Why PowerPoint decks have no place in the future of FP&A
“I love to put together a 50-page slide deck every month.”
“Yeah, and I can’t wait to read each and every one of them.”
I have never heard anyone say that. Yet, preparing comprehensive decks to report company performance is still the norm in most industries.
That’s why I’d like to bring attention to an alternative: One-Pagers.
Procter & Gamble and Amazon are two companies that fully embrace them. When I was at P&G, the GM I was working with refused to look at any deck or document unless it fits on one page.
Similarly, someone told me when he started a new job at Amazon, he was confused why no one would say anything at the beginning of a big meeting. People would just sit there with their heads down.
That’s because they were all reading the One Pager at the beginning of each decision meeting.
The image above shows how a typical P&G One-Page Memo is structured.
Here are 4 reasons why companies prefer One-Pagers over Slide Decks:
1) Summarizing evolves thinking
Creating slides is easy. You can slap some graphs with a few comments on the page and move on to the next one. But if you are severely limited in space, you are forced to think more deeply about the actual message you are trying to bring across. Often, that process may lead you to question prior conclusions and arrive at a better recommendation.
2) More efficient use of meeting time
One-Pagers are more condensed than decks and they can easily be read in advance of a meeting.
3) Easier reference post-launch
Comparing results to forecasts is easier if the premises are all neatly on one page.
4) Less time-consuming to prepare
Not having to deal with the tedious formatting of slides can reduce preparation time. Additionally, since the structure is pre-determined, writing One-Pagers gets significantly faster with practice.
But of course, there are also disadvantages to consider:
1) Space constraints can be limiting
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”, said Mark Twain. Bringing your case across in a concise way isn’t easy.
2) Harder to control the message
The format of One-Pagers means that we have to say what we want straight up, without much opportunity to warm someone up to our idea.
3) Harder to show the thought process
Slides allow us to show with various visualizations that we looked at the issue from different angles and “did our homework” before concluding. While that’s not impossible to do with a One-Pager, it may be more difficult.
In sum, I hope this makes it clear that One-Pagers have a lot of potential - if we are willing to put effort into mastering them.
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