Case Study 26-2: Elena's Executive Translation — Making Complex Analysis Simple

The Challenge: A 40-page organizational assessment report needs to become a 10-slide executive presentation. The executives are smart, busy, and skeptical. The analysis is rigorous but dense. Elena has two days.

Context

Elena has completed a four-month organizational health assessment for Meridian Professional Services — the same firm she onboarded in Chapter 24's case study. The full assessment is a 40-page document covering: - Survey data analysis from all 400 employees (6 sections, 48 questions) - Interview synthesis from 45 individual conversations - Benchmarking comparison against 8 peer firms - Root cause analysis for the three low-performing departments - 12 specific recommendations, prioritized

The client CEO has asked Elena to present findings to the full executive team (8 people) in a 40-minute slot at their quarterly offsite. The CEO's instruction: "Don't give us the analysis. Give us what we need to make decisions."

Elena has two days to convert 40 pages into 10 slides that drive decisions, not confusion.

Day 1, Morning: The Translation Problem

Elena's first challenge is framing. The 40-page report is organized around the analysis (survey section by survey section). The executive presentation needs to be organized around decisions and actions. These are fundamentally different structures.

She starts with an AI prompt designed to surface the structure, not the content:

Structural translation prompt:

I have a 40-page organizational assessment that covers: survey data analysis (6 sections, 48 questions), 45 interview syntheses, benchmarking, root cause analysis, and 12 prioritized recommendations.

I need to present this to 8 executives in 40 minutes. The CEO's instruction: "Give us what we need to make decisions, not the analysis."

The executives need to: (1) understand the main finding, (2) endorse a set of prioritized interventions, (3) allocate budget for implementation, (4) understand the timeline.

I cannot include more than 10 slides. Help me structure the executive presentation.

Key constraint: These executives are skeptical — some were defensive about the survey results when we started. The presentation must communicate difficult findings in a way they can receive rather than reject.

AI output on structure:

"Recommended structure for executive decision-making:

Slide 1: The one headline finding — one sentence. This is your anchor.

Slide 2: The data in 60 seconds — one chart showing the overall engagement pattern and the three department outliers. No explanation needed if the chart is designed well.

Slide 3: What's driving it (root cause in plain language) — two or three factors, not twelve.

Slide 4: What peer firms show (benchmarking) — positioned as opportunity, not embarrassment.

Slide 5: The three priority interventions — what they are, not how to implement them.

Slide 6: Budget and timeline — what you're asking them to approve.

Slide 7: What success looks like in 6 months — measurable indicators.

Slide 8: Risks if no action is taken — what the current trajectory looks like.

Slide 9: Decisions needed today — specific, numbered, actionable.

Slide 10: Q&A invitation with appendix reference — let them know there's more available.

The 40 pages become appendix material: available for any executive who wants to go deeper, but not in the presentation room."

Elena reviews this structure. Two things register immediately:

First, the sequence. AI put "risks if no action is taken" (Slide 8) after "decisions needed" (Slide 9) would be wrong — she moves risks before the decisions, so the executives feel the cost of inaction before they decide. She reorders.

Second, the skeptical executive problem. The structure AI suggested doesn't specifically address the executives who were defensive. She adds a note to her prompt: "I need the findings to be framed as organizational patterns, not as leadership failures. How do I present the three low-scoring departments without making those department heads feel publicly exposed?"

AI response to the framing question:

"For defensive executives, the framing that tends to work: 'This is a structural pattern, not a performance evaluation.'

Instead of: 'Department A, B, and C have significantly lower engagement than the rest of the firm.'

Try: 'Three departments are experiencing headwinds that don't reflect the quality of their leaders — they reflect specific structural conditions that leadership intervention can address.'

The benchmark data is actually your ally here. When you show that these three departments' scores match patterns seen at comparable firms going through similar growth challenges (if that's true), it normalizes the finding without minimizing it. You're not saying 'you failed.' You're saying 'this is a known pattern at firms like yours, and here's how comparable firms addressed it successfully.'"

This reframing is exactly what Elena needed. She hadn't fully worked out how to present the department findings diplomatically without softening the message to uselessness. The "structural pattern, not performance evaluation" framing preserves the diagnostic value while removing the accusatory tone.

Day 1, Afternoon: Slide Content Generation

With the 9-slide structure confirmed (she collapsed Slide 10 into a standard closing), Elena runs the slide content generation:

Prompt for each cluster of slides:

For Slides 1-3 of my executive presentation (headline finding, data overview,
root cause), generate:
1. Assertion titles (not category labels)
2. 3 key points per slide (max 12 words each)
3. Speaker notes (4-5 sentences, natural speech, no jargon)
4. Visual recommendations

Context: Audience is skeptical executives who may be defensive.
Framing goal: Findings as organizational patterns, not leadership failures.
Emotional tone: Factual, direct, forward-looking — not accusatory.

Here is the content I need to include on these slides:
[paste relevant findings from the assessment]

AI generates first drafts for all nine slides. Elena goes through each one with a red pen:

Most significant revisions:

Slide 1 — The Headline Finding: AI generated: "Employee engagement at Meridian is below benchmark and requires urgent attention" Elena revises to: "Meridian has an engagement gap worth $2.4M in annual productivity — and it's fixable" Reason: Elena has calculated the productivity cost of below-average engagement (using standard industry calculations). This number makes the finding concrete and orients the executives toward the investment case rather than the problem.

Slide 3 — Root Cause: AI listed 8 root causes (accurately reflecting the assessment). Elena reduces to 3 (manager communication quality, career path clarity, and cross-department collaboration friction). Reason: Executives with 8 root causes will debate all 8. With 3, they'll focus on solutions. The other 5 are in the appendix for anyone who wants to go deeper.

Slide 5 — Priority Interventions: AI wrote three intervention descriptions that read like report language ("Implement a structured manager development program with specific emphasis on communication and feedback practices"). Elena rewrites in executive language ("Train managers to have better conversations — 12 hours over 6 months, not a day-long workshop they'll forget"). Reason: Executives respond to specificity and realism. "12 hours over 6 months" is more credible than "structured program."

Slide 6 — Budget and Timeline: AI couldn't generate this — it doesn't know her fee structure or implementation costs. Elena builds this slide manually: a simple three-column table (intervention, cost range, timeline) plus her consulting fees in a separate line. She takes 25 minutes on this slide.

Day 1, Evening: The "Defensive Executive" Slides

Elena is most worried about the three slides that touch the low-performing departments. She runs a specific prompt:

I need to present findings about three departments with significantly lower
engagement scores than the rest of the firm. The department heads will be in the
room. They have been told their departments were identified as focus areas.

Help me write the slide content for this topic in a way that:
1. Is factually accurate (the scores really are lower and it really does require action)
2. Is forward-looking (focuses on what we're going to do, not what went wrong)
3. Doesn't publicly expose or embarrass the individual department heads
4. Gives the executives the information they need to allocate resources appropriately

The departments are: [Legal/Compliance, Client Services, Operations]

Average engagement scores: Firm-wide 62/100; Legal/Compliance 44/100;
Client Services 48/100; Operations 51/100.

AI's suggested framing:

"Proposed framing for the department-specific slide:

Title: 'Three departments face structural headwinds that investment can address'

Body: Rather than a department-by-department breakdown, consider a 'pattern analysis' approach:

'Three departments share a consistent set of conditions that research associates with engagement challenges in professional services: rapid growth without proportional management infrastructure, limited visibility to career development options, and high client-facing pressure with limited internal support resources. These conditions explain the scores — and they're correctable.'

Then: 'We've seen this pattern at comparable firms at this stage of growth. In every case, targeted intervention produces measurable improvement within 12 months.'

This approach tells the executives what they need to know (three specific areas need attention, and why) without turning the room into a debrief of each department head's management failures."

Elena adapts this significantly — she makes the departments explicit rather than omitting their names (the executives already know which departments are involved and omitting them would feel evasive) but wraps the mention in the structural framing AI suggested. The result threads the needle: honest and specific while forward-looking.

Visualization work:

The most important visual in the presentation is the Slide 2 overview chart — showing firm-wide engagement scores with the three departments highlighted as outliers. Elena uses AI to help design the visualization:

I need a chart for Slide 2 that shows:
- Overall engagement score (62/100) vs. industry benchmark (68/100)
- 6 department scores as a horizontal bar chart
- 3 departments highlighted as "focus areas"
- One reading: the overall picture in 10 seconds

What chart type, color coding, and annotation strategy would communicate this
most clearly to a busy executive who will spend 10 seconds on this slide?

AI recommends a horizontal bar chart with firm average and benchmark shown as vertical reference lines, with the three low-performing departments in a different color (red is too charged for this audience — AI suggests amber as less accusatory). Elena agrees with all of these except one: she changes the label from "Focus areas" to "Investment targets" — subtly shifting from problem identification to action orientation.

The "so what?" final audit:

Review my executive presentation and identify any slide where a busy executive
reading only the slide titles would not understand the full argument. Every title
must carry the narrative on its own.

[paste slide titles]

AI flags one: "Slide 7 — 'What success looks like in 6 months' is a category label. What specifically does success look like? Make that the title."

Elena revises: "Six months from now: engagement gap closed by 40% and productivity measurable"

The Presentation

Elena presents at the quarterly offsite. The 40 minutes breaks down as: - 18 minutes — slides 1-7 (findings, root causes, recommendations) - 7 minutes — slide 8 (decision slide, where she walks through each approval individually) - 15 minutes — Q&A

The Q&A is substantive. The head of Legal/Compliance — one of the three department heads whose area was identified — asks the first question after the decision slide: "When does the manager training start? My team is ready."

Elena had expected defensiveness. She got engagement. The "investment targets" framing, the structural pattern narrative, and the fact that she leads with the productivity cost (not the problem) all contribute to a room that's leaning forward rather than defending.

All three interventions are approved in the meeting. Budget is allocated. Elena leaves with a signed work order extension.

What Made the Executive Deck Work

Elena's post-presentation notes:

What AI contributed: - The 9-slide structure: organizing by decision rather than analysis is an obvious idea in retrospect, but she wouldn't have arrived at it quickly alone - The defensive executive framing: "structural pattern, not leadership failure" is a reframe she knew intuitively but couldn't have articulated without the prompt surfacing it - The assertion title audit: catching the generic Slide 7 title in a final review pass

What Elena brought: - The $2.4M productivity calculation: this required her own research and anchored the entire business case - The "investment targets" language (vs. AI's "focus areas"): a subtle but important shift - The decision to make departments explicit rather than abstract: judgment about what the executives in that specific room needed to hear - The manual budget slide: no shortcut for this - The sequencing change (risks before decisions): a presentation instinct that AI's default structure missed

"The 40 pages to 10 slides translation is something I've always found hard. The hardest part isn't cutting content — it's knowing what to cut without losing the argument. AI was helpful for the structural decision: what do executives actually need in order to make the calls I'm asking them to make? Once I had that answer clearly, the cutting became obvious. What didn't serve those decisions went to the appendix."