Board Deck Builder

What this is for

The board meeting is Thursday, you have a spreadsheet full of numbers and a half-written email of "things to mention," and no story yet. This walks you through building the narrative (data cleanup, slide logic, speaker notes, and a stress test) before you touch a slide template.

Before you start

• Have your raw data open: the spreadsheet, dashboard export, or notes file.
• Know your audience's temperature going in. Are they generally supportive, neutral, or does one board member always push back on numbers?
• One confidentiality line, because this file's inputs are the most sensitive in the library: board financials belong in a company-licensed AI account if you have one. If you're using a personal account, round or index the numbers (show trend, not raw figures) before pasting; the narrative logic works identically. Your AI policy should already say this.
• Pick your build tool now, knowing where each one ends up: Gamma exports to PowerPoint and PDF, which is what boards actually receive. Claude writes a real .pptx you can download, so the narrative work and the file can happen in one place. Gamma is still worth it when you want its themes to do the design work; Claude is faster when the story is the hard part.

The workflow

Prompt 1: The data cleanup

Claude, because you can paste a full spreadsheet as text or CSV and it holds the whole thing in context.

ROLE: You are a data analyst prepping messy numbers for a board
narrative.
CONTEXT: Below is [YOUR DATA, e.g. Q2 metrics: revenue by month,
churn by segment, pipeline by rep, raw and unformatted]. I need the
signal, not a reformatted version of the mess.
CONSTRAINTS: Identify the 3-4 numbers that actually matter for a
board audience, not everything that's in the sheet. Flag anything
that looks like an error or an outlier before I present it. Do not
smooth over a bad number. Flag it and note the likely cause if the
data suggests one.
OUTPUT FORMAT: A short list of the key numbers with one-line context
each, followed by a separate list of anomalies or data-quality flags.

Prompt 2: The "so what per slide" narrative

Either model.

ROLE: You are a board-deck strategist who cares about narrative, not
decoration.
CONTEXT: Here are my key numbers and context from the cleanup step:
[PASTE CLEANED NUMBERS AND FLAGS]. The board's main concern this
quarter is [THE CONCERN, e.g. burn rate and whether the sales hire
is paying off].
CONSTRAINTS: For each of 8 slides, give me one sentence that is the
"so what": the takeaway a board member should have if they only read
that one line. Do not give me slide titles that just restate the
topic ("Revenue Update"). Give me the point ("Revenue is up but
concentrated in one segment, which is a risk").
OUTPUT FORMAT: A numbered list, slides 1-8, each with a one-line "so
what" and the 1-2 data points that support it.

What eight real "so what" lines look like for a fictional $30M services company, so you know the bar:

1. We beat the quarter, but one client is now 31% of revenue, and that's the number to watch.
2. Revenue up 9% QoQ; growth came entirely from expansion, not new logos.
3. The two Q1 process fixes held: delivery margin recovered to 34%.
4. New-logo pipeline is the miss: down 40%, and it's a top-of-funnel problem, not a close-rate problem.
5. The cause is capacity: both senior sellers spent the quarter on the expansion deals that drove slide 2.
6. We're reassigning one seller to new logos and trialing an SDR contract through October.
7. We need the board's help on one thing: intros into the two verticals where we have case studies but no relationships.
8. By the November meeting you'll see pipeline coverage back above 2.5x or a revised plan.

Notice the shape: every line survives being read alone, slide 4 names the miss plainly, and slide 7 asks for something specific. If your eight lines don't do those three things, re-run the prompt with sharper inputs.

The executive-summary-first structure

Board decks fail when the punchline is on slide 6. Structure is fixed; don't skip slide 1:

1. The headline: one sentence, the single thing they need to remember if they read nothing else.
2. The number that matters most, with trend.
3. What's working, with evidence.
4. What's not working, named directly, not softened.
5. Why, in one layer of "so what does that mean."
6. What we're doing about it.
7. What we need from the board: a decision, money, or air cover.
8. Next milestone and date.

Prompt 3: Generating speaker notes

Either model.

ROLE: You are helping me write speaker notes for a board deck I've
already outlined.
CONTEXT: Here is my 8-slide outline with "so what" lines: [PASTE
OUTLINE FROM THE NARRATIVE STEP].
CONSTRAINTS: Notes should be what I'd actually say out loud, not a
read-aloud script. Short phrases and reminders, not full sentences.
Flag any slide where the "so what" isn't obvious from the visual
alone, since that's where I need to talk more.
OUTPUT FORMAT: One block of speaker notes per slide, max 4 lines
each.

Prompt 4: Stress-testing with a skeptical CFO

Either model; Claude if you want a longer back-and-forth in the same thread. (Meeting notes from the last board session are the best input for the board-concern line; Meeting-to-Memo is how those get made.)

ROLE: You are a skeptical, numbers-first CFO sitting on this board.
You are not hostile, but you do not accept a claim without evidence
and you notice when a number is presented without its context.
CONTEXT: Here is my deck outline and speaker notes: [PASTE OUTLINE
AND NOTES]. Challenge me the way you actually would in the room.
CONSTRAINTS: Ask the three hardest questions this deck invites. Do
not be polite about it. Then ask the one question you'd ask if you
had already privately decided to vote no; that's the one I most need
to hear before Thursday. For each, tell me whether my current
material answers it or leaves a gap.
OUTPUT FORMAT: Four questions, each followed by "answered" or "gap,"
and what I'd need to add to close any gap.

Building the actual slides

Once the narrative is locked, build the deck. Don't build slides before the story is right.

Gamma: gamma.app, create new, paste in your 8-slide outline with speaker notes, choose a theme, and Gamma generates one slide per section. Edit slide-by-slide from there (don't regenerate the whole deck for small fixes), then export to PowerPoint or PDF for the board packet.

Claude: In your existing Claude conversation, ask: "Build this as an 8-slide PowerPoint file, one slide per section, using the outline above." You get a real .pptx to download and open in PowerPoint or Keynote, built in the same thread that holds your narrative, so revisions do not mean starting over somewhere else. Ask for an HTML version instead when you plan to present from a browser and want to click through it while you refine.

Getting it right

• Pick which numbers matter yourself. The AI doesn't know your board's history or which member fixates on churn. Treat the cleanup output as a draft shortlist, not the final cut.
• Settle the narrative before you build slides. Fixing a weak story after the deck is built means redoing slides. Lock the narrative steps before you open Gamma.
• Run the CFO stress test even when the deck feels done. A deck that feels done is exactly the one where a gap gets found live, in the room, instead of by you the night before.
• Build for how it gets delivered. A deck forwarded as a file, presented from a screen, and printed for the packet are three different builds. Decide which one you owe them before you start, not on Wednesday night.

The 2-minute version

Paste your data into the cleanup prompt. Feed the output into the narrative prompt and hold the eight lines to the worked example's bar. Build in Gamma or ask Claude for the .pptx directly. Run the skeptical-CFO prompt, including the vote-no question, before you present, not after.

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More where this came from. The resource library has 24 free guides like this one, written for people with real careers rather than developers.

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