include such a for discussion sticker, then if you walk into a meeting, then you realize that your analysis sparks some discussion, and then yet you can say, well, "Yes, of course, this
is not the final result." "This is just for discussion." As you also wrote here. "So let's just have a
discussion about it." "I'm interested to hear your opinion." "What is your view of it?" "Why do you believe this is true?" "What is your opinion?" So, this is how you frequently use such a for discussion sticker. Preliminary and highly preliminary, this is just something to make clear, that the results that you're showing, the analysis that you are doing, are not the final ones. And here again, this just,
is a way to protect yourself, that then if later it comes out that maybe your were missing some data. That there additional information that you would need to take into consideration. You can just say, "Yes, of
course, this analysis that" "we did here was only preliminary." "This was not the final version." This is also again to protect yourself, because, otherwise, it could happen, and these things happen, right? That there is a hostile client, that then just points out
a page that you created, maybe in the first weeks
of your engagement, that you were just learning, trying to understand the data. And the page you labeled, you
just did, was complete BS, because this analysis that you created, was just obviously not correct. Right? And maybe he was right,
maybe it just wasn't correct, because you didn't have the full picture. But, then you can say, "Yes,
Mister, this is true, you are" "right, but as you can also
read here, this was not a final" "version of the analysis." "This was just a preliminary version." And incidents like that happen. And this is why you put the
preliminary sticker on it. That's similar, but different
is the indicative sticker and also the illustrative sticker. So, an indicative sticker,
you can use just to make it clear that a certain
analysis that you make, maybe has some flaws, maybe has some drawbacks. So, the numbers that you show, should not be taken that serious. But, it gives a good direction, so that you believe that the analysis, the results that you
show, are at least are indicatively right, and these show the right direction, the right picture, even thought the specific
numbers that you use might not be accurate. And, this of course can
happen in any situation. You need to work with
the incomplete data sets, where you're lacking certain information that you just were not able to use. Then, you might want to
make it clear that the analysis that you're
showing is just indicative. Illustrative goes kind of
even further than indicative. And, it's sometimes also
used a bit, in a dirty way, in the sense that you can
show a whole chart of very specific information,
very specific graphs, then you can put an
illustrative sticker on it. You can make it clear that actually the numbers are not true. That you just made up
the whole chart, right? Maybe, the whole chart doesn't contain any real numbers at all. But, you just wanted to
show a certain relationship, how you believe that it
is from your experience, or maybe from other
information that you have. So, you're just drawing this chart, which maybe not even contains
any real numbers at all, but illustratively, this
is the chart you believe it looks like. So, this is how you put the
illustrative sticker on it. So, if you see the illustrative
sticker on a presentation, pretty frequently, you
can assume that actually, the numbers are not real. The numbers are not actual numbers. But, this chart pretty
much just was made up by the consultant who used it. So, now another element
that you can frequently use, is something that is
called a takeaway box. So, takeaway boxes are something like this that you
include below your chart. It includes an important overall remark. So, while the callout you saw earlier, usually is used for just
given information on a specific element of the chart. If you ever have genuine information, that is relevant to the whole chart, you can just include such a takeaway box, below the chart that you are showing. In the takeaway box, you can
just include the main insight, the main piece of information, that you want the reader,
the viewer, the listener, to takeaway from the chart
that you are showing. Another element that you
can use that looks similar, but is often used in a
slightly different way. It is something that
you would call a bubble. So bubble is sometimes
also called a sticker, and it's included in a
chart in some way like that, so you purposely make it look like this, just included in front of something else. It looks a bit less
informal, than for instance, a takeaway box. And, a bubble you often use to include some kind of limitation to the analysis that you are showing a limitation to the data
that you are showing. And, a bubble is called a bubble, because sometimes, instead
of a rectangular form, you can also use a circular
form of the text that you are showing. So, that the text is included in a circle, instead of a rectangular form. From the standpoint,
bubbles are so important, you need to put yourself into the shoes of a consultant. Because, very frequently, you
receive certain data sets, certain informations from your clients. And then you take several days, or maybe even weeks to
then conduct the analysis, and then to come up with
some kind of a result. Then very often, what
happens, is that then, the last days, some anxious hours before the big presentation, where you then want to show the results, you receive some new information, maybe you realize that now
some new data came out, maybe now, the next month's finished, and now you put, re-do all the analysis, with all the data from
the new time period, from the new month. In these situations, you're
very frequently faced with the decision to whether
you want to re-do now, all the analysis, to incorporate this new
information, or whether, will you leave all the analysis as-is? And, then just include
a bubble on the page, stating the limitation,
or stating what has not yet been included in the analysis. Bubbles are so important,
because very frequently, instead of re-doing the whole
thing, re-doing analysis, re-creating all kinds of pages. Problems like that, you can
frequently use with the bubble. And, this is why there is a
magic saying in consulting, and this goes like, "If
in trouble use a bubble!" So, if you are struggling with something, something just isn't right. You just need to use this statement, just need to make some corrections, in the end, if you're in trouble, most of the problems you
can just use with a bubble. Just stating the specific
things that you want to change. Now, some other frequently used elements are circles with numbers. This, again, is something
that I very frequently see in consulting presentations, but I rarely see lines of
circles with numbers like that in presentations that are being
done by non-consulting people. So, how do you use these things. So, you can use these kinds
of number circles, whenever, you want to include another layer of data. Another dimension of numbers, which is not directly part of the chart. So, let's look at this stylized chart. So, what do we see here? So, these are the revenue
figures of a business. But, not the absolute figures, but the difference to the previous year. So, we look into these calendar weeks, and we look into how
the business performed against the previous years. So, here, so this would
mean that in the calendar week seven of the year, the business had revenues that
were by a 100 million higher than in the previous year. You have 200 million
higher, 250 million higher, here a 100 million less, and so on. Of course, in this context,
if you look at this, it would be interesting
and important to us, to include what the absolute amount, what the revenue was in
the current year 2020. In situations like that, where
you just want to include as a second point of data,
second point of information, circles of numbers like that
are just very commonly used. So, here you would now
include information, that in the calendar week seven, you make now the revenues of 900 million, and this was 100 million more than you made in the previous year. Then, regarding the
legend, what you do is, the main legend that you
state in the chart title, the main legend always refers to the numbers in the main chart. And, for the circles, you
can include a sub-legend, then explain what is shown
and depicted in these circles. And, if you're interested to
learn more about how to set up consulting style charts, like that. I created a whole other
video just discussing how you should set up the chart title, then also the subtitle,
and things like that. So, if you haven't seen that yet, I believe this is also highly relevant, and something that you need to know, if you work in consulting, or want to create
presentations that meet the standards of consulting firms. I will leave it above here for you, check it out if you'd
like to see it as well. Next concept I would like
to talk about is also a very, very important one. And, it's the concept of clotheslines. More specifically, of
avoiding clotheslines. So, what do we call
clotheslines in consulting? Clotheslines are referred to
as just long lists of things, and specifically in the context of creating PowerPoint presentations, just long lists of bullets. So, what you will always never see in consulting style presentations, is just the list of bullets like that, where you just randomly
list all kinds of thoughts, or other explanations that you want to. So, why is this bad? So, if you just use a list
of thoughts like this, what you're missing,
what you're not showing, what you're not doing, is giving
it some kind of structure. If you present things like that, it looks completely random. The person looking at it, can have no trust at all
that actually the things that are mentioned here are complete, that all the relevant aspects have been discussed and addressed by you. But, it just seems like
a completely random unstructured list of points. In such an unstructured list of points, is what you would call a clothesline. And, you want to avoid clotheslines. So, what is now used
in consulting to avoid clotheslines like that? And, very frequently, what you do is to use structure elements. So, here again, just in
the illustrative page, this could be out of, for
instance, an M&A transaction, a merger's and acquisition transaction. Where one company aims
to buy another company. Another company is showing
how the purchasing price that they want to offer
for a company splits down to the different assets
that the company has, and that the company is selling. Here again, this is now, another frequent use of a waterfall chart, that you now have the
total purchasing price. Now you show how this breaks
down into the different subelements of the company. Now, here you have the different
assets that the company has to offer us, so here,
property, plant and equipment. Then, of course, there could
be a whole lot of other assets that the company offers, for instance, inventory, and so on. Now, a clothesline would be
just to state all these assets, just in a random list of bullets. Now, to avoid clotheslines, what you often use is structure elements. So, what you try, is to define buckets, to define groups of elements, then you can use to organize
the different subelements, that are from bullet points that you have. Now, here just a simple
example is to use gray bars, that you include in front of the elements, then the company you will
often distinguish the fixed assets from the current assets. This is now a structure that I defined, in that, in this structure, now I can use a different bullet points. And, I hope you now understand,
that this is superior to other ways of structuring the points. Because, now, by having
to use the structure, fixed assets, and current assets, I already have some kind of guarantee, that if I now look at
these two types of assets, I will catch all the assets that are included in the company. Because, this way, now I have covered the whole balance sheet of the company. And, I can be sure that
I will have covered all the assets within these two groups. So, always use structure elements, avoid at all costs, using clotheslines, because, this is just
completely unprofessional. This is probably one of the
first points of feedback that you will get as a young consultant. If you created a page just using a list of bullet points like this. So, this concludes my little
list of tips and tricks of elements that you can use to improve your PowerPoint pages as well. I hope you found this was useful. If you have any questions about that, feel free to leave me a comment below in the comment section. I will answer every single comment, and I also like to hear from you, what are your little tips? What are the things that
you've frequently use to improve your presentations? Let's have a conversation here from which everybody can benefit. Again, if you took any value
out of this video at all, please hit the like button
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