Executives in today’s business environment have limited time available to research and absorb information. In order to optimize their time, executive summaries are becoming increasingly important. They allow readers to speed read a report and gain the focus and insight needed.
Your executive summary should:
- Cover the main points
- Provide a conclusion and/or make recommendations
Prepare an executive summary presentation of your final project. It should summarize the final project so it can be presented to the board of a particular company. Use this guide to writing an effective executive summary as a resource to prepare your content and message for your presentation. The presentation should contain about 7–10 slides with either audio (voice over) or detailed speaker notes.
Consider and apply the following principles of an effective presentation:
- You may utilize a product such as Microsoft’s PowerPoint, Prezi, or Google Slides to create your presentations.
- There are various template designs that you can find on the internet for your presentation. However, first consider your presentation from the audience’s perspective prior to selecting a specific style. Distracting backgrounds, large blocks of text, all uppercase fonts, elaborate font styles, grammatical errors, and misspellings are distracting. Be consistent with the style of text, bullets, and sub-points in order to support a powerful presentation that allows your content to be the focus.
- Each slide should include your key point(s). Do not place large blocks of text on the visual. Your presentation is not a means of presenting a short paper. In an actual presentation you would not read from your slides but use them as prompts.
- Any notes or narration you would use in delivering this presentation to a group should be listed in the notes section of the slide.
- References should be listed at the bottom of the slide in slightly smaller text.
- Use clip art, AutoShapes, pictures, charts, tables, and diagrams to enhance but not overwhelm your content.
- Be mindful of the intended audience and seek to assess the presentation’s effectiveness by gauging audience comprehension (when possible).
The following links offer helpful tips and examples for developing presentations:
Remember:
- Your feedback and comments should be constructive, featuring a discussion of the strengths of the presentation as well as areas that could be improved.
- Keep the tone of your comments positive and constructive. You are reviewing the presentation, not the person.
Follow-up should focus on receiving clarification on edits and feedback, or should lead to a discussion contrasting approaches. Constructive and friendly follow-up is optional, but encouraged.
