The Analyst's Path

Consulting slide structure

A consulting body page has four elements: an action title that states the claim, one exhibit chosen by the message, a source and date line, and one supporting sentence. Anything else on the page is either decoration or a second claim, and both are defects. The source and date line is the cheapest credibility you can buy, and it's the first thing missing from an amateur deck.

2 min readPart of The Consulting Deck and the Project ReadoutOpen in course mode

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A consulting body page has four elements. Anything else on the page is either decoration or a second claim, and both are defects.

How do the action title and the exhibit work?

The action title is a full sentence with a verb. It states the claim the page makes and carries the figure that makes it checkable. "Tier-2 is 4.1x short of its own break-even and no operating plan closes that gap" is an action title. "Tier-2 unit economics" is a filing label.

The exhibit is one chart or one table. It's chosen by the message, and what the data looks like doesn't come into it. Its form is fixed by the message type: comparison across categories takes a sorted bar, change over ordered time takes a line, relationship takes a scatter, composition of a single number takes a waterfall or a stacked bar with few parts. If the exhibit has a title of its own, it doesn't repeat the page title.

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What do the source line and the supporting sentence do?

The source and date line goes at the foot in small type and says where the numbers came from and when. It's the cheapest credibility you can buy, and it's the first thing missing from an amateur deck. In a client setting it also carries the definition the number depends on. A line like "orders per store per day, 30-day month, excludes cancelled orders" is the difference between a checkable claim and an argument about definitions.

The supporting sentence is one line, and it says the thing the exhibit can't show. Usually that's a mechanism, such as "the gap is fixed cost per order, which falls only with density". It can be a caveat instead, like "two Tier-2 clusters opened within the last quarter and are excluded". Or it's a bridge to the next page. One sentence. If it runs to three, the page is carrying a second claim and should be two pages.

Does every consulting slide need a chart?

Six of the nine body pages in the India deck carry an exhibit, which is 66.67%. The other three carry a table or a structured text layout, because each of them claims something about a decision, and you don't need a chart to prove a decision. Put a chart on every page out of instinct and you get the decorative bar chart of two numbers.

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Part of the course

This page is part of The Consulting Deck and the Project Readout (PR5.01), in Phase 5: Industry and sector mastery. The module's flashcards and its quiz are in the app.