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)

Situation

Establish common ground — what the audience already knows and accepts as true

Complication

The trigger that disrupts the situation — why the status quo is no longer acceptable

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.