{
  "kind": "tools",
  "canonId": "019dd956-ac70-700b-a608-ba58e78f5dcc",
  "slug": "action-titles",
  "name": "Action Titles",
  "category": "Slide",
  "description": "The McKinsey-bred discipline of writing every slide title as a complete declarative sentence with a verb and an insight, not a topic label. Each title is a sub-claim that ladders up to the deck's governing thought; read in sequence, the titles reconstruct the executive summary.",
  "structure": null,
  "bestFor": null,
  "layer": "slide",
  "agent": "Architect",
  "agents": [
    "Architect"
  ],
  "whenToUse": "Any decision-grade deliverable — strategy recommendation, board update, investment memo, M&A review, post-mortem — where the reader is being asked to agree, decide, or act and will skim the title bar at speed.",
  "whyItWorks": "Solves two failure modes at once. (1) The buried claim: action titles place the conclusion on the page before any analysis is read, so a busy reader doesn't reverse-engineer it from the chart. (2) The spineless deck: because each title is a claim, slides have to ladder up to the governing thought; logical gaps become visible as topic-shaped titles in a sequence that no longer reads as a story.",
  "narrativePurpose": "Forces the deck to carry its argument in the title bar so a senior reader can extract the recommendation without opening a single slide; converts a binder of topics into a navigable pyramid where every slide is a node defending the apex.",
  "signalComponentKinds": [
    "title",
    "callout",
    "subtitle"
  ],
  "signalKeywords": [
    "action title",
    "key takeaway",
    "in summary",
    "drove",
    "delivered",
    "grew",
    "declined",
    "recovered",
    "recommendation",
    "headline"
  ],
  "signalDescriptions": {
    "grew": "Magnitude-move verb that anchors most quantitative action titles (Revenue grew 12%, driven entirely by Europe); pairs naturally with a driver clause.",
    "drove": "High-frequency attribution verb in real action titles (Pricing changes drove 60% of margin recovery); finite, active, names a cause.",
    "title": "Action titles are titles by definition — the discriminator is sentence-with-verb vs label, not the slot itself.",
    "callout": "When titles fall back to topic labels, the claim often migrates into a key takeaway callout box. A callout containing a declarative sentence on a topic-titled slide is a tell that the author knows the discipline but didn't apply it to the title.",
    "declined": "Counterpart to grew for negative trajectories (Volume declined 6% in Q3); often the trigger verb in problem-statement titles.",
    "headline": "Synonym for action title in BCG / corporate variants; appears in style guidance and slide review feedback.",
    "subtitle": "Some templates split the action title into a short topic header plus a sentence-form subtitle; the subtitle is then carrying the action-title load.",
    "delivered": "Outcome-bearing verb common in performance/results decks (The programme delivered 180 bps of margin recovery); claims a result.",
    "recovered": "Trajectory verb that signals reversal-of-fortune slides (Margins recovered 90 bps after the pricing reset); strong narrative beat.",
    "in summary": "Section-closing or deck-closing slide that bundles claims; if the rest of the deck used action titles correctly, in-summary titles are largely redundant.",
    "action title": "Direct vocabulary for the discipline; appears in McKinsey/BCG style guides and modern restatements naming the pattern explicitly.",
    "key takeaway": "Common labelled callout box restating the slide's claim — a hedge consultants use when the title itself is a topic; the takeaway is doing the action-title's job.",
    "recommendation": "Explicit call-to-action token; the recommendation slide's title is the deck's apex action title and frequently uses the verb recommend."
  },
  "antipattern": "Topic labels disguised as titles — Volume by quarter, Key findings, Pricing strategy, Margins have been impacted. No verb, or a passive verb with no agent, or a fact (Revenue grew 12%) without the so-what. Also: titles that overreach the chart's evidence, multi-claim X-grew-but-Y-fell welded titles, and mechanical repetition of the same X-drove-Y template across the deck.",
  "bodyDocId": "816dad3c-9983-41c1-a86e-978ebd582841",
  "bodyDocSlug": "framework-action-titles",
  "bodyDocTitle": "Action Titles",
  "status": "active",
  "version": 1,
  "sequence": [],
  "arcUsages": [],
  "stats": {
    "matches": 13944,
    "docs": 2215,
    "slideRanges": 13809,
    "avgConfidence": 66.92428,
    "avgPages": null,
    "arcCount": 0,
    "requiredBeats": 0
  },
  "examples": [
    "'VCs remain vested in the region with $15B dry powder'",
    "Title 'Expanding network effects' makes a directional claim.",
    "Antero is the only publicly-traded Appalachian Basin company run by Co-Founders"
  ],
  "completeness": {
    "score": 100,
    "missing": []
  },
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