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Consulting Findings Slide Deck Builder
Every slide title states a claim, one exhibit proves it, and every challenge you will get has an appendix page waiting.
River fixes the title stack before it builds anything. Every slide gets a title that states its claim rather than naming its topic, and the titles are read straight through as one argument before a single exhibit is drawn. Then each slide gets the one exhibit that proves its own title, with its source underneath. The speaker notes come back with the challenge each slide will draw, who in the room will make it, and the appendix page that answers it.
Search the query and page one is deck anatomy. Title slide, agenda, executive summary, situation, findings, recommendations, next steps, appendix. It is a table of contents dressed as a method, and following it produces a deck whose titles name topics. That is also where the last three days of the engagement go. Exhibits get built first, the argument moves, and every chart gets rebuilt to match a story that was never fixed before the drawing started.
Built for the consultant with four days left and a board meeting at the end of them. It takes the argument from the storyline and the numbers from the value model, and what the room approves goes into the roadmap. Reach for it when the analysis is finished and the deck is not, or when a deck that read well in the team room has to survive being forwarded to people who were not in the room.
Three rules a securities filing already enforces
The rule that a heading must carry its content is not a consulting convention. It is written into a regulation. 17 CFR 230.421 requires a prospectus to use descriptive headings and subheadings, and its note tells drafters to avoid vague boilerplate that is imprecise and readily subject to different interpretations. Cost Analysis is exactly that boilerplate. It survives any reading, commits to nothing, and adds a page without adding an argument to the deck.
The same rule wants complex material in tabular form wherever possible and says plainly that you must draw graphs and charts to scale. The appendix has a rule too. 17 CFR 229.601 requires an exhibit index listing every exhibit by its assigned number, with an active link to each one, so any statement can be traced to the document behind it. An appendix nobody can navigate is weight rather than support.
Marchetti Beverage, a fictional beverage distributor on $210m, six weeks on route profitability, nine body slides. Slide one says delivery contributes $1.57m and 43 percent of it is consumed by accounts below break-even. Slide three says break-even is 9.0 cases a drop and the smallest band averages 3.1. Slide six says 291 of those 412 accounts were signed in the 14 months after a bonus changed. Read the nine titles alone and the argument is complete, from the size of the problem to the trigger still producing it.
How it works
Send the storyline
The argument as it stands, plus whatever analysis and exhibits you already built.
Name the room
Who will be there, and which of them each finding is uncomfortable for.
Read the stack
The titles in order, on their own, before any exhibit has been drawn.
Fix a title
Push back on any title that names a topic, and the exhibit follows it.
What you get
- Every title stating a claim, so the titles alone read as the argument
- One exhibit per slide, chosen to prove that slide's title and nothing adjacent
- A source note under each exhibit, naming the file the numbers came from
- The challenge each slide will draw, and which person in the room makes it
- An appendix index where every page is reachable from the claim it supports
- The challenges with no appendix page behind them, listed before the meeting
Common questions
What is the title stack test?
Extract every slide title in order into a single list and read only that. If the list is a complete argument with no gaps, the deck works standalone. If a title contributes nothing to the sequence, the slide is decoration. Marchetti's nine titles run from the size of the problem to the bonus trigger behind it.
Why fix the titles before building exhibits?
Because that is where the three days go. Build charts first and every time the argument moves the charts get rebuilt, which is rework disguised as production. Lock the stack and each exhibit has exactly one job, which is proving the title above it. Marchetti had forty charts and nine of them shipped.
What goes in the challenge notes?
For each slide, the objection it will draw, the name of the person who will make it, the appendix page that answers them, and what you say if they push past it. The board member at Marchetti was always going to test the volume assumption on slide seven, so slide seven has a sensitivity page waiting.
What happens to a challenge with no appendix page?
It gets listed as an exposure before the meeting rather than discovered in it. Marchetti's comp plan slide has 291 of 412 accounts signed after the bonus changed, which is correlation and not cause. There is no page that closes it, so the note says to concede that first rather than defend it.
How long should the appendix be?
As long as the body needs and no longer, which is a test rather than a number. Every appendix page has to be reachable from a specific claim, and any page no claim points at comes out. Where a claim rests on the client's own documents, the cited evidence log is what the page points back to.
Can a title be too specific?
A title can be wrong, which is different. A number in a title has to be the number the exhibit shows, and if the analysis moves the title moves with it. That coupling is the point. A topic label never has to be corrected because it never said anything that could be.
Where does this sit in the engagement?
Last week, once the analysis has stopped moving. The argument is built and objection-tested first, and the title stack is assembled from that rather than invented alongside it. Whatever the room approves needs sequencing afterwards, and the full written set sits in the findings pack with each exhibit's source still attached.
Consulting Findings Slide Deck Builder
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