Prepare Your Executive Summary in Presentation Slide Format for Your Instructorã¢â‚¬â„¢s Review
If y'all're anything similar me, then y ou build all of the main torso slides in your slide decks, sharpen the text, perfect your visualizations… and then chop-chop throw together an executive summary slide.
The trouble? The executive summary slide is the first impression of your deck and the but place that the reader tin can become a complete overview of your statement.
Therefore, executive summary slides shouldn't be an afterthought. In fact, it'due south important to spend meaning fourth dimension writing a strong executive summary that clearly articulates your statement and inspires your reader to human activity.
What is an executive summary slide?
An executive summary is a written overview of the principal points or arguments of a larger document, memo or other report.
Strategy consultants as well write executive summaries for their presentations or slide decks.
An executive summary slide is the first slide in your presentation that fully summarizes the argument, storyline, and supporting evidence of the body slides.
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Why do you need executive summary slides?
As a reader, it's then piece of cake to get lost in a PowerPoint slide deck. You need to keep previous slides and messages in your mind, follow the line of statement, and somehow put everything together into a coherent story that y'all can brand sense of.
Executive summary slides help the reader "follow along" with your slide deck. At that place are a few main benefits:
- Executive summaries provide context to help the reader understand why the topic of the slide deck is important.
- Executive summaries communicate the loftier-level argument before the reader gets into the body of the slide deck. This helps the reader understand your more detailed torso slides.
- Executive summaries are a "map" that the reader can reference back to if they offset losing the line of argument in the body of the deck.
How to write executive summary slides
To understand the best practices of writing executive summary slides, we're going to break down a BCG executive summary.
In doing then, we're going to acquire the simple framework for writing executive summary slides that is used by strategy consultants, such as McKinsey & Co, Bain, and BCG.
Below you tin can see an case of a BCG executive summary. This slide deck is a BCG report on "Melbourne as a Global Cultural Destination" and can be downloaded here.
Here are the ii main executive summary slides:
These BCG executive summary slides are a not bad instance of an executive summary done well. Then we'll use them to describe best practices.
Best exercise #1: Bold text for summary sentences, bullet points for supporting data
One of the outset things yous'll discover near the BCG executive summary is the bold-bullet structure.
The bold sentences denote key statements or claims, and the bullet points back up those statements (ordinarily with data).
If there was no prove to support their claims — or if the evidence was buried deep in the slide deck — then the reader could quite easily doubt the validity of the claim, and ultimately the finish decision of the slide deck.
So one of the central aspects of strategy consulting slide decks is that no claim is fabricated without testify. And that includes the executive summary.
Let'south zoom in on one example:
The central statement in this part of the executive summary is "there are weaknesses in Melbourne's cultural and artistic offer".
This claim is supported past a bunch of data points, such as xc% of agencies and thought leaders believe the cultural offer is non conspicuously articulated.
Primal takeaway
Apply a bold-bullet construction in your executive summaries, where your claims are bolded and the supporting evidence is articulated in bullet points underneath.
Best practice #ii: Assuming summary sentences tin can exist read alone to tell a story
Executives are busy people and many of them aren't interested in diving into the supporting bullet points. They volition just read through your bolded summary sentences to understand the high-level argument and recommendations.
This means that your executive summary should be "skimmable by pattern".
In other words, your bolded summary sentences should tell a complete and logical story without requiring the supporting data in the bullet points below.
Permit'south read just the bolded sentences in our BCG executive summary:
Melbourne has a compelling artistic and cultural offering; the urban center attracted >10m Australian and international visitors in 2015. Cultural visitors and creative industries bulldoze significant economic benefits; cultural tourism projected to grow further.
However, Melbourne's position as Australia's cultural and creative capital is beingness challenged. On a global index of cultural and creative cities, Melbourne ranks first in Australia, tertiary in Asia and 12th globally.
Melbourne has clear strengths to build on as a cultural and creative urban center. Yet, there are some weaknesses to address to further ameliorate Melbourne's cultural and artistic offer.
These findings suggest five strategic priorities to improve Melbourne's position every bit a global cultural and creative destination, which may lift Melbourne's position on the Operation Index.
It reads merely similar a narrative!
Despite ignoring all the bullet points, we tin can still fully empathise the argument that BCG is making in their executive summary (which is too reflected in the body of the slide deck).
Fundamental takeaway
Ensure that your bolded summary sentences tin can be read without supporting bullet points and even so fully clear the argument of your slide deck
All-time practise #iii: The executive summary should reflect the 'SCR storyline' construction of the slide deck
It's not good enough to only "tell a story", yous need a tell the story using a particular structure.
The structure used by strategy consulting firms, such as McKinsey & Co, Bain, and BCG, is the 'state of affairs, complication, resolution' structure.
Equally an aside, yous tin acquire more about how to craft a compelling statement and SCR storyline for your slide deck in our Complete Guide To Building Strategy Presentations. If you haven't read that guide, you should check it out.
Let's take a expect at how the SCR storyline applies to your slide deck:
Situation
- What baseline knowledge do people demand to take before they understand our argument?
- How did this trouble come well-nigh?
Complication
- What is the problem nosotros need to solve?
- Why is this particular problem of import to solve?
Resolution
- How do nosotros answer / solve the problem?
- What are the specific recommendations and/or next steps?
Your executive summary slide should communicate the complete storyline in your slide deck. And thus information technology should also follow the situation, complication, resolution structure.
In our BCG example, you tin clearly see the SCR structure in action:
Information technology'due south important to set the context with the state of affairs, as there'due south no guarantee that all of you readers will accept the groundwork knowledge to empathise your argument. It likewise gives you the opportunity to explicate the causes of the problem that you're addressing in the slide deck.
So, in the complexity department, you lot should succinctly define the problem and why it is important to solve. Some people suggest that you use a question format, for case "How tin Melbourne improve its position every bit a global cultural and creative destination?", although that's actually just a thing of manner.
Finally, yous demand to clearly articulate your proposed resolution or "answer" to the problem. You'll note that most of the executive summary real-estate is spent on the resolution component. From a reader'south perspective, the recommendations are the virtually important part of the slide deck.
Central takeaway
Write your executive summary in a situation-complication-resolution structure to provide the right context for the reader and ensure your line of reasoning is easy to sympathise.
Executive summary slide examples
Beneath you'll find examples of executive summary slides from consulting firms like Bain & Co, BCG, 50.E.Thou. Consulting, Oliver Wyman, and others.
If you lot'd like to meet more than examples of strategy consulting slides, including executive summaries, check out the Slide Science slide library.
Source: https://slidescience.co/executive-summary/
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