Bankster Slidedeck Reality

There's a third season of Industry out. A TV drama-cum-exposé of merchant bank traders. Despite the littering of finance jargon, favourable reviews flow.

What I enjoyed about the PR prior the latest series, were the pieces that seek to judge the veracity of the show. Is real-life corporate gambling banking really as scandalous?

We don't really need to await an answer, do we?

The appalling 'all my male bosses tried to sleep with me' inevitability. Alongside hazing, bullying and public humiliations. The excuse of the sky-high salaried slavery leading to a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

I noted the approach to presentation materials.

Specifically in the form of slidedecks. Made for advisory or sales purposes, these often require junior staff to pull all-nighters.

I myself have seen this in the flesh. In one case I'd notice a then rare, state-of-the-art colour laser printer would sit in the corner of my room most weekends. In another, I'd hear out-of-hours moans that no-one's interested in the output, despite buckling pressure to see it.

Which I read remains the case today. As told by '27'yo 'Hannah' to The Times [sub'n req'd];

"... you can easily work until 4am or 5am on a slide deck that never really gets used. It’s so depressing as you get more senior and start going to these meetings and realise that you only really look at page 1 and 2 out of a 100-page deck your junior has been up until 6am working on."

With worse to come;

"I would produce a model and a slide deck with numbers and if one number was wrong on page 50, my boss would scream at me until I cried."

The definition of a toxic work environment.

And all so unnecessary. As five-year suffering 'Flora' recounts as to why she left age '26', 'banking is dying, all the cool, hot jobs are now in tech, so I learned to code'.

So-called Masters of the Universe attitudes to slide decks bears some reflection.

In particular, what the purpose of such a doc actually is.

We've had the slidedeck as Proposal doc. Heavy with text. Might as well've been a Word doc pdf.

Then came the brief blossom of the 'infodoc'. A supposed hybrid presentation-detail attempt. As championed by such as Big Presentation Designers, Duarte (which they termed slidedocs).

Then followed the pared-down pictures-with-slogans gallery style.

Interwoven with such recommended templates for brevity and punch by various 'influencers' of their day; 10-20-30, Pecha Kucha, the Lessig (or Takahashi) Method.

What do we have now?

Well, my experience lately is very much of the throw-mud-at-the-wall type.

If you're the kind of operation that likes to have a lot of info at your disposal, the other trend of our time is to build a large slide deck. With any or all of your pitch points scattered throughout, then choose to show just the key one as and when required.

There is something to be said for this approach. And I've seen how prospects react positively to seeing you put the slide sorter view on screen and scroll around to then select the point of note.

Deceptively stress-free to make part of your winning routine. As once you've done your first, that can be the template for all others to follow. In best-practice style adapt, evolve, remix as you iterate.

There's an overlay here with Props in general.

Where once 'war and peace' 100pp docs of the 90s were de rigueur, almost from an audit perspective if nothing else, they slimmed down so that by the Millennium I was doing only a ten-pager, of one page per section, with appendices attached where required. Even those addendums eventually became a different doc, allowing for two-screen viewing.

Interestingly, my involvement when writing business cases for new ventures greatly influenced these Prop formats. Nowadays, a single-page summary template I've long used is down to that. And makes big impression as a 'working' document.

Which some of the 'challenger' presentation design apps embrace. Moving away from standard page-by-page surrounds.

No-one really ought be presenting what still passes for the typical slideshow anymore.

Yes, have a decent deck prepared. But only pull out the one or two slides with true memorability for unique message, collaborative spark or progressive disclosure.

For the rest, write out live by hand yourself if need be.

This applies to numbers, motion and as per the ex-bank factotum testimony, models.

Be less banker, be more bankable.