I’m always wanting to do a talk or write a series of items on the white-collar toolchain, or surviving in big companies. Here’s one principal about presentations in corporate settings.
Much presentation wisdom of late has revolved around the actual event of a speaker talking, giving the presentation. In a corporate setting, the actual delivery of the presentation is not the primary purpose of a presentation. Instead, a presentation is used to facility coming to a decision; usually you’re laying out a case for a decision you want the company to support. Once that decision is made, the presentation is often used as the document of record, perhaps being updated to reflect the decision in question better.
As a side-note, if your presentation doesn’t argue for a specific, “actionable” decision, you’re probably doing it wrong. For example, don’t just “put it all on the table” without suggesting what to do about it.
Think of presentations as documents which have been accidentally printed in landscape and create them as such. You will likely not be given the chance to go through your presentation from front to end like you would at a conference, You’ll be interrupted, go back and forth, and most importantly, end up emailing the presentation around to people who will look at it without you presenting.
You should therefore make all slides consumable without you being there. This leads to the use of McKinsey titles (titles that are one-liners explaining the point you’re making) and slides that are much denser than conference slides. The presentation should have a story-line, an opening summary of the points you want to make, and a concluding summary of what the decision should be (next steps, launching a new project, the amount needed for your budget, new markets to enter, “and therefore we should buy company X,” etc.).
This also gives rise to “back-up” slides which are not part of the core story-line buy provide additional, appendix-like information for reference both during the presentation meeting and when others look at the presentation on their own. You should also put extensive citations in footnotes with links so that people consuming the presentation can fact check you; bald claims and figures will be defeated easily, nullifying your whole argument to come to your desired decision.
Also remember that people will take your slides and use them in other presentations, this is fine. And, of course, if successful, your presentation will likely be used as the document of record for what was decided and what the new “plan” was. It will be emailed to people who ask what the “plan” is and it must be able to communicate that accordingly.
Remember: in most corporate settings, a presentation is just a document that has been printed in landscape mode.