The One Thing Jeff Bezos Got Wrong…
Jeff Bezos is a visionary, but even visionaries get things wrong sometimes.
The internet is erupting in reaction to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, and his 2018 annual letter. In it, he reiterates a hard and fast rule at the world’s largest online retailer: PowerPoint is banned at Amazon’s executive meetings.
WHAT! Ban PowerPoint?! What would an executive meeting even BE without an unending series of bullet points and hokey looking clipart?
Well, Bezos claims “narrative structure” is more compelling and makes a deeper impact than bullet points. And it will change more than how people share information. According to Inc magazine’s coverage, “New executives are in for a culture shock in their first Amazon meetings.”
What Jeff Bezos Gets Wrong
Here’s how they describe that culture shock: “Instead of reading bullet points on a PowerPoint slide, everyone sits silently for about thirty minutes to read a ‘six-page memo that’s narratively structured with real sentences, topic sentences, verbs and nouns.’”
So, wait, let me get this straight. Meetings have become painfully boring. PowerPoint is not doing the job. And you expect people to sit and read a six-page memo instead?
There must be a better way for a large enterprise to engage its employees…
What Are They Watching?
I want you to watch the video below, and tell me: What are these people watching?
Are they watching a comedy show? Are they engrossed in a documentary? Are they watching a Manchester United footie match?
Time’s up! The answer? Quarterly department reports! No foolin’.
At Powtoon, our departments share updates about their KPIs, how their work is supporting the company’s priorities, and any milestones or celebrations they want to show off to their colleagues.
But instead of slogging through PowerPoints (or reading the first chapter of War and Peace), we create Powtoons — short, engaging videos. And the results are insane (and awesome for the team) for four important reasons:
Benefit to Your Team: Attention
Throughout this video, you can see the Powtoon team is sitting with rapt attention. The baseline for sharing a message or engaging an audience is to grab and hold their attention. Remember, every minute someone spends checking their Facebook during a meeting makes the entire meeting less beneficial.
Benefit to Your Team: Engagement
Attention’s just the first step. Just because people pay attention, doesn’t mean the information is making an impact. Getting engagement — seeing people raise their hands in response to questions, seeing them applaud, getting other direct and active feedback — makes it easier for your audience to personally connect with the content you’re sharing.
Benefit to Your Team: Laughter
Ok, but just because someone pays attention and engages with you doesn’t mean they really enjoy it. Laughter is an expression of joy. If your audience has moments where their attention and engagement is so delightful that they’re laughing out loud — you have the chance to grab the most amazing benefit this approach can offer….
Benefit to Your Team: Sustainability
As you can see from the timer running in the corner of the video, this meeting lasted for over one and a half hours. But unlike just about every other 90-minute business meeting, no one is falling asleep, no one is taking a call, and everyone is having an amazing time. It’s what we call a sustainable meeting.
Turn Your Meeting Into a Film Premiere
On paper, this means we can present information quickly, in a way that people will be able to absorb and remember.
It means our teams get to spend a little time engaging creatively about how they tell the story of their work within the company.
And it means that, by winning our colleagues’ attention, engagement, and laughter, everyone has a good sense of the direction of the company, and how they fit into it.
All well and good. But in practice, this approach has actually turned our quarterly meetings into an exciting film premiere.
The excitement for the day builds throughout the quarter. Watercooler talk shifts…
“Have you heard anything?”
“What will the product team do this time?”
“How will creative top that last video?”
We’re fostering a company culture of creativity and sharing information in a way that isn’t just fun, but addictive.
Want to know exactly what I mean? Watch the Marketing team’s update from January 2018:
Video? As an Enterprise Tool?
It’s a shame that Jeff Bezos (whom we love and admire here at Powtoon) hasn’t yet had the opportunity to see what so many other enterprise organizations do: Video is the way to connect today. It’s a way to leverage the art of storytelling without demanding hours of silent sustained reading from your audience.
And it’s in almost every corner of the enterprise. Don’t believe me? Check out all the different ways video is revolutionizing how people work.
