The No BS Guide to Creating Decks FAST

Your team members have all waited until the last minute to finish a task they’ve been putting off. I’ve read that this is how most creative minds work – they overestimate their available time and keep waiting until there’s barely enough left. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but as a manager, you’ve probably seen this pattern more times than you can count.

The truth of the matter is, last-minute decks happen on your watch. You can try and prevent them from happening, but they still will. This guide is made to help you educate your presentation design team on how to create decks fast when the pressure is on.

To start off, here are some tips your team needs to know.

Tips for Creating Slides Fast

To create decks fast, your team needs to keep them simple since they don’t have much time to prepare. (All their decks need to be simple, regardless of how much time they have to work on them.).

Your team members need to be able to remember the flow of their presentations, and their talking points. So, keeping their decks simple, and their talking points limited, helps.

Make sure they keep their slide design simple as well. 2 fonts, one for headings, one for paragraphs.

Have them stick to a simple color palette. No time to think about color palettes? Black text on a white slide is enough. Add 1 more color for a few elements in the presentation and suddenly they’ve got themselves a clean-looking presentation.

All the text on their slides should be short phrases. These phrases will help their audience follow the talk, and also serve as a teleprompter for the presenter.

Now while your team is creating their decks, make sure they keep these points in mind: What’s the main message? What should the audience know? Why should they care? Make sure the content of their presentations addresses these points. Have them stick to the bare minimum needed to accomplish these goals.

What about the actual presentation? How would last minute presentation preparation look like for your team? Well, if they don’t have much time, have them only rehearse what they would say if they had one minute in their presentation. To do this, they need to identify the key takeaways that they want to convey, and summarise it into a few words. Then, have them take a small piece of paper, and write down the most important words from these key points. They’ve just created a cue card for their presentation.

Another tip, is to encourage them to incorporate some storytelling into their presentations. Now this helps their presentations become more engaging, but it also makes presentations easier to memorize, which saves time. And no matter how little time your team has, make sure they always practice their presentations. Even if they have just a few minutes, make sure they use this time to practice at least the start of their presentations. The opening of a presentation matters a lot, and if they can nail that, it boosts their confidence as well.

Next, let’s look at some practical tips:

Methods to Speed Up Deck Creation:

Learn how to templatize your workflow in PowerPoint.

Your team should have a workflow where they create templates for their use using the slide master. Use the slide master to create custom layouts which they can use as templates any time they need to create slides instead of building layouts from scratch every time.

Think about it. If your team is spending 30 minutes formatting every slide, that’s time they could spend on content. But if you have pre-made layouts ready to go, they can just drop in their content and move on.

Here’s how to do it: Go to the View tab in PowerPoint and click on Slide Master. This opens up the template editor where you can create layouts for different types of slides. Title slides, content slides, comparison slides, whatever your team uses most.

Set up your fonts, colors, and positioning once. Then save these templates as a .potx file. Store them in a common shared folder or a OneDrive folder so everyone on your team can access them. Here’s a guide to get started with OneDrive.

Now when someone on your team needs to create a deck fast, they open the template and just fill in the blanks. No thinking about fonts, no adjusting spacing, no wondering what color to use. It’s all done for them.

Want to learn more about templatizing your workflow? Check out my comprehensive Udemy course on presentation design where I walk through the entire process step by step.

Building Your Team’s Speed System

Templates are just the start. Your team needs a system that works under pressure.

Create a slide library. Have your team build a collection of pre-made slides for common situations. Charts, timelines, team introductions, thank you slides. When they’re in a rush, they can pull from this library instead of starting from zero.

Establish content roles. When your team is working together on a last minute deck, don’t have everyone do everything. One person handles the outline and key messages. Another handles slide creation. Someone else handles visuals and formatting. This prevents people from stepping on each other’s work.

Use a shared workspace. Whether it’s PowerPoint online, Google Slides, or any other platform, make sure multiple people can work on the deck at the same time. Emailing files back and forth is a time killer.

Managing Last Minute Requests (Because They Will Happen)

Sometimes the last minute deck isn’t your team’s fault. Your boss comes to you at 4 PM asking for a presentation for the 9 AM meeting tomorrow. Here’s how to help your team handle it.

Have them ask for priorities immediately. What’s the one thing that absolutely has to be in this presentation? What can be left out if they run out of time? Make sure they get clear on this before they start working.

Help them set realistic expectations. If your team only has a few hours, they’re not going to create a masterpiece. Be upfront with stakeholders about what’s possible given the timeline.

Train them to focus on the story first, slides second. Have your team spend most of their limited time figuring out what they’re going to say. The slides are just there to support their message, not replace it.

The Reality Check

Look, your team’s last minute decks are never going to be perfect. That’s not the goal. The goal is to help them create something that gets their message across without making them look unprepared.

Your team will get better at this with practice. The more systems you put in place now, the less stressful these situations become for everyone.

And here’s something nobody talks about: sometimes the best presentations are the ones that were thrown together quickly. When your team doesn’t have time to overthink every detail, they focus on what really matters. The core message. The key points. The story they’re trying to tell.

That’s often more powerful than the perfectly polished deck that took weeks to create but lost its focus along the way.

So stop letting your team beat themselves up about procrastination. Help them build the systems, practice the skills, and when the next last minute deck comes up, they’ll be ready.