Situation Complication Solution

Before We Begin

1. About the Author
2. Acknowledgements
3. Foreword
4. Bridging the Ivory Tower and the Engine Room (A Fictional Review)

Introduction and Overview

1. Why This Book
2. Example of a Slide with Room for Improvement
3. The Meridian Deck: Our Reference Example
4. The Problem This Book Solves
5. Promise to the Reader
6. Overview of the Book
7. Part A — Why Consulting Slides Work

The Anatomy of Consulting Slides

1. The Three Layers of Every Consulting Slide
2. How the Eye Reads a Consulting Slide
3. The Skim Test
4. The Slide as a Unit of Argument
5. Part B — Thinking Before Designing

Start with the Answer: The Pyramid Principle on One Page

1. Barbara Minto’s Core Idea in Five Minutes
2. Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up: Why Consultants Start with the Answer
3. The Pyramid Through a Concrete Example
4. MECE: No Overlap and No Gaps
5. Inductive or Deductive?
6. The Question-Answer Dialogue
7. The Vertical and Horizontal Logic Tests
8. A Typical Mistake: Activities Instead of Arguments

From Question to Structure: Hypothesis Trees and Issue Trees

1. The Problem Statement Worksheet
2. From Question to Issue Statement
3. Hypothesis Trees: When You Know Enough to Conjecture
4. Issue Trees: When You Still Know Too Little
5. Prioritization: Not Everything Matters Equally
6. “Get to Paper Quickly”: The First Draft May Be Incomplete

The Storyline: From Pyramid to Narrative

1. What Structure Alone Cannot Do
2. SCS: The Basic Structure of Every Consulting Story
3. The SCQA Variant: When the Question Should Be Explicit
4. The Ghost Deck: Making the Storyline Visible
5. Storyline vs. Agenda: The Decisive Difference
6. How the Storyline Maps onto the Slide Structure
7. The Opening: Why the First Three Slides Decide
8. The Iterative Loop: How a Deck Really Comes Together
9. When the Storyline Tips Over: Warning Signs
10. Enough Planning. Build.

Action Titles: The Single Most Important Skill

1. What an Action Title Is and What It Is Not
2. The Grammar of the Action Title
3. Length: One Message per Slide
4. The Newspaper Test
5. The Consistency Rule: What Is in the Title Must Be in the Chart
6. Ten Slide Titles: Before and After
7. The “So What?” Test
8. Advanced: Action Titles as Transitions
9. Why It’s Worth Taking Action Titles Seriously

What You as a Consultant Should Know About Your Audience

1. Three Questions Before the First Slide
2. Pyramid Depth: How Much Proof Does This Audience Need?
3. The Four Author Roles
4. The Pre-wired Deck
5. The Uncomfortable Deck
6. Reading the Room
7. The Cover-Your-Bases Slide
8. The Difference Between Writing and Communicating
9. Part C — The Craft of Consulting Slides

Lead-Ins, Deck Structure, and the Five-Part Architecture

1. The Lead-In: The Bridge from Title to Chart
2. The Five-Part Architecture
3. The Meridian Deck as Archetype
4. Why This Order Works
5. What Has to Be Decided Before the First Chart

Chart Design: Concept Slides

1. The Slide That Showed Everything and Said Nothing
2. What a Concept Slide Should Do
3. The Grammar of Visual Elements
4. The Six Basic Types as a Toolkit
5. When the Template Replaces the Message
6. The Message First, Then the Chart
7. The Meridian Slide, Second Try
8. Where to Find 150 More Types
9. Craft Means Deciding

Chart Design: Data Slides

1. The Slide That Did Not Lie and Still Misled
2. The Three Mechanisms of Unintended Deception
3. Zelazny’s Method: Message First
4. The Three Types That Cover 80 Percent of the Cases
5. A Word About the Other Nine
6. Anatomy of a Credible Chart
7. The “One Message” Rule and the Role of Annotations
8. Data Integrity as Craft

Visual Consistency and Formatting

1. The Template as Contract
2. The Type Decision
3. Color Is Function, Not Decoration
4. White Space, the Most Underestimated Design Tool
5. The Grid
6. The 3-Second Rule
7. A Catalog of Sins
8. What the Meridian Deck Does and Does Not Do
9. The Reference Card as a Tool
10. Consistency Is Discipline

Sharpening Perspectives: The Four Distinctiveness Practices

1. Why Good Technique Alone Is Not Enough
2. Expand: Put on Several Pairs of Glasses
3. Link: Turning Data Points Into Patterns
4. Distill: The Courage to Leave Things Out
5. Challenge: Step Uncomfortably Far Back
6. How the Four Practices Interact
7. Integrating the Practices Into the Workflow
8. Part D — Building the Deck

From Ghost Deck to Finished Product

1. The POWER Workflow
2. P as in Profile: Understand the Sponsor and the Audience
3. O as in Organize: Pyramid and Storyline
4. W as in Write: The Ghost Deck
5. Three Paths to the Ghost Deck
6. The Ghost Deck Review: The Most Important Quality Gate
7. The Just-Start-Writing Rule
8. E and R: The Review Cycle
9. Time Management: The 40-30-20-10 Rule
10. The Personal Slide Library
11. The Workflow as a Scaffold, Not a Corset

Common Deck Types and Their Patterns

1. The Common Scaffold That Applies to All
2. The Strategy Recommendation: When You Want to Win the Race
3. The Project Status Update: The Art of Leaving Out
4. The Architecture Decision Record as a Deck: Structured Thinking for Technical Decisions
5. The Business Case: When the Lawyer Reads Along
6. Reading Copy and Presentation Deck: Why You Sometimes Need Two Documents
7. The Three-Slide Version: First Distill, Then Expand
8. What the Deck Types Have in Common, and What They Don’t

Dissecting a Real Consulting Deck: The USPS Case Study

1. The Crisis No One Could Ignore
2. The SCS Storyline of the Deck
3. Progressive Disclosure: The Base Case First
4. Action Titles: What Good Slide Titles Actually Deliver
5. Data Slides: Waterfalls, Scenarios, and Quantified Impact
6. MECE Structuring of Recommendations: What It Delivers and Where It Ends
7. What Sets This Deck Apart From an Average Strategy Deck
8. What You Learn From a Politically Uncomfortable Deck
9. The Limits of Case-Study Analysis

Quality Assurance: The Five Review Checklists

1. Why the Order Matters
2. Checklist 1: Relevance and Completeness
3. Checklist 2: Brevity and Clarity
4. Checklist 3: Persuasiveness and Style
5. Checklist 4: Tone and Audience Fit
6. Checklist 5: Final Editing
7. The Five Slides You Should Always Cut
8. What Makes a Strong Closing Slide
9. The “Fresh Eyes” Check
10. Why the Process Is More Than the Checklists
11. Part E — Beyond the Slide

Presenting a Consulting Deck

1. Interruption as a Quality Marker
2. Read the Room, Not the Slide
3. The Parking Lot
4. Navigating to Backup Slides
5. When the CEO Flips Ahead
6. Remote Presentations
7. Sending the Deck Ahead
8. Preparation and Stress Test
9. What Remains

When the Method Does Not Help

1. When Persuasion Is the Wrong Goal
2. When the Action Title Burns the Bridge
3. When the Problem Does Not Yet Have a Thesis
4. What Remains

Consulting Slides in the Age of AI

1. The Amplifier Paradox
2. What AI Tools Can Do Today
3. What AI Tools Cannot Do
4. Integrating AI into the POWER Workflow
5. The New Noise
6. The Principles Become More Important, Not Less
7. What Remains
8. Part F — Appendix

The Meridian Deck — All 31 Slides

1. Slide Overview and Export Mapping
2. The Skim Test: Action Titles Only
3. The Individual Slides

The Ghost Deck Template

1. The Template
2. How to Use It: Three Passes
3. The Ghost Deck Review
4. The Filled-In Meridian Example

Action Title Cheat Sheet

1. Strategy
2. IT and Architecture
3. Finance and Controlling
4. Operations and Processes
5. Regulation and Governance
6. People and Organization
7. How to Use This

Chart Type Decision Tree

The Twelve Consulting Special Charts

1. The Consulting Special Charts Explained
2. Why You Should Use a Good Master

Formatting Reference Card

Bibliography