Why a McKinsey-style presentation makes the difference
Good ideas don’t speak for themselves. Two teams can reach the same conclusions and leave the same meeting with very different outcomes: one gets a decision, the other gets “let’s revisit this next month”. More often than not, the difference lies in how the presentation was built, and this is precisely where a McKinsey-style presentation stands out.
When preparing a presentation, most teams invest the majority of their effort in producing analysis, then assemble slides, adjust messages and take care of layout if time allows. The result is often a deck which documents the work, but fails to make the point.
Audiences care about implications and decisions, not methodology. The real value lies in turning the work into clear, convincing, actionable messages. This is what storylining and slide writing are for: not an afterthought, but a deliberate discipline that determines whether your ideas land or get lost.
Read more: Every business presentation should tell a story, Consultants care about slide layout, and you should too
Strategy consultants have developed a structured process to build impactful presentations, in which analysis, storylining and slide writing evolve together in an iterative loop. Here is how it works, step by step.
1. Draft a presentation skeleton
Before building any content, establish the skeleton of your presentation.
Optional: set up the Slide Master, or use an existing template
Set up your template. If you have a slide template or master, configure it before adding any slides. It will save significant time on formatting later.
Read more: How to use the Slide Master and build a slide library
Build your storyline
Storylining is the work of turning your insights into a clear, logical and convincing flow. It produces two outputs that you build together: the executive summary, which states the story on a single slide, and the storyboard, which deploys it across the deck.
Work in hypotheses from the start
Your reading of the situation, the problem, and your recommendation can all be drafted before your analysis is finished, then tested and refined as findings come in. This is how most consultants actually work.
Make sure your storyline item is a clear message
Every statement in your storyline should state one message (not a topic), be specific, and stay short. On slides, titles written this way are known as action titles, as opposed to descriptive titles like “Market overview” or “2024 results”.
Read more: Every business presentation should tell a story, Action titles: how to write slide titles like a consultant
Formalise your storyline in an executive summary and a storyboard
The executive summary: your story on one slide
Start here. The executive summary is the most important slide in your deck, and the one that fixes the story everything else will serve.
Open a blank slide in your presentation software.
Set the scene, briefly
Open with a short Situation and Complication: the shared context and the tension that makes a decision necessary. Skipping straight to a recommendation feels abrupt, even with the most senior audience, and risks misalignment if your audience doesn’t share your reading of the situation. But keep it short, a sentence or two each. Its only job is to earn you the right to deliver your answer. Together with the recommendation that follows, this Situation-Complication-Resolution sequence is known as the SCR framework.
Then lead with your answer
Once the scene is set, flip the logic: start with the takeaway, work backwards to the supporting arguments and evidence. Senior audiences are time-constrained, more interested in your findings than your method, and likely to interrupt or redirect (see How to present to senior management: what they expect and how to deliver it).
Leading top-down ensures your key message lands even if the discussion gets cut short. This is the Pyramid Principle: main message on top, then two to four supporting arguments, each backed by evidence. Make sure those arguments are MECE: distinct, and collectively covering the full case.
Stop at the second level
On the executive summary, you usually only write the top two levels of the pyramid: your main message and its supporting arguments. The evidence, the third level, goes into the storyboard.
Note: this structure is built for presentations meant to convince a decision-maker. A purely informative presentation usually works differently: instead of one main message framed by a Situation and Complication, you’ll have several parallel key messages, one per category (schedule, budget, risks, etc.), each structured as its own small pyramid.
Read more: How to write an executive summary slide (with example), SCR framework: Situation, Complication, Resolution explained, What is the Pyramid Principle? Minto’s method explained, The MECE principle explained with examples
The storyboard: your story across the deck
Alongside the executive summary, build the storyboard. Start with one blank slide per executive summary item, with a title that mirrors that item exactly. Reading the titles in sequence should tell the same story as your storyline: this is your deck’s horizontal flow.
While you usually stop at arguments in the executive summary, the storyboard contains the full story. It is where the evidence goes. As you write each argument, note on its slide the data points and analyses that prove it, or, if your analysis isn’t finished yet, the ones you expect will. It keeps your research focused on what the story actually needs. Some evidence will fit in the slide body; some deserves a deep-dive slide of its own, titled with the evidence point it proves. Deep-dive titles won’t necessarily appear in the executive summary, but each one should support a specific executive summary item and slot into the story right under it.
Read more: How is a consulting slide deck structured?, Action titles: how to write slide titles like a consultant
Make the two outputs work together
The executive summary leads: it fixes the story, and the storyboard serves it. But the two keep each other honest. If an argument turns out to have little evidence behind it in the storyboard, revisit it in the executive summary. If the storyboard grows slides that don’t connect to any executive summary item, either they don’t belong in the story and should be removed, or the executive summary is missing something.
Add structure slides
Add structure slides. These are the navigational elements that give your deck a professional frame: an opening slide, an agenda slide outlining the main sections, divider slides marking transitions between them, and a closing slide.
Read more: How is a consulting slide deck structured?
Skeleton example
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Skeleton example (EcoHome)
EcoHome has experienced steady success over the past 10 years.
Competition has intensified and profits began to decline since last year.
EcoHome must innovate and shift to direct-to-consumer sales.
- Current products are outdated.
- Consumers now prefer smart home technology.
- Direct-to-consumer sales increase profitability.
A good skeleton must contain an executive summary, a storyboard (blank slides with titles) and structure slides.
Below is an example of what a good skeleton could look like for EcoHome. Use the slider to see the entire skeleton.
2. Build the slide bodies
With the skeleton in place, build each slide body. Together, they form your deck’s vertical flow: beneath each title, elements which support it.
Optional: Reuse, once the skeleton is in place
If a slide you’ve already built can support a message, insert it, but not before the skeleton exists: every slide should serve the story, not the other way around.
The same goes for design: if you’ve already built a framework or diagram for a similar type of information, adapt it rather than starting from scratch. Keeping your best designs in a slide library makes this much faster.
Read more: How to use the Slide Master and build a slide library
Choose the right visual element
Use structured text for qualitative insights, charts for quantitative comparisons, and diagrams for processes and frameworks.
Read more: Chart types: how to choose the right chart for your data
Focus on what matters
Only include elements which support the title’s key message. If an element does not support the message, it gets its own slide, provided it fits the storyline.
Keep only the detail your audience needs. The goal is to drive a decision, not to show all the work done. Move the rest to the appendix.
Write short, sharp sentences, without buzzwords or jargon.
Read more: One message per slide: why it matters and how to apply it
Show the way
Guide your audience to the conclusion rather than letting them draw their own. Group related findings, and use contrast (bold, size, color) to draw attention to the important information while toning down the rest. If your presentation is long, add a navigator.
Be rigorous
Check spelling, make sure the numbers add up, label every chart, source every external data point, add footnotes where context is needed, and remove double spaces.
Make it look clean
Align related elements, leave white space, keep a clear margin around the slide, use a professional font, a readable font size and remove “orphan” words.
Read more: Anatomy of a consulting slide: what great slides share
3. Ensure consistency
Flip through the entire deck and check that design choices are applied consistently: title positions, headers, footers, logos, margins, fonts, colors, and chart styles. If you’ve used a Slide Master, much of this is already handled.
Title alignment is the classic example. A slight shift in title position is easy to overlook on a single slide, but it becomes distracting as soon as you flip through the deck. It is like reading a book where every page has different margins. It’s one of the first things I point out when reviewing a deck: simple to fix, with a dramatic impact on how your work is perceived.
4. Iterate and refine
Building presentations is an iterative process. Don’t expect to get it perfect on the first try. Storylining, slide writing, and analysis are not strictly sequential. In practice, you will iterate, coming back to the executive summary as findings evolve, adjusting titles as the argument sharpens. The structure above is a framework, not a rigid sequence.
Step away from your slides periodically. It’s easy to lose perspective the longer you stare at the same deck, and a break helps you come back with fresh eyes.
Then read it through your audience’s eyes: what might be clear to you may not be immediately obvious to them.
Ask a colleague for feedback before the final version; fresh eyes catch what you’ve stopped noticing.
Want to make sure your deck is good to go? Check the business presentation checklist.
A McKinsey-style presentation is a learnable discipline
The four steps above give you the framework, and the articles linked throughout go deeper on each element.
Want to apply these principles faster? The inslidr toolkit gives you 100+ slide layouts built on these consulting best practices, ready to drop into your decks.
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