Presentation Structure

Build a coherent presentation with Situation → Complication → Question → Resolution, supporting points and evidence, and a purposeful closing. Default to a speaking outline plus a short structural breakdown. Adapt to a requested slide outline, full script, or review.

Establish the presentation

Identify the audience, purpose, intended takeaway or decision, supplied evidence, requested format, and time limit from context. Ask only when missing information would materially change the presentation. Without a time limit, produce a concise outline without claiming a delivery duration.

Preserve the user's intended recommendation while checking its support. Expose contradictory evidence and qualify uncertain conclusions; do not manufacture a persuasive case. For an informational presentation, use the relevant change, knowledge gap, or audience question to motivate the takeaway without inventing a crisis or decision request.

Connect the opening to the body

Draft the opening in this order:

• Situation: Orient the audience with necessary background. Do not assume agreement or familiarity without support.
• Complication: Explain the relevant problem, change, risk, or gap and why it matters.
• Question: State the simple, natural question raised by the complication. This belongs in the presentation; it is not an instruction to pause for user input.
• Resolution: Answer that question with the central recommendation or message. Four sentences can work for a compact opening but are not required.

For a tightly constrained slide outline, put the opening question and its answer in the first slide's key message or speaker note before developing the supporting evidence. Preserve the requested slide count and fields.

The resolution is also the pyramid's main message. Do not introduce a second thesis or restart the opening when moving into the body. Preview the supporting points, then develop each with evidence and rationale. Let the subject determine the number of points rather than forcing three.

Check upward: evidence supports each point, and each point supports the main message. Check across: the points are distinct, logically ordered, and cover the audience's important questions. Give repeated evidence a primary home, explain genuine interactions, and preserve material counterarguments. Distinguish facts, examples, assumptions, and reasoning. Identify missing evidence rather than inventing it; keep important uncertainty in the argument, not only in a hidden note.

Use transitions to make the relationship between points clear. Match depth to the audience and time available rather than allocating an arbitrary number of slides or minutes to every component.

Close the presentation

Signal the ending naturally and restate the central message. Recap the supporting points when useful for the presentation's length and complexity. Include a decision request or next action when the purpose calls for one; do not invent commitments, owners, deadlines, or a new argument.

These closing recommendations come from Alexander Lyon's advice in the source video. He explicitly says he does not know of a single prescribed McKinsey conclusion framework. Do not attribute his suggested closing to an official McKinsey standard or require the literal phrase “in conclusion.”

Deliver or review

• Speaking outline (default): Provide drafted opening wording, organized body talking points with supporting evidence, and drafted closing wording. Add a compact breakdown showing how SCQR, the body, and the closing connect; do not repeat the whole outline.
• Slide outline: Provide slide titles, key messages, supporting evidence, and brief speaker notes, followed by the structural breakdown. Do not treat an outline request as a request to create a deck.
• Full script: Provide conversational spoken prose from opening through closing, followed by the structural breakdown.
• Review: Assess consequential weaknesses, revise in the supplied or requested format, and provide the breakdown. Distinguish changes in wording or organization from proposed changes in substance. For critique-only requests, provide feedback without rewriting.

Keep framework labels and explanatory notes separate from prose meant to be spoken. Follow explicit format requests, including omission of the breakdown. Finish when the opening poses and answers a coherent question, the body supports the same central message, the closing serves the purpose, and material evidence gaps remain visible.

Sources and related work

Related skills are optional. If a linked sibling skill is not installed, use the guidance in this file rather than treating it as a missing prerequisite.

Read Alexander Lyon's presentation source notes for questions about the original teaching, its hypothetical example, or source attribution. Routine work does not require loading it. The notes summarize the source teaching; this skill's workflow and output defaults are adaptations.

For deeper component work, consult SCR when the context/problem/action framing needs attention, or Pyramid Principle when grouping or evidence logic needs attention. Use their component guidance within this presentation workflow rather than producing separate complete outputs from each skill.

When the user requests an actual PowerPoint or Google Slides artifact, apply the appropriate available presentation-production skill alongside this argument-structure guidance. This skill alone does not prescribe deck layout, tooling, or file production.