big name consulting firms like mckenzie bain and bcg all do one thing really well they create amazing presentations for their clients but it's not just the formatting and design that makes these presentations so special it's the story they tell in this video i'm going to teach you how to take your presentation and turn it into a story with clear takeaways compelling insights and an engaging narrative i'll walk through each step of the storytelling process in detail and show you a couple examples of what this looks like in the real world all that and more coming up [Music] hi everyone my name is paul and i'm an instructor at the analyst academy we provide advanced powerpoint presentation design and data visualization training to consulting strategy and finance teams so if that sounds like something you're interested in make sure you visit us at theanalystacademy.com when building a presentation regardless of who the audience is you have one primary goal to make it as easy as possible for the audience to understand what you're trying to tell them and this can be difficult business presentations tend to have a lot of data and information and it can be hard for the audience to grasp the key insights right away especially if they're trying to also listen to the speaker and think about what they're going to say in response so when building your deck it's especially important to make sure it's structured in a way that makes it clear insightful and engaging it's something top consulting firms do really well thanks in part to two important concepts the scqa framework and the pyramid principle in simple terms scqa is just a framework for presentations that allows you to craft a story around the information you're trying to present it stands for situation complication question and answer every presentation is an answer to some question such as should we acquire this company or how did this marketing campaign perform or even what did you find in your research and the scqa framework just allows you to provide context for that answer practically speaking this means that your main deck is used to show your answer and the situation complication in question or how you provide context for that answer let's consider an example let's say you're on a consulting case for disney the executives have asked you to make a recommendation for where they should build their next theme park the main part of your presentation will be the actual recommendation and all the supporting details but then the situation complication and question will form your introduction slide the situation is how things are right now the complication represents a change in that situation and is the reason why the presentation is needed the question is what gets raised by the complication and what needs to be solved then the answer is the resolution so here the situation might be something like disney's looking to grow revenue by opening a new park the complication could be they need to decide where to open this park which then leads to the implicit question which is where should disney open its next theme park then the main part of your deck answers this question and notice how this brings the presentation to life it puts the presentation in context and it tells the audience why they should care instead of just dropping them in the middle of your data you're leading them along and creating a narrative remember your goal is to make it as easy as possible for the audience to understand what you're trying to tell them consulting firms in particular do this really well let's take a look at an example from bcg the presentation is for a non-profit organization that invests in open education resources or oer which are basically education resources that are made available to everyone and here's the introduction slide notice how they've titled it context of the work because really that's what it is they're just giving context before diving into the presentation the first line says since the william and flora hewlett foundation began investing in open education resources in 2012 the field has grown significantly the past decade has seen an influx of oer and increased awareness and adoption and notice how this just clearly and plainly explains a steady state situation how things are right now and this is our situation then the next line says however and by the way that should be your clue that a complication is coming the word however however more work remains to push the oer movement from the sidelines of mainstream education into the center of the classroom okay so now we have our complication things are looking good for oer however more work remains and already you can see how this is setting up the presentation situation leads to the complication and the complication very naturally leads to the question which is right here the foundation engaged the boston consulting group in late 2012 to evaluate the state of the current ecosystem in the united states and to help understand how to measure the movement's progress towards a sustainable mainstream end state now although they don't state the question explicitly you can see it in the text the question is what is the state of the current ecosystem in the u.s and how can we measure the movement's progress and now we have the right set up for the presentation and we're ready to hear the answer everyone is on the same page and the audience is ready to go it might seem like a small piece of the presentation but all the major consulting firms use this framework to turn what otherwise might be a dry presentation into a persuasive story with a clear narrative so that brings us to the second important concept the pyramid principle if you've watched our other videos or taken some of our advanced courses you'll know that we talk about the pyramid principle a lot especially as it relates to slide structure but here i'm going to focus on how it applies to storyboarding and the presentation as a whole put simply the pyramid principle is just a way of communicating information where you start with the main idea and then provide the supporting details and data of that idea going back to our disney example the main idea would be on top then the two supporting points would be below that if you recall the question is where should disney build a new theme park let's say that your answer is that disney should build a new theme park in rio de janeiro brazil then two supporting reasons for that answer might be that rio is a major tourist destination and that the disney brand is strong in brazil and if you wanted you could continue creating additional layers to your pyramid with more supporting details and data in a presentation the way you would communicate this is from top to bottom and the reason why that approach is so effective is because you provide the audience with context first before giving them more granular detail plus it helps the audience know exactly what you're trying to tell them and how you've reached each of your conclusions remember your main goal is to make it as easy as possible for the audience if you were to turn each of these ideas into its own slide you would rearrange them like this with the highest level ideas coming first then the supporting details following each then throw your introduction slide up front and voila you've got yourself a story and this is the exact approach they use at every major consulting firm to build client presentations that are incredibly clear compelling and persuasive now it doesn't always look exactly like this in practice there are lots of factors that can influence the final version of a deck not to mention other slides that i didn't talk about like an executive summary slide next step slides or the appendix but generally speaking this approach works really well in fact did you notice it's the same approach i used for this video i started the video by stating the situation i said that when you build a presentation you want to make it as easy as possible for the audience then he introduced the complication business presentations tend to have a lot of data and information so making it clear can be difficult the implicit question then became how can you make your data heavy presentations easy to understand then i moved on to my answer which was to provide a clear structure to your presentation using two key concepts the scqa framework and the pyramid principle and i use this structure to then build out and explain my answer the end result i hope is a video that's clear easy to follow and insightful but you'll have to let me know what you thought down in the comments if you think you or your team could benefit from learning how to consistently build high quality persuasive presentations for clients internal stakeholders or anyone else make sure you check out our advanced courses at theanalystacademy.com each course is carefully crafted with clear and actionable insights multiple real-life examples and case studies hands-on exercises quizzes downloads and a whole lot more we sell courses to individuals corporate strategy and finance teams as well as consulting firms of all sizes if that's not for you then no worries we've got lots of great free content on youtube instagram linkedin and over on our blog so make sure you check those out as well thanks again for watching and best of luck in your own slide making so [Music] you