Arguably the holy grail of slide design, the Action Title solves many problems and achieves most goals of an effective presentation. Visually unappealing presentations can become artistic masterpieces, and confusing slides can shed revelation to the beholder when action titles are in place. Action titles on your slides will take 10% of your effort but achieve 90% of the results you want.
Before we break down how to write action titles, lets first discuss what they are. Aptly named, the goal of an action title is to summarize the key takeaway from the slide. Action titles have movement and flow, meaning they are a full and complete sentences. Imagine you are the CEO of a company and you have been presented a slide deck that you must review before an important stakeholder meeting in 5 minutes. You, of course, don’t have time to read the presentation in full. Alas, one of the junior consultants has included action titles on each slide. If the 5 minutes, you can flip through the slide deck and just read the action titles, as they tell a full and complete story of the presentations content, and your proposed ideas.
The problem with normal titles is they provide no value. Titling a slide “SWOT Analysis”, is a waste of good space, especially when there is often a graphic in the middle of the slide that says “SWOT”, with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats surrounding it. Titles are big, bold, and are always read first, so having an action title that summarizes the slide to come is the most effective way to title the slide. You always want to start with the main idea and use the presentation to explain why it is the best idea, the same goes with the title of your slide.
Now that we understand how ineffective normal titles are, lets break down the three steps on how to write action titles.
The first step to writing an action title is to complete the slide in full. To summarize something, you need to have a completed slide in front of you to make sure the title is an accurate representation of everything you presented on said slide, plus the main takeaway. Next, identify what the make takeaway of the slide is. Use the fundamentals of the elevator pitch to quickly summarize what you want the audience to leave with. This more often than not will be the key “so what” of the slide. Finally, once all slides are finalized, go back though your presentation and just read the action titles. Does your presentation make sense and clearly articulate your proposed solution and why it is the preeminent solution? If so, excellent. If not, go back and adjust any slide necessary to tell a complete and effective story.
