FP&A Stories

Hello Reader 👋

In my life, I think I went schizophrenic when it came to creating slides

Sometimes I wanted to automate the max out of them;
Other times, I spent too much time on them just so they were perfect;
And also, out of laziness, I just dropped as much data as possible, maybe out of contradiction against someone who wanted to know everything.

The truth is, there is no unique personality for people working with PowerPoint.

And I wanted to share with you the main characters of the PowerPoint world (and yes, it's also to have fun, no need to be overly serious all the time, right?)

This, before telling you more about the HUGE surprise I'm planning for you next week.

So take a coffee, sit down and read FP&A Stories just like 22k other readers

No coffee no work — It's not yet Christmas but what the heck...I'm doing it

This week in FP&A Stories

😎 The 8 Personae of PowerPoint

💻 PowerPoint Guide - The new course

🎀 The 5 Days of Black Friday

😎 The 8 Personae of PowerPoint

I've been there. You've been there.

Despite the many templates available in our companies, we never really met someone who would prepare our slides the way we would.

This could be frustrating sometimes but I learned to embrace the different personalities, even if some aspects should be corrected when we know more about storytelling.

The way we build slides often says more about us than the data itself.

Here’s the truth: we all fit into a “persona” when it comes to creating slides.

Some approaches work better than others. Some, well… don’t.

Let’s dive into the eight types of slide creators in Finance.

Which one are you?

I dropped my article in ChatGPT to get the visuals. What do you think of them?

1. The Data Dumper

A professional finance setting with a visual representation of the 'Data Dumper' persona. The slide shown on the screen is chaotic, overflowing with tiny-font tables, overly detailed charts, and excessive graphs, leaving no white space. The background includes a corporate office with a frustrated audience trying to decipher the cluttered slide. Ensure the slide looks overwhelming and emphasizes the persona's focus on including every detail without a clear message. The overall scene should feel professional yet visually overbearing, capturing the essence of a data-heavy presentation gone wrong.

Traits: Loves their spreadsheets. Packs slides with every number they’ve ever calculated, complete with tiny-font tables and unreadable graphs.
Their Logic: “If it’s all there, nobody can question me.”
The Problem: Nobody knows where to look. Your message drowns in an ocean of data.
How to Improve: Focus on one insight per slide. Start with the key message and build only around that. Remember: if everything is important, nothing is.

2. The Bullet Point Warrior

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Bullet Point Warrior' persona. The slide on the screen is entirely filled with bullet points—rows of repetitive text marked with bullet symbols, creating a cluttered and overwhelming visual effect. The audience in the background appears disengaged, some looking at their phones or with confused expressions, as they struggle to process the dense information. The setting emphasizes the lack of visuals or hierarchy on the slide, showcasing how the excessive use of bullet points diminishes clarity. Ensure the scene feels corporate and relatable.

Traits: Lives and dies by bullet points. Each slide looks like a legal memo, complete with full paragraphs.
Their Logic: “I don’t need to present, I’ll just read the slide.”
The Problem: Slides aren’t reports. Walls of text are read by the audience, so they'll sleep and won't listen to you.
How to Improve: Slides should guide, not replace, your voice. Use visuals, whitespace, and concise headlines to drive attention to you.

3. The Designer (But Overboard)

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Designer' persona in slide creation. The slide on the screen is filled with colorful designs, overly elaborate animations, and excessive decorative elements like fancy fonts and gradients, overshadowing the actual financial content. The audience in the background appears distracted or unimpressed, struggling to focus on the message amid the visual chaos. The scene emphasizes form over function, showcasing how overdesign can detract from clarity and purpose. The setting is a corporate environment, professional but visually exaggerated to highlight the persona's tendencies.

Traits: Spends hours tweaking fonts, animations, and elaborate slide designs. Their deck looks like an art project, but the main message is lost somewhere.
Their Logic: “If it looks great, they’ll listen!”
The Problem: Form overshadows function. No one remembers your flashy animations (they can even distract).
How to Improve: Keep it simple. A professional design supports the message without competing with it. Think clarity, not like you were the next director of Marvel Studios.

4. The Over-Preparer

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Over-Preparer' persona in slide creation. The slide on the screen is cluttered with an overwhelming number of charts, backup data, and contingency scenarios, all crammed into one slide. The visuals are complex and excessive, making it hard to focus on any key point. The audience in the background appears puzzled or fatigued, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information. The scene emphasizes the over-preparation tendency, with too many details that dilute the core message. The setting should feel corporate and relatable, highlighting the persona's overcomplication of slides.

Traits: Fills slides with contingency scenarios, extra charts, and backup data “just in case.” Their decks could double as the size of a good old dictionnary.
Their Logic: “What if someone asks for this?”
The Problem: You waste time and dilute your message preparing for questions nobody will ever ask.
How to Improve: Tailor your slides to the core narrative. Bring backup slides for deep dives, but don’t overload your main presentation. Sometimes, you just have to admit you will have to come back with a response to an unexpected question.

5. The Minimalist

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Minimalist' persona in slide creation. The slide on the screen features one title at the top, a single chart in the center, and two simple bullet points below the chart. The overall design is very sparse, with large empty spaces, creating a sense of ambiguity and incompleteness. The audience in the background appears slightly confused, trying to make sense of the minimal information provided. The scene highlights how the minimalist approach can sometimes leave the audience searching for clarity. The setting should feel corporate and relatable, emphasizing simplicity taken to an extreme.

Traits: Takes “less is more” to the extreme. Their slides are so "empty" they feel incomplete (one-word headlines and a single graph).
Their Logic: “I’m letting the data speak for itself.”
The Problem: Data doesn’t speak, you do. If your audience has to guess the message of your slide, they won't listen to you either.
How to Improve: Give your slides enough structure to guide the audience. Add context, even if it’s brief, to ensure clarity.

6. The Jargon Enthusiast

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Jargon Enthusiast' persona in slide creation. The slide on the screen is overloaded with technical finance terms, including words like 'EBITDA,' 'CASHFLOW,' 'ARR,' 'NPV,' 'IRR,' 'IFRS,' and 'GAAP.' The layout is dense with acronyms and jargon, creating an overwhelming and inaccessible look. The audience in the background appears puzzled or disengaged, struggling to process the information due to the excessive use of complex terminology. The scene highlights how jargon-filled slides can alienate stakeholders and obscure the message. The setting should feel corporate and relatable, emphasizing the cluttered and overly technical nature of the slide.

Traits: Fill their slides with technical terms, acronyms, and finance jargon. If your audience is not in Finance, good luck for them.
Their Logic: “This proves I know my stuff.”
The Problem: It excludes non-finance people and confuses even the pros.
How to Improve: Translate jargon into a normal human language. Ask yourself: Would my audience understand this without a finance dictionary?

7. The Slide Master

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Slide Master' persona in slide creation. The slide on the screen is perfectly aligned and formatted according to a rigid corporate template. Every element, from the title to the bullet points and chart, is neatly placed but lacks creativity or flexibility. The design appears overly formal and mechanical, with no variation to suit the specific content or message. The audience in the background looks neutral or slightly bored, as the presentation feels more like a routine than an engaging experience. The scene highlights the overly rigid approach to slide creation, where uniformity stifles adaptability. The setting should feel corporate and structured, emphasizing the templated and uninspired nature of the slide.

Traits: Obsessed with slide masters and templates. Everything follows the rules, but creativity is nowhere to be found.
Their Logic: “Consistency is everything.”
The Problem: While templates create uniformity, they can also prevent your ability to tailor slides to your message.
How to Improve: Start with templates, but don’t be afraid to break the rules when it serves your story.

8. The Strategist

A professional finance setting illustrating the 'Strategist' persona in slide creation. The slide on the screen is clean, well-balanced, and visually engaging, featuring a clear headline, a simple chart, and concise bullet points that guide the narrative. The layout is logical, with enough whitespace to avoid clutter while ensuring all essential information is presented. The audience in the background looks engaged and attentive, as the slide effectively communicates the key message and drives decision-making. The scene highlights how the 'Strategist' persona strikes the perfect balance between form and function, creating slides that are both impactful and actionable. The setting should feel corporate and polished, showcasing the ideal approach to slide creation.

Traits: Balances form and function. Their slides tell a story, guide decisions, and leave the audience with clear next steps.
Their Logic: “Slides are a tool to drive action.”
Why It Works: They combine the best of all worlds: clear visuals, concise messages, and well-structured narratives.
How to Improve (for Everyone Else): Share your knowledge with the 7 other personae

Final Thoughts

We’ve all been the “Data Dumper” or the “Bullet Point Warrior” at some point.

But every presentation is an opportunity to improve. Next time you sit down to create a deck, ask yourself:

-Which persona am I today?

-And how can I move closer to being the Strategist?

Because in Finance, it’s not just about presenting a report: it’s about helping the decision-making process.

What persona do you see most often in your organization?

Or, better yet, which one are you guilty of being?

Let me know;-) I’d love to hear your stories!

💻 PowerPoint Guide - The New Course

Some time ago, I created together with Nicolas Boucher a PowerPoint Guide for Finance, a 116-page guide to help finance professionals master PowerPoint

This was a huge success (665 people purchased it) and many people asked us whether we would work on a video training to demo the different features present in the book.

Well, it's a work-in-progress and it should be out next week.

In this video course, I'll show everything you need to know with PowerPoint in use cases that are applicable to our field.

Short videos, all at the same place, with clear walkthrough on how useful they are in a monthly results presentation for example.

Stay tuned as more will come next week.

🎀 The 5 Days of Black Friday

I'm sure you've already received dozens of emails warning you about the Black Friday week.

I know they can be overwhelming sometimes and I totally understand it.

The thing is: we can't really escape them.

Many people are expecting to get the courses they wanted and I also kind of expect it to make a living of my passion.

So here's my deal:

I will only send 5 emails in total
In each email, you'll get a unique offer
You won't get tons of reminders, last call, doors are closing, etc....

So if you hoped to get 1 my offers (some surprises are coming), stay tuned and keep an eye on your mailbox.

If you really don't want to have these commercial emails, no hard feelings.

Just click on the link here

That's a wrap for this week

See you next week!

PS: Whenever you're ready to develop your financial storytelling skills and become the visible face of finance, join the Financial Storytelling Program

FP&A Stories - The 8 Personae of PowerPoint