Executive Storytelling

Turn the analysis
into a decision.

A full workshop and one-to-one coaching for managers and specialists who present to senior audiences. How to turn good analysis into a clear recommendation, and put it so the room can decide.

Discuss a Session
The Gap

Good analysis is not the same as a clear recommendation.

Most professionals who present upwards know their material thoroughly. The difficulty is choosing: what the room actually has to decide, which evidence carries it, and what to leave out.


Senior audiences have limited time and read quickly. When the recommendation is buried, they spend the meeting working out what it means, and the decision moves to next month.


Structure can be taught, and so can the judgement about what to cut.

Where It Goes

Four ways a strong case gets lost.

Each one is a habit rather than a gap in ability, which is why it responds to practice.

Everything found is in the update

Six weeks of research become forty slides. The person meant to decide spends the meeting working out what it means, and the "so what" never arrives.

The story follows the analysis

The deck runs in the order the work was done. The audience needs it in the order they will decide.

The decision is never put on the table

There is a recommendation in there somewhere, but nobody is asked to choose between clear options, so nobody chooses and the item returns next month.

The predictable question arrives unprepared

The objection anyone could have foreseen lands in the meeting, the answer is improvised, and confidence in the whole case drops with it.

What We Cover

From analysis to a recommendation the room can act on.

Four connected parts, worked on with participants' own presentations and updates rather than invented case studies.

Part

01

Start with the decision

Who is in the room, what they have to decide, and what they are likely to resist. The recommendation is settled before a single slide is built.

Part

02

Structure the argument

Communication frameworks built for senior audiences. Lead with the "so what", keep only the evidence that carries it, and make the case hold up for someone who only skims the slides.

Part

03

Make the evidence readable

Turning data into a few clear points. Choosing the chart that makes the point, and writing slide headlines that say what the chart means.

Part

04

Deliver and defend it

Being present in the room, handling challenge, and answering the hard question without losing the thread of the argument.

Participants bring a real presentation or update, and leave with it restructured and a method they can use again.

Formats

For a team, or for one person.

For Teams

Executive Storytelling Workshop

Half a day or a full day  ·  In person or online

For a team that presents to senior audiences, or a cohort in a learning and development programme. All four parts, with each participant working on their own material.

  • The decision and the audience, defined first
  • A real presentation restructured in the room
  • Evidence and charts that make the point
  • Practice handling challenge, out loud

For Individuals

Executive Storytelling Coaching

One or three sessions  ·  Ninety minutes each

For a manager facing a presentation that matters, or one who wants the method rather than one good outcome. Built around their own material and their own senior audience.

  • The audience, the decision, and what they will resist
  • The argument built out, with slides worked on alongside it
  • Rehearsal against the hard questions, out loud
  • The structure written down, so it can be used again

Heads of function commissioning a presentation standard or training material for a whole team can have that scoped separately.

Modupe Sanda

Who Does The Work

Close to two decades where the presentation was the deliverable.

Modupe spent close to two decades in FMCG marketing, much of it in roles where a decision depended on how well a case was put. He became the person the Marketing Director and the Area Director came to before any presentation that mattered, which is a position you are given by being right about structure more often than you are wrong.

As Area Information Manager for West and Central Africa he set the standard formally: he established how insight-led executive storytelling was done across the function, and ran the Insights and Foresights training that taught it.

"The numbers don't always speak for themselves. Someone has to explain what they mean and what the implications are."

Fit

Worth being direct about who this suits.

This is practical work on real presentations. It asks for preparation and it does not suit every situation.

This fits if

  • Your people present analysis or recommendations to directors, executive committees or boards.
  • They know their material well, but decisions stall when they present it.
  • Participants can bring a real presentation or update to work on.
  • You want a structure the team can share, not one good meeting.

This does not fit if

  • You want slides designed and returned. A presentation agency is faster and better at that.
  • You need a motivational talk with no expectation of changed habits.
  • You need brand-standard visual design, illustration or animation.

Practical Detail

What booking involves.

Delivered in person across the UK, or online where that suits the group better. Participants work on their own material, so the session is agreed with you beforehand.

On confidentiality

Commercial material stays with you. Nothing participants share is reused, referenced or shown elsewhere, and a non-disclosure agreement is signed beforehand wherever you need one.

Formats

Team workshop or one-to-one coaching

Delivery

In person across the UK, or online

Lead time

Four weeks preferred for workshops, shorter for coaching

Fee

Priced on enquiry, based on format and group size

Tell us about the presentations that matter.

Who presents, to whom, and what keeps stalling. If the fit is not right, we will say so.

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