Strategy Deck Checklist in 5 Slides

How to impress your audience with your strategic prowess!

👋 Hello, I’m Salem and welcome to this 🚀 awesome weekly product management 🚀newsletter. Every week, I write on topics that help product managers at their jobs and how aspiring product managers can become pros!

If this is your first time, here’s some of what you have missed :

1. Pivoting to product management? Here’s How you can

2. Your 90 day plan as a new product manager.

3. The best Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy.

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Few months back, I had said a strategy is not a plan. Yep! I got quite a lot of responses and I decided to show PMs how to shine when that opportunity to create a product strategy comes. Crafting a superb presentation displays your elegant thought process and I recommend it is the best way to approach any strategy task.

I have seen many wrong ways some PMs design strategy decks and I hope you share this with every PM you know as I have tried to make this very generic.

A classic strategy can be delivered in 5 slides. Yes 5. Let’s get into it ; 

First, some housekeeping rules.

A list of tactics with a timeline attached is a plan. A strategy is much more than that. It’s how you convince your audience that your plan is great so they’ll buy-in to your approach.

Think of the tactics as the “what” and the goal as the “why”. The strategy is the “how”. It’s the guiding principle — the elevator pitch for your tactics, backed by research and data whenever possible.

You can have a plan filled with tactics but lacking strategy and it will fall flat with your audience. Present the exact same list of tactics, but preface that with a solid strategy and you’ll get the nod[s].

Please also note: a strategy is not a spreadsheet.

It goes without saying that it is almost always better to present your strategy in the form of slides (PowerPoint, keynote, google slides etc).

Great communicators know that presenting is more of storytelling. You need more than just a list of steps or facts to draw your audience in and keep them engaged — you need a narrative.

You really only need six slides.

More often than not, I have seen this outline deliver excellent results ;

1. Task

2. Insight

3. Principles

4. Visual Model

5. Tactics

6. Timeline

Slide 1 — Task.

This is a clear and concise articulation of the job to be done, including the specific goal or problem. This does not take a foxed shape or form. It could be a graph, infographics, an illustration or a combination of these.

It is important to aim for impact on this first slide. Tell a story, do not repeat word for word whats written on the slide. Provide context, but minimize text. You don’t want your audience reading because you want them to focus on you speaking and most people can’t do both at once.

Slide 2 — Insight.

Every great strategy starts with research, and by now, you should have done some data collection with actionable insights to form a strong narrative.

There is Data and then Insight - the data [observation] + story telling to drive understanding. An example - “Heineken has higher market share in the summer” is an observation. An insight is: “During the hot weather, consumers prefer to drink something crisp and refreshing — like light beer.”

Slide 3 — Principles.

This slide displays your strategy. It must be impactful. So leave it concise and use sticky language.

Here, grammar matters. Font, slide layout, your pace and tone of voice when you read the slide — it all matters because it impacts your ability to make it memorable.

Slide 4 — Visual model.

The visual model can be the toughest part of building a strategy presentation, but it can also be one of the best ways to ensure understanding and acceptance of your strategy.

Your visual model should show how actions are prioritized in a process to deliver the desired outcome. This is mostly inform of graphs, or it could just be words and shapes that show theoretical relationships or steps.

Some popularly used examples of model formats are 4-quadrant, 3 pillars, a funnel, a pyramid, a venn diagram, and a flywheel. These can all be adapted to fit many strategies, and of course, feel free to create your own variation or combination of these models to suit your strategy.

Slide 5 — Tactics.

Now, you will feed in all that detail that you’ve been holding back since the start of your presentation. Lay out the exact steps or tactics in your plan. The format can be plain, the key is to be clear and concise.

Typically more than one slide, but keep in mind that less is more. Include only words that are key for comprehension — zero fluff!

Before you close on this part, read it through and anticipate what questions might come up. Do you know how you’ll answer them? I will recommend you proactively incorporate them in the details of your plan. Using this approach, you avoid a distracting discussion if the question never comes up.

[Bonus] Slide 6 — Timelines.

As much as you can infuse your timelines on other pages, I have learnt that it is more profitable to have a separate timeline slide. How long will each phase of your approach be in days, weeks or quarterly? Are there any key milestones to be hit by a certain date? And of course, by what date do you expect to have achieved the target results? Set realistic expectations and then try to over-deliver by doing it all sooner.

Your slides are done, but two last things.

You should send out a pre-read of the slides a few days before your presentation. This will help keep the meeting on track and improve the quality of questions asked. One hack is to tag the email subject line “pre-read” so there’s no way they can miss it.

Good luck!

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Hopefully, next time you need to design your strategy, you’ll know exactly how to tell the story and display your strategic thinking. This basic outline has worked for me countless times, but there are endless variations to this. Please let me know if I missed anything

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