You may know that Amazon has a no powerpoint rule. In the 1997 letter to the shareholders (which we strongly recommend you read), Bezos shar

The Amazon Way of Writing

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2021-06-06 01:30:04

You may know that Amazon has a no powerpoint rule. In the 1997 letter to the shareholders (which we strongly recommend you read), Bezos shared -

"We don't do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon," Mr Bezos wrote. "Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of 'study hall.”

Explaining why the employees read the memos at the meeting, the Amazon boss said busy executives "like high school students" often "bluffed" their way through so this was his way of ensuring everyone was on the same page - literally. Mr Bezos admitted the quality of the memos varied widely. "Some have the clarity of angels singing. They are brilliant and thoughtful and set up the meeting for high-quality discussion. Sometimes they come in at the other end of the spectrum."

Calling it the "weirdest meeting culture," he joked that new executives were often in for a culture shock while attending their first meetings at Amazon. Instead of passively listening to dull PowerPoint presentations, everyone sits silently for 30 minutes and reads a "six-page memo that's narratively structured with real sentences, topic sentences, verbs and nouns... not just bullet points." Its contents are then discussed in detail.

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