6 page memo

Jeff Bezos, founder, and CEO of Amazon has a unique approach to meetings. Bezos prohibits slide-decks in meetings. While you’d have to work at Amazon to know how stringent this rule is, the idea is that slide decks suffer from poor design and often skim over essential details. Effective decision making benefits from exactly that missing, rich and relevant detail.

So Bezos encourages his people to write six-page, rich narratives around the topic of discussion for a meeting. The first few minutes of a meeting are silent. Everyone reads the document in a study hall session. You can implement a similar pattern in your team to promote an async-first mindset. Not only will this encourage preparation for meetings, but it’ll also build the reading habit in teams. 

The six-page limit represents the maximum length. Shorter is better. The more effective the memo, the more effective the follow up discussion.