Constructive Feedback on Your Frankly Terrible Slides

The Vanity Metric -

Hey there Jean-Ralphio,

I scheduled this 1:1 with you to go over the slides you prepared for the executive meeting tomorrow. I marked up the doc a bunch but then I thought I should save the most vitriolic feedback for in person. Hopefully you can make these changes today.

In summary, there are things about executive reviews that you don't know because you're an extremely junior generic schlepper who has no exposure to anything, so allow me to dispense my wisdom on to you without your consent. Please cancel your lunch and 'PC Load Letter'. It sounds important but this is more important because it involves me.

  1. It's far too long at fifteen slides. You only have a fifteen minute segment. That's a metric of one slide per minute, which when I say in this tone of voice, sounds ridiculous!! This length is in contrast to your last presentation, which was far too short at fourteen slides, but really I don't want to get too dogmatic here... I'm looking for you to get to your own happy medium.
  2. Slide 2, the agenda - love it. Let's put it in the appendix though and come back to if it we have time.
  3. There's too much detail on slide 3. I spent quite a large portion of my review counting the words... 406. Seems like a lot. Also I'm picking this one arbitrarily, even though there are other, more detailed slides, which are implicitly fine I guess.
  4. Slide 4 with the arrows and chevrons at the top - love it! Executives here love chevrons. Maybe add more of them?
  5. Slides 5-9... I made some minor tweaks to the language, by which I mean I deleted whole swathes of it and replaced it with my own verbiage which is awkwardly riddled with typos you should point out to me. It's fine, rewrite it however you want, as long as it's just like I did it but you know, in your own voice.
  6. Slides 10-14 I only pretend to have read because I got bored. Should we add more chevrons? By 'we' I mean 'you'.
  7. It needs a timeline. Oh it has one? Still, the timeline appears not fleshed out... can you put a timeline in for completion to the timeline?
  8. I know one of our values is "Be Different", but there's too much color in this. Can you remove all of it. FYI, executives hate color, beauty and life.
  9. Where's the data? Can you share me the model? Heads up - I know I just asked you to do a back-of-the-envelope one, and that's fine for now, but I'll share it with all kind of randoms who'll know you did it, and eventually "needs to do better models" is still probably going to come up in your review.
  10. The last slide should always say 'Thank you' with a picture of yourself. Let's make that now. I'll take a photo!
  11. Actually let's move that last slide to the appendix. Then delete the appendix.

Oh hang on... I just got told that the meeting has been pushed back a few weeks until some new executive joins, which might change our entire strategy. Still, can you get me a review by this afternoon? I need to circle back and then socialize it before I present it. I mean you present it, haha.

Please set up some time with me tomorrow, preferably over your lunch.

Thanks so much! Really appreciate the quick turnaround.