Ditch the Deck - Do This Instead
- seelafsimmons
- May 18
- 4 min read
Your leadership meetings are designed to produce slides when they should be designed to produce decisions.
Seela | Threadline Coaching
6 min read
How much of your team’s week is buried in PowerPoint? New initiative? Deck. Quarterly review? Deck. Strategic decision that’s been punted from one agenda to the next? Definitely needs slides.
The slide-deck habit has turned conversation into presentation theater. If your leadership meetings lack debate, feel overproduced, and the real conversations keep happening offline, the problem isn't your people. It's your meeting design.
Death by Deck
You’ve sat through this meeting. Someone walks the room through 22 slides. The first eight are context that everyone already knows. The recommendation lands somewhere on slide 19, three minutes before the hour. "Any questions?” Maybe you get through a question or two, and then the meeting ends. The decision gets discussed somewhere else, in small groups in the hallway, then again over Slack, only to show up again at next month’s meeting on a new deck. The collective discussion that needed to happen never did.
We expect senior leaders to debate, decide, and act. Then we structure our meetings to do the exact opposite.
2.3×
Leadership teams are 2.3× more likely to make winning decisions when they engage in authentic conversation — exploring assumptions, seeking disconfirming information, and presenting counterarguments. — McKinsey & Company, Effective decision making in the age of urgency (2019)
What your meeting actually needs
Most Decks Today | What Your Meeting Actually Needs |
Linear narrative built around a recommendation | A framed decision with options and trade-offs surfaced upfront |
Polished output that hides the thinking | A working draft that exposes the thinking and invites debate |
One person presents; the rest listen | Everyone discusses and participates |
Discussion crammed in at the end | Discussion is the meeting |
"Getting through" slides equals consensus | Decisions, actions, and owners are documented before the room empties |
The fix isn't a better deck. It's a better tool!
If this approach sounds familiar, it should. Amazon famously replaced internal slide decks with six-page narrative memos and a silent reading period at the start of each meeting. We didn’t invent the idea. What we have done is adapt it for leadership teams that aren’t Amazon and teams that need something more flexible and easier to adopt without rewiring the whole organization.
We call our version the Action-Decision Memo, and it sits at the center of a three-step framework we run with every client.
The Threadline Framework
01 Triage the Agenda!
Before any tools change, the agenda has to. We help clients sort every topic into one of three tiers:
Tier 1
Strategic Decisions
The big rocks. The big rocks. The group weighs options and commits to a path.
Tier 2
Action Requests
Items that need executive mobilization: resource shifts, task force assignments, high-stakes communication decisions.
Tier 3
Items to Inform
FYIs and project updates where the decision is already made. Ask yourself: Does this need live discussion, or can it be an email?
At least 80% of your agenda should land in Tier 1 or Tier 2. If it doesn't you're paying senior salaries to watch status reports.
02 Replace Your Slides with 'Action-Decision Memos.'
Once the agenda is set, most organizations spin up to build the deck. We break that habit. Instead of meetings before the meeting — chevrons, clip art, version 14 — each topic gets one short, two-page memo. Maximum.
Every Action-Decision Memo forces four things into the open:
The Topic: | What are we deciding, and why it matters now. |
The Context: | What has been tried, what needs to be considered, who is involved, and what else is impacted. |
Options: | What paths are on the table, with pros, cons, risks, opportunity costs, and success measures for each. |
The Ask: | What specific action or decision do you need from the leadership group today? |
The memo goes out 48 to 72 hours before the meeting with an explicit request: read it, write your reactions, and arrive with questions.
03 Open with silence, then with the Ask
Ideally, 72 to 48 hours before the meeting, the forms should be sent to meeting participants, with a specific ask to pre-read and arrive prepared with a written response and specific questions. A leadership team that honors can start the real work at minute one of the meeting.
A Necessary Caveat
When the Deck IS the Right Tool
There is a time and a place for slides. External pitches, all-hands, training, any setting where the goal is communication rather than decision-making, slides earn their keep. The point isn’t to eliminate slides. The point is to stop reaching for them when the real task is to think, debate, and act.
What Our Clients Report:
15–20% reduction in total meeting time
Decisions made once, not punted across three or four agendas
Try it on your next meeting
Pick one Tier 1 item from your next leadership agenda. Skip the slides. Write a two-page Action-Decision Memo instead. Send it 48 hours ahead. Open the meeting silent reading and start the conversation with the Ask.
Then tell us what happened.
Want the template? Email us, and we’ll send you the exact Action-Decision Memo template we use with our clients, just fill-in-the-blank, and it will be ready to use this week.
Want help redesigning the whole rhythm? Book a 30-minute consult. We work with CEOs, COO's, Chiefs of Staff, and HR leaders to rebuild the meetings where the most important decisions get made.
Seela
Founder, Threadline Coaching and Consulting.
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