Overhead: “No, don’t summarize the presentation, putting more info on fewer slides will just make it harder to read, just send the whole thing”. I see a number of ways you can make a deck shorter.
Compressing. The common approach to shortening a presentation is to take the shortening literally: reduce the physical number of pages. Smaller fonts, combining the text chart and the bar chart on one page, etc. The resulting deck contains the same amount of information, and would in theory take the same amount of time to present.
Dumbing down. The second approach is to make the story simpler. Replace complex chart with simpler headlines, eliminating complex plot tangents. Your presentation shorter, but it lost some information.
Plot writing. Here you try to extract the story from the pile of data and slides. You view your presentation deck as a completely different document than your project presentation. It does not have to be exhaustive, the logic flow does not have to be business school strategy-like, not every strategic option deserves equal wait.
Most people start with compressing. Then, after reading presentation blogs like these, realize that pretty pictures and big words look so much better, but end up dumbing down their deck. Becoming a plot writer is the challenge.
Photo by Nery Montenegro on Unsplash