A ninety-slide deck is almost never a communication tool. It's an anxiety artifact. Someone was worried they'd be asked a question they couldn't answer, so they built a slide for every possible question. The result is a document that says everything and communicates nothing, and a meeting that starts twenty slides in because the room already checked out.
We've been using a one-page format with clients for several years now. It started as a session recap tool — a single page that captured what was decided, why, and what happens next. Clients started using it for other things: board updates, team alignment, investor prep. It works for all of them, which told us the format was solving a broader problem than just session notes.
What Goes on the Page
The format has four sections, each constrained to a fixed amount of space. The constraint is the point — if you can't say it in the space given, you haven't figured out what you actually want to say yet.
Why It Works Better Than a Deck
“A deck answers questions people might ask. A one-pager answers the question people actually have: what are we doing and why?”
The format forces clarity before the meeting, not during it. A team that can fill in all four sections in under thirty minutes is a team that is actually aligned on the decision. A team that can't fill it in — or fills it with jargon that dissolves when questioned — has more thinking to do before the deck or the meeting.
We share a blank version with every new client at the start of an engagement. Most of them are still using it six months after we're done. That's the clearest signal that it's solving a real problem, not just a session prep problem.