What is a recommendations or next steps slide?
As we’ve covered in other articles, the purpose of your slide deck is to persuade your audience and lead them to a conclusion.
In order to persuade your audience, your slide deck needs a clear situation-complication-resolution storyline. Your storyline will outline why the topic of your slide deck is important (situation), the major business problem or issue (complication), and how to address the problem (resolution).
A next steps or recommendations slide is used to outline the actions or responses required to address the business problem that you’ve identified earlier in your slide deck.
Best practices and key characteristics
There’s quite a lot of flexibility in how you layout your recommendations or next steps slides. However, irrespective of your slide design, you must ensure that you slide has the following:
- Structure: Group your recommendations into themes or categories to make it easier for your reader to understand.
- Numbering: Number your groups and/or individual recommendations to help your reader to see the “continuity” when you discuss your recommendations across multiple slides.
- Wording: Write your recommendations in active voice and consistently start your recommendations with verbs (i.e. action words), such as “Expand…”, “Improve…”, “Develop…”, “Target…”, “Increase…”, etc.
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Roadmap slides, recommendations slides, journey slides, key takeaways slides, next steps slides, panel slides, and more!
Example recommendations and next steps slides
Let’s take a look at some example next steps slides and recommendation slides from McKinsey, BCG and other consulting firms.
If you’re interested in checking out more recommendations and next steps slides (and other slide types) from consulting firms, such as McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Kearney, L.E.K Consulting and others, then check out our strategy consulting slide library.