Amazon’s flipped meetings….

No powerpoint slides at a meeting? SAY WHAAAAAT?

Image credit Pixabay

There is no question that Amazon has become one of the most dominant companies of our time. Whilst it is crazy to assume everything they do, if copied, will lead to global domination, it makes sense to exam aspects of the business for learnings. One I find particularly interesting is the approach Jeff Bezos takes to meetings. Here he has banned PowerPoint decks from being used, instead demanding that a briefing paper is prepared, and distributed ahead of the meeting. Once in the meeting the first portion is completed in silence while participants read through the briefing note, only then to begin the discussion which is facilitated by the meeting host.

Says Bezos in a 2012 interview:

“The traditional kind of corporate meeting starts with a presentation. Somebody gets up in front of the room and presents with a powerpoint presentation, some type of slide show. In our view you get very little information, you get bullet points. This is easy for the presenter, but difficult for the audience. And so instead, all of our meetings are structured around a 6 page narrative memo.”

Stowe Boyd highlights how this flipped meeting approach completely changes the dynamic:

The meeting is not taken up by a lecture, it becomes a coworking session. Once the reading is out of the way… the participants can actually wade into the issue and its resolution.

It is interesting to look into how the 6-page narrative structure is set up as this is a lesson in logical thinking. Similar to a previous post about good communication and the Minto Pyramid, the briefing note has a fixed structure to make sure it clearly gets the point across.

Shawn Callaghan writes :

a simple narrative structure that will really help in the development and understanding of a memo, assisting decision-makers to work out what might come next:

In the past it was like this …

Then something happened …

So now we should do this …

So the future might be like this …

Geoffrey James expands on this further highlighting the six sections in a good briefing note

1. The Challenge. This defines “where we are now” and is always either a problem or an opportunity.
2. The Undesired Outcome. This defines “where we don’t want to be” — what will happen if the problem or opportunity is not addressed.
3. The Desired Outcome. This defines “where we do want to be,” which should obviously be better than the undesired outcome.
4. The Proposed Solution. This defines what must be done to avoid the undesired outcome and achieve the desired one.
5. The Risk Remover. Why the proposed solution is likely to succeed and unlikely to fail.
6. The Call to Action. The decision you want made that will put the solution into motion to achieve the desired outcome.

I am drawn to this concept for a number of reasons. Firstly it forces the meeting organiser to come in with far more preparation than you would otherwise be able to get away with when you slap together some slides. The act of preparing the briefing memo forces the organiser to consider in more detail the proposal, which in turn results in a far better prepared body of information for discussion. As Ben Casnocha says:

Writing is thinking. A lot of busy people say they wish they had more time to “think” — to be proactively thoughtful rather than reactive. But “thought time” is a hard thing to actually schedule, let alone measure. Writing, on the other hand, is something you can schedule to do and then evaluate and measure the output . When someone tells me they don’t do much writing anymore, I sometimes wonder, When do you think deep-ish thoughts? And how do you ever know how coherent your thoughts actually are?

In forcing the preparation of this memo, the temptation to call a meeting to discuss half baked ideas is significantly reduced. How many meetings have we all been to where the key discussion points have not even been articulated clearly. I believe the skill of being able to prepare these documents is an important cognitive exercise that forces better thinking and decision making across the organisation.

Next, conducting the first part of the meeting in silence allows all participants a chance to review and consider the proposal without being led or influence by either the presenter or the HIPPO (HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion!). Also by allowing time at the start of the meeting to read the briefing document, it acknowledges the reality that despite best intentions many managers simply do not have the time to prepare ahead of meetings. This format ensures everyone is debating the merits of the idea with the same information.

HIPPO

As a result of the detailed proposal being completed ahead of the meeting and captured in the briefing note, the concept also has the potential to save significant time. Rather than the majority of the meeting being taken up by the slidepack briefing, once the memo has been reviewed the discussion can jump straight to key comments from stakeholders. When done well this can cut significant chunks of time from meetings.

Finally the preparation of this document provides an enduring reference to be filed, capturing important corporate knowledge in a way that contents of a slidepack can never to.

Former VP at Amazon Brad Porter confirms how the 6 pager changed Amazon

writing a good six-page evidence-based narrative is hard work. Precision counts and it can be hard to summarize a complex business in 6 pages, so teams work for hours preparing the document for these reviews. But that preparation does two things.

First, it requires the team writing the document to really deeply understand their own space, gather their data, understand their operating tenets and be able to communicate them clearly.

The second thing it does is a great document enables our senior executives to internalize a whole new space they may not be familiar with in 30 minutes of reading thus greatly optimizing how quickly and how many different initiatives these leaders can review.

I have written previously about how often the best way to scale is to do things that don’t scale — and this seems like a classic example of that in action.

Leaving the last word to Edward Tufte:

Power corrupts, and powerpoint corrupts absolutely

References:

• Ben Casonocha — Writing is thinking
• Brad Porter — Amazon 6 Pager
• Callahagn — What might Amazon’s 6 page memo look like
• Gigaom — Flipped Meetings
• Conor Neill — Amazon Staff meetings have no powerpoint
• INC — Jeff Bezos bans powerpoint in meetings and his replacement is brilliant
• INC — Adios Powerpoint
• INC — Amazon
• WIRED — Powerpoint is Evil