In this episode I break down the difference between slide decks and slide docs—and talk about designing intentionally for each.

Many presentation problems don't stem from weak ideas or poor analysis. They come from using the wrong artifact for the job. Slides overloaded with text are often treated as presentations when they're really documents meant to be read. The result? Confused audiences, long meetings, and diluted messages.

I explain why slide decks and slide docs serve fundamentally different purposes—and why trying to make one file do both almost always fails.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why slide decks are spoken artifacts designed to support your voice, not replace it

• How slide docs function as read artifacts that must stand on their own without explanation

• A simple rule of thumb to help you choose the right format before you start building

Whether you're preparing for class presentations, team meetings, interviews, or client-facing work, understanding this distinction will immediately improve your clarity and credibility.

Data doesn't persuade. Insight does.

In this episode, I break down what effective data visualization really means—and why most charts fail to do their job. This isn't about making slides look prettier. It's about helping your audience think clearly, decide faster, and trust your analysis.

Drawing on lessons from Edward Tufte's work and Good Charts by Scott Berinato, Gregory explains how to move from cluttered, confusing visuals to charts that make the point unmistakable.

You'll learn:

• Why every chart should answer one clear question—and how to define it before you design

• How to match chart types to intent, so your audience doesn't have to work to understand your message

• What it really means to simplify ruthlessly, including what to remove, mute, or highlight

• Why message-driven titles dramatically improve comprehension

• How context, annotation, and design for the room turn data into evidence

Whether you're preparing for class presentations, internship updates, or executive decks, this episode will help you stop using charts as decoration—and start using them as tools for influence.

The Glance Test is a simple but powerful rule for slide design: if your audience can't understand the point of a slide within a few seconds, the slide isn't doing its job.

In this episode, I explain why slides that demand too much reading or decoding cause audiences to stop listening—and how the Glance Test helps protect attention during live presentations. You'll learn how strong, message-driven titles anchor understanding, why visual simplicity matters more than precision, and how to design slides that support your voice rather than compete with it.

The episode also explores the difference between slides meant to be spoken versus read, where detail really belongs, and how passing the Glance Test leads to calmer delivery, clearer pacing, and more persuasive presentations. If your slides feel busy or your audience seems distracted, this episode offers a practical framework to fix both.

Many presentations fall apart not because the ideas are weak, but because the slides are doing too much at once. When a single slide contains multiple messages, charts, or competing points, the audience stops listening and starts decoding.

In this episode, I explain why the "one idea per slide" principle is so effective—and why it's one of the fastest ways to improve clarity in presentations. You'll learn what "one idea" actually means, how strong sentence-based titles do most of the work, and how to use visuals that reinforce your message rather than compete with it. The episode also covers where detailed analysis belongs (the appendix) and how to use the three-second Glance Test to ensure your slides support your voice, not replace it.

If you want your slide decks to feel calmer, clearer, and more persuasive, this episode offers a simple rule that makes a big difference.

Every fall and winter, MBA students gear up for behavioral interviews with an understandable mix of anticipation and anxiety. We spend hours coaching them on frameworks, stories, and delivery. But nothing beats hearing directly from the people on the other side of the table.

On this encore episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, I brought together four Foster MBA alumni—now at Accenture, Google, Walmart, and Goldman Sachs—to share what they actually listen for when evaluating candidates. I spoke with each of them separately, but their messages converged with remarkable clarity.

Here are the big themes.

Every alum highlighted the same point: the "Tell me about yourself" question is guaranteed. If you can't deliver a clear, structured, thoughtful answer, it signals a lack of intention.

Adam Schmidt (Accenture) put it plainly: "This is a question you know is coming." Preparation demonstrates respect for the interviewer's time and respect for your own story. It's the discipline before the performance.

Several alumni talked about sensing whether an answer felt honest, grounded, and human. Authenticity arises from knowing your stories well enough that you can speak naturally—not recite.

Skylar Brown (Goldman Sachs) shared that authenticity often shows up in how candidates pause, think, and connect their experiences to the role. Over-scripted answers flatten your personality; thoughtful ones reveal how you'll show up as a colleague.

Stoic reminder: focus on what is within your control—your preparation and your presence—not the outcome.

At Google, Sam Eid looks for patterns that reveal how a candidate operates on a team. One of his sharpest insights: candidates who talk only in "I" form look self-centered, but candidates who talk only in "we" form leave interviewers wondering what they actually did.

He advises framing a story around:

• The opportunity or challenge
• What the team achieved
• Your specific contribution
• What wouldn't have happened without you

That last piece is gold. It's also how Google evaluates internal performance.

The alumni were unanimous: generic answers tank candidates. You should be able to articulate:

• What differentiates the company
• How its mission or values connect to you
• Who you've spoken with and what you learned
• Why this role aligns with your future trajectory

Claire Herting (Nintendo, ex-Walmart) noted that specific, thought-out answers signal maturity and genuine motivation—not simply chasing the brand name.

Companies want to see that you understand the environment you're entering and how you'd contribute to it.

Whether it's humility, customer obsession, collaboration, or intellectual curiosity, your stories should reflect the behaviors that matter most at that organization. Not by forcing it, but by choosing experiences that naturally align.

One of the most useful insights came from Skylar Brown: many candidates cast too wide a net. When you're interviewing for 20–40 roles you don't genuinely want, your answers sound hollow.

Depth beats breadth. Focus creates authenticity.

Across industries and roles, alumni interviewers value the same things:

• Clear thinking
• Genuine enthusiasm
• Self-awareness
• A structured approach to storytelling
• A real understanding of the company and role

Behavioral interviews aren't about trick questions—they're about surfacing who you are, how you work with others, and how you make an impact.

If you're preparing for interviews this season, the wisdom from these alumni is a powerful compass.

In this episode of Conversations on Careers & Professional Life, we go inside the Autumn Quarter Integrated Case Competition at the Foster School of Business—a one-week sprint where MBA teams analyze an acquisition case, submit a written recommendation, and deliver a 25-minute presentation to faculty, alumni, and industry judges.

I speak with three students from finalist teams:

• Nat Fernandes (Class of 2027) – whose team placed third, emphasizing early alignment and organized execution.

• Josh Gonzales (Class of 2027) – part of the second-place team, highlighting team cohesion built from day one and the importance of energetic delivery.

• Andrew Parriot (Class of 2027) – from the winning team, reflecting on iteration, practice, and transforming earlier missteps into strength.

We discuss:
• How teams approached analysis, collaboration, and slide design
• The value of early relationship-building and role clarity
• The pressure and payoff of presenting to the entire class
• What these students learned about communication, strategy, and themselves along the way

A great listen for prospective MBAs, current students preparing for next year, and anyone curious about how high-performing teams deliver under tight deadlines.

On this episode I share a principle that shows up again and again in great communication but is often overlooked by professionals: you have to earn attention before you earn understanding.

Too many presentations, meetings, and messages begin with dense context, background, or data. But audiences don't start in "information-processing mode." They start in attention mode — scanning for relevance. If the opening doesn't grab them, the content that follows doesn't land.

The core idea of this episode is simple but transformative:
Engage first. Then inform.

We live in a world of constant distraction. Phones buzz, inboxes refill, and meetings stack back-to-back. You can't assume your audience is ready to absorb information the moment you begin.

That's why starting with engagement is essential. As the episode puts it, if the first thing your audience hears is a spreadsheet, a data table, or a wall of bullets, "their brains will tune out before the thinking begins."

Engagement isn't entertainment — it's a form of cognitive kindness.
It tells your audience:
Stay with me. This matters.

Engagement doesn't require charisma or theatrics. Instead, it's about delivering an emotional or intellectual spark that primes the brain for meaning.

In the episode, you highlight several practical ways to create that spark:

• Start with a story — even a single sentence can establish stakes or human connection.

• Lead with a recommendation — clarity itself is engaging.

• Share a surprising fact — novelty triggers curiosity.

• Pose a thought-provoking question — questions pull the audience mentally into the conversation.

• Create simple tension — the gap between "where things are" and "where things could be."

These techniques aren't gimmicks. They are proven attention triggers that open the door for the logic and evidence that come next.

The episode lays out the psychology clearly:
engagement activates emotion, and emotion primes the brain for comprehension.

This echoes Aristotle's frameworks — Pathos sets the stage for Logos.
When your audience feels something — interest, tension, surprise — they become more open to understanding and retaining information.

Engagement isn't a bonus.
It's the bridge between attention and insight.

Once you've earned attention, now you can deliver the substance. The episode reinforces a familiar structure for this phase:

1. Lead with the key recommendation

2. Share the top supporting reasons

3. Present only the evidence necessary to make the case

4. Clarify implications, risks, or next steps

5. Make a clear request or action

This sequence works because the mind prefers clarity before detail, destination before map. Engagement at the start makes this structure even more powerful: the brain is now on board and ready to follow.

Importantly, the episode emphasizes what not to do.
Engaging first is not about jokes, theatrics, or forced "TED-ification."
The goal isn't to "perform."

The goal is to help your audience stay with you long enough to understand you.

Engagement is the runway.
Information is the flight.
Both matter, but one must come first.

Professionals who learn to engage first don't just communicate more effectively — they lead more effectively. Audiences trust them faster, stay with them longer, and remember their message more clearly.

Before your next email, meeting, or presentation, try asking:

• What's my hook?

• Why will this matter to my audience right now?

• What moment will pull them in before I deliver the data?

If you start there, the rest of your communication will feel smoother, clearer, and more compelling.

Because if you want people to listen, you have to earn their attention.
Only then can you earn their understanding.

Structure isn't a formatting exercise. It's the foundation of every clear, persuasive communication.
Whether you're giving a presentation, writing an email, or leading a meeting, structure is the difference between an idea that gets ignored and an idea that creates action.

In the latest episode of Conversations on Careers and Professional Life, we explore why structure matters so profoundly — and how leaders, students, and professionals can use it to communicate with more clarity and impact.

Human beings aren't wired to process information in random fragments. We make sense of the world through stories — beginnings, middles, and ends.

As you put it in the episode, we're not "data digesters"; we're storytellers. And when communication wanders, attention wanders with it.

A clear structure reduces cognitive friction. It guides your audience through the idea. It shows respect for their time and sets you apart as someone who thinks and leads with intention.

The classic story shape applies perfectly to business communication:

• Beginning: What's the point?

• Middle: Why does it matter?

• End: What should we do?

In practice, this means starting with your main idea — the recommendation, insight, or conclusion — and only then walking people through the reasoning.

This mirrors the Pyramid Principle, but it also aligns with how executives think: give me the destination first, then show me the path.

You referenced Matt Abrahams' framework from Think Faster, Talk Smarter:

• What: The headline or central idea

• So What: The significance — why it matters

• Now What: The implication or action

This structure keeps communication focused and future-oriented. It helps audiences quickly understand context, importance, and next steps. And when you use it, people stop interrupting with "What's your point?" because you've already answered it.

Every slide should tell a mini-story:

• A clear title that states the point, not a topic

• A single idea supported by one graph, chart, or set of bullets

• Visuals that reinforce your narrative rather than compete with it

The slide is scaffolding — not the building. Your voice delivers the narrative; the slide supports it.

Unstructured meetings drift. Structured meetings decide.

A simple three-bullet agenda can turn an hour-long discussion into a 20-minute decision. Before any meeting, ask:

1. What's the goal?

2. What's the sequence that gets us there?

3. What decisions or actions do we need?

Structure creates momentum, momentum creates clarity, and clarity creates action.

Editing is structuring.
This is where Chekhov's Gun becomes a communication tool: remove anything that doesn't serve the message.

Ask:
If I cut this sentence, slide, or data point, does the meaning change?
If not, remove it.

Editing isn't erasing work — it's generosity. It gives your audience time and brings clarity. Remember the ABCs!

1. Identify your main point.

2. List two or three reasons that support it.

3. Add only the evidence necessary to prove those reasons.

4. Arrange it in a natural sequence — then cut everything else.

It's deceptively simple, but rarely done well — and that's why it stands out.

Ultimately, structure is more than communication mechanics.
It's a leadership signal. Structured communicators show that they think clearly, respect their audience, and understand how decisions get made.

The episode closes with a reminder worth repeating:

Structure isn't just a communication tool. It's a mark of how you think. And it matters more than most people realize.