A pre-flight checklist for decks that face partners, boards, or clients

Senior reviewers don't read your deck the way you wrote it. They scan for credibility signals in the first thirty seconds — and a handful of mechanical mistakes will cost you the room before your argument gets a hearing. This is the checklist we use.

The story

1. Titles alone tell the whole argument (the horizontal-logic test).
2. One idea per slide. If a slide makes two points, it's two slides.
3. Every content slide answers "so what?" — in the title or a takeaway.
4. The recommendation appears early, not as a slide-30 reveal.

The numbers

1. Every figure has a source on the slide, not just in your head.
2. Estimates are labeled as estimates, with the basis stated.
3. Numbers that should reconcile do reconcile (totals, bridges, CAGRs).
4. Chart types match the message: composition → stacked bars or pies,

bridges → waterfalls, trends → lines, exact values → tables.

The mechanics

1. Nothing is clipped, nothing overflows, nothing almost-aligns.
2. Bullet lists are parallel: same grammatical form, comparable length.
3. Fonts, colors, and spacing are consistent across every slide.
4. The deck survives PowerPoint: send it to a colleague and have them edit

a chart. If they can't, fix your export path.

The room

1. The deck works without you narrating it — assume it gets forwarded.
2. The appendix carries the depth; the main line carries the argument.
3. Someone hostile has read it before someone friendly presents it.

Most of the mechanical items on this list shouldn't require human vigilance at all — layout fit, consistency, sourcing, and editable exports are properties a well-built tool can guarantee. That conviction is why we're building Slidechat the way we are. The story checks, though, remain your job — and they're the fun part.