| name | deck-building |
| category | kumite-office |
| description | Build PowerPoint (.pptx) decks with M365 Copilot using approved templates, layouts, and slide-narrative discipline. Use for QBRs, steerco updates, board pre-reads, customer briefings, all-hands — any deliverable that ships as a slide deck. Triggers: "build a deck", "make slides", "QBR deck", "steerco", "board pre-read", "PowerPoint", ".pptx". |
Deck Building
A good deck has one idea per slide and a story across slides. Copilot will happily produce neither unless you force the structure.
Cowork skill. Drives Copilot in PowerPoint for human presenters. For programmatic .pptx generation, use the agents dojo.
Quick Reference
| Task | Approach |
|---|
| New deck from scratch | Storyboard takeaway titles first -> one slide per Copilot turn |
| Refresh existing deck with new data | Anchor the template; replace data slide-by-slide; verify charts |
| Memo -> deck | Storyboard the deck — don't auto-convert; the memo's structure ≠ slide structure |
| Deck -> memo | Extract takeaway titles + speaker notes -> expand into prose |
| Add speaker notes | Always ask explicitly — Copilot omits notes by default |
| Tighten a long deck | Cut to 6–10 takeaway titles; collapse appendix; respect the time box |
When to Use
- QBR, steerco, board pre-read, all-hands, customer pitch.
- Converting a memo into a deck (or vice versa).
- Refreshing an existing deck with new data while keeping brand/template fidelity.
- Building an executive read-out of a longer analysis.
How to Use
- Storyboard first, slides second. Write the slide titles as full sentences (the takeaway of each slide). 6–10 takeaways = 6–10 slides.
- Anchor the template. Attach the team/tenant template. Tell Copilot which layouts exist ("Title", "Section Header", "Two Content", "Quote", "Comparison").
- One slide at a time. "Build Slide 4 —
Adoption is up 32% but support tickets doubled — using the attached usage telemetry. Layout: Two Content."
- Speaker notes are part of the deliverable. Ask for them explicitly. They are how the presenter stays on-message.
- Charts via Excel, not PowerPoint. Build the chart in Excel (excel-analysis), paste-link into the slide. Source-of-truth stays in one place.
- Verify every chart, every number, every logo. Hallucinated data on a slide is the highest-blast-radius defect in the dojo.
- Time-box rehearsal. 1 minute / slide is a useful planning constant. Cut, don't shrink the font.
Examples
| Don't: Anti-example | Do: Good example |
|---|
| "Make me a 10-slide deck on our Q1 results." | Provide 10 takeaway titles + the source workbook; ask Copilot to build one slide per turn against the template. |
| Accepting auto-generated stock photos for an external customer deck. | Use only template-approved imagery; flag missing assets with a comment. |
| "Convert this memo into a deck." | Storyboard the deck independently — pick the 6 takeaways the audience needs. |
| 14-bullet slides in 12pt font. | One headline, one chart, one sentence of context. The rest goes in speaker notes. |
Critical Rules
- Takeaway titles only. "Q1 Results" is a topic; "Q1 revenue grew 18% on EMEA expansion" is a takeaway. Always the latter.
- One layout family. Don't mix template versions or legacy slide masters. Inconsistency reads as carelessness.
- Charts are linked, not pasted as images — unless the underlying data is too sensitive to ship.
- Speaker notes for every content slide. Section dividers can skip.
- Build an appendix. Anything you'd reference under questioning lives there. Don't pad the main flow.
- No new content on the final slide. Q&A, contact, or thank-you only.
- Sensitivity label before any external share. Decks leak more than memos.
Common Pitfalls
- "Make a nice deck" — guarantees off-brand, generic output.
- Letting Copilot pick the layout — inconsistent slide masters across the deck.
- Skipping speaker notes — the presenter improvises and goes off-message.
- Pasting a long memo and asking for "a deck version" without storyboarding first.
- Auto-resized charts that crop axis labels or legends.
- Embedded video that doesn't play in the venue's PowerPoint version.
- Animations that read as juvenile in front of a board.
- Smart-art clusters that look great on the laptop and unreadable on a projector.
Anti-Patterns
- One slide per memo paragraph — destroys narrative arc.
- Reusing yesterday's deck without auditing for stale data, departed people, sunset products.
- Customer logos on slides without explicit reuse permission. Legal incident waiting to happen.
- Deep colors on dark template backgrounds — fails accessibility contrast.
Verify Before Send
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