To persuade a customer, the document has to be jargon-free and tell a storyįurther, press releases force big thinking. And you start by writing a mock press release to determine if the customer need makes business sense: The early Bezos philosophy was to flip the model and start with the question “What does the customer need?' and then work toward the product. The typical playbook for 20th century retail was: Why? Because you “work backwards” from those mock releases when deciding on whether to launch a new product (hence, the name of the book). While the “6-pager” is probably the most famous artifact of Amazon’s writing culture, there was another piece to the writing puzzle: Bezos asked his execs to write mock press releases and FAQ documents for potential new products. This requires a mastery of narrative (AKA memo writing) to persuade stakeholders. However, at the executive level, you are making complex decisions and leading a group. Further, a new employee can quickly 'get up to speed' by reading past memos.ĭecisions need narrative: Powerpoint and Excel are great at communicating data. Shared understanding: Whether or not one agrees with everything in a memo, focussed reading of a document provides a shared knowledge base to begin discussions. It's a forcing function to get everyone on the same page and makes the remaining 40-minutes a high-quality discussion. Narrative-driven memos can be multi-causal and provide a 360-degree view on a topic.įocusses a meeting: If every meeting participant spends the first 1/3rd of a 60-minute meeting reading, there is a huge transfer of information. In a memo, the idea wins.īetter analysis: Powerpoint's hierarchical (and sequential) structure is not ideal to address complex issues. Conversely, a poor presenter may be unable to sell a great idea. Ideas over charisma: In Powerpoint presentations, a great presenter can sell a bad idea. Information density: People read faster than people can talk meaning that - for a 60-minute meeting - reading a memo before discussing an issue conveys much more information (one of the authors of Working Backwards says it’s 10x more info).

Here are 6 advantages of writing a memo over whipping up a Powerpoint: The email morphed into Amazon’s famous “6-page memo” that execs had to type up when presenting an idea in a meeting (and before the meeting starts, each participant reads the entire document in silence). Powerpoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the inner-connectedness of ideas.īezos made this decision to address a major problem: the S-Team would finish 60-minute meetings without making any decisions.

The reason writing a 4 page memo is harder than 'writing' a 20 page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what's more important than what, and how things are related. If someone builds a list of bullet points in word, that would be just as bad as powerpoint. Well structured, narrative text is what we're after rather than just text. On June 9, 2004, at 6:02 p.m Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sent an email to his inner team - dubbed the S-team - with a very ominous subject line if you’re a fan of slide decks: 'No powerpoint presentations from now on at s-team.'Ī little more to help with the reason 'why.' The lessons are very applicable for anyone trying to create anything in their daily life (in my case: writing stuff and making very very dumb memes). But they have a key similarity: both forced ideas from the brain into the real world. Here is the TLDR: Jeff Bezos instilled Amazon with a writing culture while Steve Jobs and Apple designed products through product demos. Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill CarrĬreative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda Both books were written by former company execs: Specifically, it reminded me of two books I read that explain how Apple and Amazon create products.

But I recently saw the cartoons and it got me thinking about how different organizations bring ideas to life. Microsoft’s cutthroat culture reached its apex under Big Daddy Ballmer, who left the CEO job in 2014). The Bonkers World cartoon is from 2011, so I’m not sure how accurate it is now (eg.

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