pitch unfairly

Office Space

Eight bosses, one glitch, and a promotion for the guy who stopped caring. Consulting readout, 1999, rebuilt as a live deck you can play and steal. More in Templates, strategy and planning.

Initech deck, first slide Play the deck
Play full screen Make yours
  • 12 slides
  • 8 bosses, 1 engineer
  • ~15 minutes of real work a week
  • 1 man paid by a glitch

Steal the consulting readout structure

12 slides, one job each, in this order. Swap in your story and keep the order.

  1. 01
    CoverThe answer as a full sentence, the client, the date, and who it is prepared for.
  2. 02
    Executive summarySituation, complication, resolution on one slide: the whole readout for someone who reads nothing else.
  3. 03
    Scope and methodWho you talked to, how, and what else you read, so the reader trusts how you know.
  4. 04
    Issue treeThe client's question split into branches that do not overlap, each ending in a question you answered.
  5. 05
    Finding oneThe finding as the title, one exhibit that proves it, and a source line under it.
  6. 06
    Finding twoThe next branch: a chart that walks from the total to the result, one labeled step at a time.
  7. 07
    Finding threeThe last branch, often a reconciliation: the records side by side and where they disagree.
  8. 08
    Options consideredEvery option on a 2x2 with the trade-off named, so the choice is visible, not asserted.
  9. 09
    RecommendationA short list of moves, each a verb, an object, an owner, and the finding it answers.
  10. 10
    Implementation roadmapWorkstreams with owners and dates, firm for the near term, undated for later phases.
  11. 11
    RisksEach risk with likelihood, impact, owner and mitigation; a blank mitigation is the warning.
  12. 12
    Decisions and next stepsWhat the client must decide, by when, then who does what this week. Never "Thank you".
What good strategy and planning do, and where they fail
  • Score last year before planning the next.
  • Name the few bets and, just as clearly, what you will stop doing.
  • Targets with owners and dates; resources follow the bets.
  • A list of everything
  • Bets without owners
  • Nothing stopped

The deck, slide by slide

Each one opens the live deck at that slide.

  1. Initech deck, slide 1: Initech can run leaner, and the interviews show where. 01Initech can run leaner, and the interviews show where.
  2. Initech deck, slide 2: Initech should run leaner, and its most candid engineer should lead. 02Initech should run leaner, and its most candid engineer should lead.
  3. Initech deck, slide 3: We interviewed every employee and asked each one the same question. 03We interviewed every employee and asked each one the same question.
  4. Initech deck, slide 4: Initech's cost problem splits into three questions we could answer. 04Initech's cost problem splits into three questions we could answer.
  5. Initech deck, slide 5: One engineer answers to eight bosses, so every mistake is corrected eight times. 05One engineer answers to eight bosses, so every mistake is corrected eight times.
  6. Initech deck, slide 6: A forty-hour week yields about fifteen minutes of real work. 06A forty-hour week yields about fifteen minutes of real work.
  7. Initech deck, slide 7: Payroll still pays a man who was let go years ago, and nobody told him. 07Payroll still pays a man who was let go years ago, and nobody told him.
  8. Initech deck, slide 8: The biggest saving is the layer that hired us, so we start with quick wins. 08The biggest saving is the layer that hired us, so we start with quick wins.
  9. Initech deck, slide 9: Promote one engineer, release three roles, and fix the glitch quietly. 09Promote one engineer, release three roles, and fix the glitch quietly.
  10. Initech deck, slide 10: The changes land in two weeks, with every notice on a Friday. 10The changes land in two weeks, with every notice on a Friday.
  11. Initech deck, slide 11: Three risks could undo the plan, and one has no mitigation. 11Three risks could undo the plan, and one has no mitigation.
  12. Initech deck, slide 12: We need three decisions from leadership, all of them by Friday. 12We need three decisions from leadership, all of them by Friday.
What really happened, and what the 2026 rebuild changes

What really happened, 1999

  1. Initech brings in two consultants, both named Bob, to help it downsize
  2. Peter Gibbons is updating bank software for the year 2000, and dreads every day of it
  3. He forgets the new cover sheet on his TPS report and hears about it from boss after boss
  4. A hypnotherapy session that ends mid-trance leaves him permanently relaxed
  5. The Bobs interview the staff one by one: what would you say you do here?
  6. Peter tells them the truth: eight bosses, about fifteen minutes of real work a week
  7. The Bobs mark him for management and put his friends Michael and Samir on the layoff list
  8. Milton, laid off years earlier, is still paid through a payroll glitch; the Bobs quietly fix it
  9. Peter, Michael and Samir plant a virus to skim fractions of a cent
  10. Milton, desk moved and stapler gone, has the last word: Initech burns down

Read the real story the film (Mike Judge, 1999), via Wikipedia

What the rebuild changes

  • Read only the titles. One button collapses every slide to its tracker and action title, so you can scroll the readout as a story. If the titles alone hold up, the deck is built right.
  • Click through the interview log. Every interview the Bobs held, as a log: what each person said, the firm's read, and the verdict stamp. Milton's entry is the one with no interview.
  • Make one mistake. An org chart with eight bosses over one engineer. Press the button and watch all eight come by about the same TPS report.
  • The week, as a waterfall. A forty-hour week drains bar by bar while a clock counts down to fifteen minutes of real work. The split is labeled illustrative; only the fifteen minutes is from the interview.

Make yours in ChatGPT

Type your site. We'll write the prompt with Initech's structure and your brand.