Who this is for: Managers, consultants, analysts, founders, and anyone preparing a deck for review.
Work problem: Deck work often starts with slide production before the story, evidence, and review questions are clear. This workflow drafts the outline first.
What you need before running this:
- Deck objective and audience.
- Decision, update, or recommendation the deck supports.
- Available evidence, source notes, or data.
- Required length, tone, and meeting context.
Create a review-ready deck outline from the inputs below.
Do not invent data, customer quotes, charts, financial results, or source-backed claims. If a slide needs evidence I did not provide, mark it as "evidence needed."
Deck objective:
[write]
Audience:
[write]
Decision or message:
[write]
Available evidence:
[paste notes, data summaries, links, or attach files]
Constraints:
[slide count, tone, meeting type, required sections]
Produce:
1. One-sentence storyline.
2. Slide outline table: slide number, title, purpose, key message, evidence needed, and reviewer question.
3. Appendix candidates: supporting detail that should not be in the main flow.
4. Evidence gaps: claims that need data or source review.
5. Review checklist: what the deck owner should check before making slides.
Keep slide titles action-oriented and avoid unsupported claims.
A good run produces:
- A coherent storyline before slide design begins.
- Slide titles with clear purpose.
- Evidence gaps visible to reviewers.
- Appendix candidates separated from main narrative.
Before building slides:
- Confirm the deck objective with the decision owner.
- Check every evidence-needed item.
- Remove claims that cannot be supported.
- Confirm the slide count and audience level.
- Review whether the storyline is honest and complete.
Where this workflow can go wrong:
- It may create a persuasive storyline from weak evidence.
- It may overfit to a common consulting deck structure.
- It may hide messy tradeoffs in appendix slides.
- It may suggest charts that the data cannot support.
This workflow does not create verified slides or charts. It creates an outline that still needs source review, data validation, and audience-specific editing.