Operational Excellence — Authoring Guide
A deliberately conservative internal management deck at the bar of a large industrial group's board and steering-committee communication. It is structured, dense and functional. It should look like something a real corporation would table in a programme review, not a designed artefact.
Action titles, not topics
Every content slide's title is a complete-sentence claim, never a label. Read top to bottom, the titles alone carry the management argument.
- Wrong: "Current situation"
- Right: "Growth through acquisitions has increased operational complexity."
Density is the point
These slides carry a lot, on purpose. Use the richest layout the content needs — a numbered point grid, a stat grid, a three-column table, a scoring matrix, a risk table, a layered architecture, an org hierarchy, a timeline. Type always stays readable (14–19px body); never shrink text to fit. Avoid large empty hero slides and excessive whitespace; a steering-committee slide is expected to be full.
Colour discipline
- White ground on content slides; deep navy (#15263D) on cover, closing, message bands and the governance rail.
- Corporate blue (#1F4E79) is the single accent: numerals, key markers, table emphasis, the recommended column. Steel blue (#4A77A8) is a tint only.
- The severity reds/ambers/greens exist only as risk-matrix likelihood/impact chips. Nowhere else.
- Hairlines (#D4DAE1) for rules, gridlines and table borders.
Imagery
- Charts, tables and diagrams are drawn by the system in its own hairlines.
- Any real-world photograph (a plant, a line, a logistics yard, a meeting) is a labelled placeholder frame, never an AI or stock image dropped onto a content slide.
Voice
- Lead with the conclusion. Plain, measured, corporate. No hype, no hedging.
- Sentence case everywhere. This is internal communication, not marketing.
- If a slide could appear in a consumer product launch, it is wrong for this deck.
