Company Culture Slide [How to make it connect]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- 10 hours ago
- 7 min read
Our client, Judy, asked us a question while we were designing her company culture slide:
"How do we make this feel less like fluff and more like... us?"
Our Creative Director didn’t even blink:
“By making sure it’s not written for HR. It’s written for your team.”
We make dozens of company culture slides every year, and we’ve noticed a pattern. Most of them end up saying a lot of nothing. Some recycled values, a few vague ideals, maybe a stock photo of diverse people high-fiving. It checks the box, but it doesn’t connect. It doesn’t make people care. And that defeats the whole point.
In this blog, we’re going to tell you how to build a company culture slide that actually reflects your people, your energy, and your reality — not some template version of what culture is supposed to look like.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
Why Most Company Culture Slides Don’t Work
Let’s just say it: most company culture slides are written like corporate horoscopes.
You’ve seen them. We value integrity, innovation, and teamwork. Okay… and so does every company that’s ever existed.
The problem isn’t that values are boring — it’s that they’re often meaningless when stripped of context. They float on a slide, unmoored from the way people actually behave on the ground. What you’re left with is a sanitized, generic statement that could’ve been copy-pasted from a career site in 2008.
Why does this happen? Three reasons:
1. Culture gets treated like decoration.
When we work on a company’s culture slide, it usually gets slotted in toward the end of a presentation. By then, the strategic story has been told — numbers, roadmaps, business models — and now someone says, “Oh right, let’s add that culture bit.”So what do they do? Toss in some nice-sounding words and call it a day. That’s not a culture slide. That’s a mood board.
2. It’s written for outsiders, not insiders.
Most culture slides are written with external audiences in mind — investors, partners, potential hires. But your culture slide shouldn’t try to impress people. It should try to inform them. If someone joins your team after seeing your culture slide, they shouldn’t be shocked six weeks later that nobody actually lives those values.
3. There’s no tension, no texture.
Real culture has contradictions. It has quirks. It has things you’re proud of and things you’re still working on. But most slides flatten all that into five buzzwords that sound safe. When you do that, you strip the personality right out of your company.
So the result? A slide that’s technically correct but emotionally hollow. One that says “we care about people” while looking like it was generated by someone who hasn’t spoken to an actual person in years.
Now, let’s talk about how to fix that.
How to Make a Company Culture Slide That Connects
First, a hard truth: your company culture already exists — whether you define it or not. It’s not something you create for a slide deck. It’s how people behave when no one’s watching. It’s what your team jokes about on Slack. It’s how new employees get onboarded without anyone saying a word.
That’s culture.
Our job isn’t to invent something. It’s to hold up a mirror — and write what’s real.
So, how do you do that on a slide?
We’ll walk you through it. This is the exact approach we use when building company culture slides that don’t just look good — they actually land.
1. Get off the values hamster wheel
Before you even touch the slide, take a step back. If your culture slide is a list of values, throw it out. Or better yet, keep it — and start asking harder questions about each one.
Let’s say your current slide says:
Innovation
Accountability
Collaboration
Cool. Now ask:
What does “innovation” look like on a Monday morning?
Who gets praised publicly in your org — and why?
When was the last time someone was held accountable… and how did it go?
You’re looking for behavior, not slogans. Values are meaningless if they don’t shape decisions. So dig into the messy, specific examples. That’s where your culture lives.
Replace “Innovation” with:
We don’t present perfect ideas. We present progress. Fast is better than flawless here. You’ll ship, get feedback, and iterate — all in the same week.
That’s specific. That’s lived. And when someone reads it, they get a gut feel for your operating style. That’s the goal.
2. Talk like a human, not a policy manual
Let’s stop pretending that big, formal words make your company sound more legitimate. They don’t. They make you sound like you’re hiding behind corporate theater.
You know what does sound legitimate? Plain, clear, human language.
Compare this:
We strive to cultivate a results-driven environment grounded in mutual respect and professional integrity.
To this:
We care about the work, and we care about each other. The first one gets us results. The second one makes it worth it.
Same intention. Very different impact.
When we build company culture slides, we strip jargon out like it’s mold in a bathroom. If you wouldn’t say it out loud to a colleague at lunch, don’t write it in your deck.
Test it. Read your slide out loud. Does it sound like something your founder would actually say? If not, rewrite it.
3. Show, don’t just tell
One of the most overlooked tools on a company culture slide is… visuals. Yes, we’re designers. But this isn’t about aesthetics. This is about showing evidence.
If your slide says, “We believe in work-life balance,” but every photo is of people grinding late at night, guess what? Your audience doesn’t believe a word of it.
Photos. Screenshots. Quotes from real employees. Snippets from internal Slack convos (yes, really — with permission). These things bring your culture to life.
One of our clients once included a photo of their quarterly “Failure Awards” — literal trophies they give for the boldest mistakes. That one image said more about their culture than five paragraphs ever could.
If you can visually prove a value, do it. People believe what they see, not what you say.
4. Don’t be afraid to name the hard stuff
Real cultures aren’t perfect. And pretending yours is only makes you sound fake.
We once worked with a startup that was scaling too fast and hadn’t quite nailed internal communication. Instead of glossing over it, they wrote this:
We’re still figuring out how to scale our communication. Sometimes, it’s messy. But we talk about it openly, and we’re working on it together.
That line earned them more respect than any polished value ever could.
You don’t have to air dirty laundry, but you do need to acknowledge reality. If you’re intense, say so. If you run lean and scrappy, say so. If people need to bring their A-game every single week, don’t bury that fact under “we’re like a family.”
You’re not a family. You’re a team. That’s not a bad thing — it just needs to be said clearly.
5. Make it specific to you, not everyone
This might be the most important part.
Your culture slide should not look like anyone else’s. If it could sit comfortably in your competitor’s deck, it’s too generic.
Start with simple questions:
What makes us weird (in a good way)?
What do new hires say after their first month?
What would someone not enjoy about working here?
What inside jokes only our team gets?
Now weave those truths into the narrative.
One of our favorite slides was for a fintech company that had this line front and center:
We speak fluent spreadsheet. If your heart rate rises in a budget review, you’ll fit right in.
It was nerdy. It was niche. And it was them.
Don’t aim for mass appeal. Aim for resonance. The best culture slides repel the wrong people and attract the right ones.
6. Tie it back to how you work
Culture doesn’t live in the About Us section. It lives in your decisions.
If you say you value transparency, then explain how that shows up in meetings. If you believe in ownership, describe what autonomy actually looks like in practice.
Better yet, map your values to your rituals.
Do you do retros every Friday?
Is there a “no meetings Wednesday”?
Does your CEO reply to Slack messages within minutes — or not at all?
All of that paints a real picture. We often recommend adding a column to the culture slide: What we say vs What we do. This contrast forces clarity. If there’s a disconnect, now’s the time to fix it — or be honest about it.
7. Don’t bury the slide — feature it
One last thing. Most people treat the culture slide like a nice-to-have. Tucked in at the end, almost like an appendix.
Stop doing that.
If your company’s culture is genuinely important to how you work — and let’s be honest, it is — then make it a centerpiece. Don’t hide it. Build it into the pitch. Put it right after the team slide. Make it a bridge between the “what” and the “how.”
People don’t just buy your product or service. They buy into how you work. Especially in early-stage companies, culture is the differentiation.
If you bury that, you lose the edge.
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