Guide · updated
What consultants use to build slides faster in PowerPoint
Mostly habits, then a few tools. Consultants write the storyline before the slides, sketch the deck on paper, reuse page layouts instead of starting blank, keep their hands on the keyboard, and add tools for charts, page templates, alignment and checks. In our timed races, a legend that took 45.6 seconds by mouse took 8.3 seconds by keys.
The habits come first
- Write the storyline before the slides. The page titles, read one after another, tell the whole argument. Each title is a full sentence that says what the page shows.
- Sketch the deck on paper. A "ghost deck" of boxes and titles gets agreed before anyone opens PowerPoint, so slides are built once.
- Reuse page layouts. Most decks are made of the same twenty kinds of page: a 2x2, an issue tree, a Gantt, a waterfall, an executive summary. Nobody draws those from scratch twice.
- Keep the hands on the keyboard. Aligning, matching sizes and placing the same box on every page are done with keys, not menus.
- Check before sending. Fonts, colors, stray boxes and slide numbers are checked as a last pass, not page by page.
Then the tools
PowerPoint is the standard. Teams add tools in four groups, and which ones they pick varies by firm and team:
- Chart tools for waterfalls, Mekkos, Gantts and stacked bars drawn from data.
- Page libraries of ready-made consulting layouts that take the deck's own colors.
- Shortcut and alignment add-ins for the moves PowerPoint leaves to the mouse.
- Deck checks that find inconsistent fonts, colors and positions.
We compared thirteen of these add-ins, from their own pages, on PowerPoint add-ins for consultants.
A note from Davon
I spent my McKinsey years, the last of them as an engagement manager, building slides the way everyone there does: hands on the keyboard, the Firm's chords doing the aligning, the distributing and the formatting without a thought. When I decided to leave, my first worry wasn't the work. It was “how am I going to make a slide without those keys?” So I built them for myself, then for everyone else who left and still reaches for a chord that isn't there. That's why the Mac keys follow the Firm's chords exactly: it's muscle memory, and I didn't want to retrain mine.
Timed: what the keys are worth
Remember building a legend by hand, one swatch and one label at a time? These are the same tasks raced both ways on the same slide.
| Task | By mouse | By keys | Keys used (Mac · Windows) | Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tidy five boxes: same size, tops on one line, even gaps | 11.1 s, 8 clicks | 3.0 s | Make same size ⌥Z · Alt+Z, Align top ⌃⌘↑ · Ctrl+Alt+↑, Distribute horizontally ⌥⇧H · Alt+Shift+H | 30 Sep 2026 |
| Put a box in the same spot on four slides | 36.3 s, 26 clicks | 12.8 s | Copy position ⌘1 · Ctrl+1, Paste position ⌘2 · Ctrl+2 | 30 Sep 2026 |
| Add a source line and a sticky to a chart slide | 27.0 s, 14 clicks | 9.5 s | Insert source footer ⌘⌥F · Ctrl+Alt+F, Insert yellow sticky ⌘0 · Ctrl+0 | 4 Oct 2026 |
| Add a three-series legend to a chart | 45.6 s, 27 clicks and 6 drags | 8.3 s | Insert legend ⌃⌥L · Ctrl+Alt+L | 8 Oct 2026 |
The Stopwatch: each task raced twice on the same slide in PowerPoint for Mac, once with the mouse and the ribbon, once with the keys, at the same pace. Timed from the first cursor move to the moment the slide reaches its final state. More races, including Google Slides, are on the shortcut reference.
What SlideShortcuts does
SlideShortcuts puts three of those tool groups in one place: keys for aligning, sizing, distributing and positioning, charts drawn as real PowerPoint shapes, and a library of consulting pages that arrive in your deck's own colors and fonts. On a Mac, the keys follow the Firm's chords, so many alumni already know them.
Questions
What software do McKinsey consultants use for slides?
PowerPoint, with add-ins for charts, page templates, alignment and checks. Which add-ins a team uses varies by office and team, and the habits matter as much as the tools: storyline first, a ghost deck, reused pages and the keyboard.
What is a ghost deck?
A sketch of the whole deck before any slide is built: one box per page with its title and a rough picture of the content. The team agrees the story on paper, so the slides are built once.
How do consultants make slides look consistent?
They start from the same page layouts and the firm's template, keep shapes the same size and lined up with the keyboard, and run a check for fonts, colors and positions before sending.
How much faster is building slides with keyboard shortcuts?
In our races, putting a box in the same spot on four slides took 36.3 seconds by mouse and 12.8 seconds by keys. The table above shows four tasks, each with the date it was recorded.
Try the keys on your own slides
SlideShortcuts adds these keys to PowerPoint on Mac and Windows, and to Google Slides in Chrome. It installs in about a minute.
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