Doing a Google search for “McKinsey PowerPoint templates” highlights many entries that are almost all a violation of copy right. Moreoever, the templates are of little use to someone who is not working at McKinsey team on a client engagement. First of all: presentation starts with substance, then follow the frameworks (if any) A bit of historical context. I recognize the frameworks from my time at McKinsey, almost all of them are from the early 90s, when McKinsey was still working with an early pre-PowerPoint presentation tool called “Solo”. Solo was developed specifically for McKinsey, later marketed as an independent application. It vanished when PowerPoint emerged, not because PowerPoint at that time was neccesarily better, but all of McKinsey’s clients were running it and using it to edit presentations. (A slightly outdated looking site is still offering it for sale?). Your graphics assistant (nobody knew how to make charts themselves then), would dive into the template database to find “something that uses 4 arrows”. All these frameworks were meant to be used in densely written strategy/micro-economics documents, not in convincing on-screen presentations. If you would like to learn about McKinsey’s approach to graphics and presentations, try this:
- The content available on the McKinsey Quarterly site (most of which look actually better than “day-to-day” work)
- For the chart “Bible” that was used in the early 90s, flick through a copy of the book “Say it with charts” by Gene Zelazny. (I see he’s updated it since I last saw it).
- The foundation of McKinsey’s approach to writing logical story lines (but not always the most compelling stories that are important in presentations) can be found in Barbera Minto’s book “The Pyramid Principle”
- UPDATE: I posted about a question I get often: how to make a McKinsey waterfall chart here.
UPDATE February 2018: I have now added many PowerPoint slide design in the style of McKinsey to my presentation template store. Feel free to have a look and/or search for PowerPoint slides that have the keyword McKinsey