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Series Preface This series of manuals represents my attempt to capture, organise, and share more than 20 years of experience coaching case-solving teams at regional, national, and international competitions. It is also the culmination of a year-long sabbatica...

PART IX: Effective Speaking Under Pressure Case competitions do not reward perfect conditions. They test what happens when: time is tight; the room feels unfamiliar; a teammate makes a mistake; a judge challenges your reasoning; you f...

PART I: Discover Your Mad Skills Mindset Before learning frameworks, financial models, presentation techniques, or specific case-solving tools, you must develop a Case Solver's Mindset. Case competitions are not simply tests of business knowledge. They test ...

Emeritus Professor | Coach & Mentor to Aspiring Professionals | Helping the Next Generation Discover Their “MAD Skills” © 2026 Discover Your MAD Skills Toolkit

PART XIV: The MAD Skills Presentation Test Before you compete, ask the following: 1. Clarity: Can the judges understand our solution? 2. Relevance: Does every major piece of content matter? 3. Logic: Does the evidence lead logically to the recommendation? ...

PART XIII: Discover Your MAD Skills Presentation Checklist Decipher Do we understand the audience? Do we understand the decision? Do we understand the case characteristics? Do we know what the judges need to believe? Have we decided what does not need ...

PART XII: Practice You have built the argument. You have designed the deck. You know the story. You have prepared the delivery and anticipated the questions. Now you need to make it work under competition conditions. Practice is not simply repeating the prese...

PART XI: Building the Deck A strong deck is not built by starting at Slide 1 and working forward. It's built by making a series of communication decisions in the right order. The goal is to move from: Case → Message → Story → Evidence → Slides → Delivery. Thi...

PART X: Q&A The presentation does not end when the final slide appears. Q&A is where judges test the depth behind the presentation. They may challenge your assumptions, calculations, alternatives, recommendation, implementation plan, risk analysis, or underst...

PART VIII: Team Presentation A case competition presentation is a team performance. The judges are not evaluating four separate presenters. They are evaluating whether the team collectively understands, believes, and can defend one Recommendation. That means ...

Series Preface This series of manuals represents my attempt to capture, organise, and share more than 20 years of experience coaching case-solving teams at regional, national, and international competitions. It is also the culmination of a year-long sabbatica...

PART VII: Communication and Speaking A strong deck does not present itself. Once the slides are built, the team must bring the argument to life. Your voice, eye contact, pace, pauses, emphasis, and transitions all influence whether the judges understand and b...

PART VI: Slide Design A slide can contain the right message and the right visual and still fail if the audience cannot process it quickly. Case competition slides are viewed under difficult conditions. Judges are simultaneously: looking at the slide; ...

PART V: Visual Communication Once you know each slide's message, the next question is: What is the clearest way to show it? Visual communication is not about making slides look impressive. It is about reducing the effort required for the audience to understan...

PART IV: Deck Architecture Once the story is clear, you can begin designing the deck. But not by opening PowerPoint. The first step is to translate the case story into a sequence of messages the audience can follow. Only then should you decide how those messa...

PART III: Building the Story A strong case presentation should feel like one connected argument. The judges should never have to ask: "Why are they telling me this?" Every section should create a reason for the next one. You are not trying to entertain the ju...

PART II: Deciphering the Communication Challenge Before you build the story, you need to understand the communication situation. The same principle that applies to case solving applies here: Do not start solving before you understand the problem. A presentati...

PART I: The Purpose of the Presentation A case presentation is not a report delivered through PowerPoint. It is the final stage of the case-solving process: the moment when your team's analysis, strategic choices, financial reasoning, and implementation plan ...

Emeritus Professor | Coach & Mentor to Aspiring Professionals | Helping the Next Generation Discover Their “MAD Skills” © 2026 Discover Your MAD Skills Toolkit

PART II: Decipher The Case Before you can solve a case, you need to understand what you are actually trying to solve. This sounds obvious. It isn't. One of the biggest mistakes case-solving teams make is starting their analysis too quickly. They see a famili...