Preparing Powerful Board Papers (PowerPoint PPTX)

Writing board papers is a challenging task often completed under pressure: pressure to submit a report on time (any report!) and pressure to do yourself and your position justice.

The challenge is further complicated when we are too familiar with the content – and potentially too intimidated by the Board – to fully recognise what they need from us.

The Board's needs are superficially simple: robust messaging conveyed so that an insight-hungry, time-poor group of people can come to terms with the content quickly. This is, however, difficult to achieve any time but particularly under pressure.

Having helped executives at hundreds of companies prepare board reports over the past 25+ years, I have come to firmly believe that structured thinking techniques provide the best results.

I have distilled this experience into providing you with a three-step process as well as 24 case studies to help guide your own board paper preparation.

This pack will help you clarify and present your report to your Board by helping you do three things:

•  UNDERSTAND YOUR BOARD'S REQUIREMENTS. Do you know what you really need from them now, and in the future regarding your issue? Who are the most critical people on the Board in relation to your issue?

•  SYNTHESISE YOUR MESSAGE CLEARLY AND CONCISELY. Learn the basics of structured thinking and then see it applied to 24 case studies covering six common types of board report: alerts, business cases, change stories, compliance stories, options stories and updates.

•  CONVERT YOUR MESSAGING INTO AN EFFECTIVE BOARD REPORT. You will often need to use a template, so I offer an extra case study three ways. A one-page message map, an annotated overview for a PowerPoint and a Word version of a Board Report (in a basic template).

This deck was prepared by Davina Stanley of Clarity First. Davina specialises in helping executives get to the point, using the Pyramid Principle. She learned the techniques at McKinsey. Barbara Minto reviewed and approved her training in 2009 and she has used them to help executives globally ever since.

I wish you all the very best in preparing your next powerful board report.