Powerpoint is dead 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.”
Said no-one ever.
Yet, preparing comprehensive decks to report company performance is still the norm at most firms.
But, there’s an alternative:
One-Pagers.
Procter & Gamble and Amazon fully embrace them. When I was at P&G, the GM I worked with refused to look at any deck or document unless it fits on one page.
Similarly, a friend 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 all read the One Pager at the beginning of each decision meeting.
Here are the pros of One Pagers:
📌 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.
📌 More efficient use of meeting time
One-Pagers are more condensed than decks and they can easily be read in advance of a meeting.
📌 Easier reference post-launch
Comparing results to forecasts is easier if the premises are all neatly on one page.
📌 Less time-consuming to prepare
Not having to deal with the tedious formatting of slides can reduce preparation time. And, since the structure is pre-determined, writing One-Pagers gets significantly faster with practice.
But of course, there are also disadvantages:
📌 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.
📌 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.
📌 Harder to show the thought process
Slides show with visualizations that we looked at the issue from different angles and “did our homework”. 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.
What is your experience with One-Pagers?
Do you use them at your company?
Do you prefer them over traditional slide decks?
Please share in the comments below. 👇
—-
If you’d like to learn more from me:
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter!
Join 7,500+ Finance & Accounting professionals who Get 3 FP&A insights from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 infographic in your inbox every Tuesday.
It’s free, and the read time is around 5 minutes.
👉 Subscribe at:
https://lnkd.in/dredP3d5
“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.”
Said no-one ever.
Yet, preparing comprehensive decks to report company performance is still the norm at most firms.
But, there’s an alternative:
One-Pagers.
Procter & Gamble and Amazon fully embrace them. When I was at P&G, the GM I worked with refused to look at any deck or document unless it fits on one page.
Similarly, a friend 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 all read the One Pager at the beginning of each decision meeting.
Here are the pros of One Pagers:
📌 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.
📌 More efficient use of meeting time
One-Pagers are more condensed than decks and they can easily be read in advance of a meeting.
📌 Easier reference post-launch
Comparing results to forecasts is easier if the premises are all neatly on one page.
📌 Less time-consuming to prepare
Not having to deal with the tedious formatting of slides can reduce preparation time. And, since the structure is pre-determined, writing One-Pagers gets significantly faster with practice.
But of course, there are also disadvantages:
📌 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.
📌 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.
📌 Harder to show the thought process
Slides show with visualizations that we looked at the issue from different angles and “did our homework”. 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.
What is your experience with One-Pagers?
Do you use them at your company?
Do you prefer them over traditional slide decks?
Please share in the comments below. 👇
—-
If you’d like to learn more from me:
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter!
Join 7,500+ Finance & Accounting professionals who Get 3 FP&A insights from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 infographic in your inbox every Tuesday.
It’s free, and the read time is around 5 minutes.
👉 Subscribe at:
https://lnkd.in/dredP3d5
