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📝 This is a writing guide, not an installable skill — use the prompt structure with any listed PPT skill.

McKinsey Consulting Deck

Last reviewed: 2026-04-28
Writing guide — prompt structure to paste into any installed PPT skill
McKinsey Style Consulting
Best for: Strategy presentations and executive briefings where consultant-grade narrative structure (SCR) and action headlines are required
Not ideal for: Startup pitches, academic presentations, or internal ops decks — the consulting format is formal and assumes a C-suite or board audience

Situation–Complication–Resolution (SCR)

S
Situation
Establish common ground — what the audience already knows and accepts as true
C
Complication
The trigger that disrupts the situation — why the status quo is no longer acceptable
R
Resolution
Your recommended path forward — the answer to the complication

SCR structures the entire deck narrative, not just individual slides. Map your content onto this three-act frame before generating any slides.

Action Headlines (Not Topic Labels)

✗ Topic
Market Overview
✓ Action
Market grew 34% YoY but is consolidating around 3 players
✗ Topic
Recommendations
✓ Action
Divest the legacy unit now to fund the digital build — delay costs $40M/year

Every slide headline states a conclusion, not a topic. Enforce this in your prompt — passive topic labels are automatically rewritten into active conclusions.

Core Features

🎨
Navy / Grey Palette, Serif Titles
McKinsey's visual identity: dark navy (#003366) for emphasis, grey for body and supporting content, serif fonts for slide titles. Applied automatically — no manual color picking.
🔗
Works with Polished Documents
This skill handles narrative structure; Polished Documents adds the McKinsey brand theme on top. Use both together for the highest-fidelity McKinsey output.
📋
Executive Briefing Format
Optimized for C-suite audiences — executive summary up front, supporting analysis in the appendix, key decisions highlighted clearly on each slide.

Signals

Framework
SCR (McKinsey)
Headline Style
Action titles enforced
Palette
Navy / Grey / Serif
Type
Writing guide

How to use this guide

This page is a prompt template, not an installable skill. The structure below is the part that takes longest to write — copy it into your prompt to any of these real, installed PPTX skills:

McKinsey PPT Design System
70 layout patterns + navy/grey theme
Polished Documents
10 brand themes including consulting style
Anthropic PPTX
the canonical PPTX skill from Anthropic — works with any prompt
# 1) Install one of the skills above (e.g. Anthropic PPTX): git clone https://github.com/anthropics/skills cp -r skills/skills/pptx ~/.claude/skills/anthropic-pptx # 2) Paste a prompt that follows the structure on this page: "Create a McKinsey-style consulting deck on [topic]. Follow the structure described in https://powerpoint.md/skills/mckinsey-consulting-deck.html — i.e. use the headlines, sections, and visual conventions documented there."

Your skill does the rendering. This guide ensures the prompt produces output that matches the genre conventions audiences expect.

Alternatives & Tradeoffs

McKinsey PPT Design System
Better layout precision with 70 patterns; use alongside this skill — this handles SCR narrative, the design system handles layout
Polished Documents
Better for visual brand matching — apply McKinsey theme on top of this skill's SCR structure for the best combined output
Academic PPTX Skill
Also uses Pyramid Principle structure; McKinsey Deck is optimized for executive/board audiences, Academic PPTX for research/conference