What Amazon's Six-Page Memos Made Me Rethink About Meetings
Jeff Bezos’s annual shareholder letter is a must-read. In the letter published in 2018, the sections on high standards and six-page narratives especially caught my attention.
I tried a six-page memo in a meeting that week, and I became a believer. It gave me a new tool to explore for making meetings more useful.
I sent my memo out a few days before the meeting so everyone had time to read it and think it through. I also reached out to a few participants to hear their feedback and answer questions. We were facing a consequential technical strategy decision, and people had strong opinions. I hoped the memo would give us a shared starting point and help keep a few voices from dominating the discussion. It worked. More people contributed during the meeting in more meaningful ways. The discussion was focused and at the right altitude, and most importantly, we reached a decision.
What interests me about this approach is the work that happens before anyone enters the room. Writing a narrative asks something different of us than putting together a presentation. We have to connect our ideas. We have to explain why one thing follows another. And we have to notice where our reasoning doesn’t quite hold up.
A slide can carry a phrase like “improve the customer experience.” A narrative makes room for the questions underneath it: Which customers? What’s difficult for them today? What would we change? Why do we think that change would help?
Those are questions worth answering before a meeting.
Writing gives an idea somewhere to stand
There’s a point in writing when an idea that seemed perfectly clear in my head becomes much less clear on the page. I find that frustrating, but useful. It’s an opportunity to work through the ambiguity before asking other people to make sense of it.
A written proposal also gives people something specific to question. They can point to an assumption, ask for evidence, or identify a tradeoff. The conversation has a shared starting place.
That feels especially valuable when a group needs to make a decision. We can spend so much of a meeting getting everyone up to speed that there’s little time left to consider what we should actually do.
What I’d put in a meeting memo
For a decision-making meeting, I’d start with a few questions:
- What decision do we need to make?
- What context does everyone need?
- What do we know, and what are we assuming?
- Which alternatives have we considered?
- What do I recommend, and what are the tradeoffs?
- What’s still unresolved?
The unresolved questions matter. I’d want the memo to invite people into the thinking, including the parts that are unfinished. A polished document shouldn’t make a tentative idea look more certain than it is.
The length should serve the conversation
Six pages gives this practice a memorable shape. But I’m more interested in whether the writing helps people understand the problem and contribute to the discussion.
Some decisions might need a page. Others might need more context. I’d want to write enough to support a useful conversation and edit enough to respect everyone’s time.
I’m still experimenting with this. One meeting doesn’t tell me where the approach will work best, but it was enough to make me want to try it again.
The question I want to carry into my next meeting is simple: What could we think through in writing beforehand so that our time together is more useful?