If you are ever going to make a presentation to Jeff Bezos at Amazon, here is a tip–don’t make a PowerPoint presentation.
As famous in an article in Observer about Bezos’ strategy, “In one episode of The Office, Dwight says of Ryan’s flashy PowerPoint slides, “PowerPoints are the peacocks of the enterprise world: all present, no meat.”
Bezos is now well-known for not allowing PowerPoints, and his strategy and calls for for substantive conferences might be why he owns one of many few largest world manufacturers on the earth.
Staff taking part in conferences will write or learn six-page memos.
The starting of the conferences is spent by assembly contributors studying these prolonged memos.
Why does Bezos demand this of his staff? In his opinion, PowerPoint:
o Fails to offer ample data
o Is susceptible to viewers interruptions.
A memo communicates well-reasoned ideas.
Understandably, while you’re the CEO of a world model like Amazon and when your staff is assembly and making selections that may have a considerable impression on the expansion of the corporate and backside line, it’s important that well-reasoned communication takes place.
Should you and I, as enterprise homeowners do it?
That relies upon.
I’m personally somebody that likes to offer and obtain data in a condensed and concise trend as a result of I’m the last word decision-maker on nearly all features of my companies. My companies aren’t on the dimensions of a world model like Amazon. However, I can see how the Bezos strategy is important.
The Devil’s In the Details
I believe we function in a world the place most individuals have very brief consideration spans. We’re all speeding from one factor to the following, and the actual fact is that more often than not if you cannot seize somebody’s creativeness or curiosity in about 90 seconds, you’ve got misplaced them.
However, it’s a mistake to suppose that utilizing the PowerPoint strategy is the proper method to go for essentially–everything. As a enterprise proprietor, you are seeking to develop and develop your corporation. One of crucial areas for you is your gross sales staff. Let’s say, for instance, you wish to perceive why your gross sales staff has projected a rise in income for subsequent fiscal 12 months of 10 p.c. You’re going to make assumptions based mostly on these income targets, and you will craft an working funds that would probably mirror that 10 p.c improve in income.
In this case, a enterprise chief can be good to take the Bezos strategy and require a well-thought-out, detailed and reasoned memo explaining the who, what, when, the place and the way of the 10 p.c improve in income.
Taking Your Team Through the Paces
There are many different conditions when it will be clever to require that your staff ship to you a well-reasoned and considerate written presentation on their pondering, which is able to impression the selections you’ll make as its chief. For occasion, you could be seeking to create a brand new job or division that can be expanded since you’ve been succeeding and wish to reinvest your revenue to develop the enterprise. You may also contemplate making a purchase order of 1000’s of {dollars} of apparatus, beginning a brand new advertising initiative, or be seeking to develop the footprint of your corporation. All of those are wonderful alternatives the place it’s best to require your staff to take a pause and clarify their rationale to you as completely and thoughtfully as potential.
As Bezos defined in keeping with the Observer article, “When you have to write your ideas out in complete sentences, complete paragraphs it forces a deeper clarity,” Bezos instructed Conor Neill, a enterprise coach at IESE Business School in 2012. “If you have a traditional PowerPoint presentation, executives interrupt. If you read the whole six-page memo, on page two you have a question but on page four that question is answered.”
While I’m unsure all enterprise leaders must demand that their groups produce evidence-based memos forward of every of their conferences, and that is not, candidly, the way in which I function my companies, I do see and perceive the worth of requiring some of these memos for vital decision-making conferences on vital matters.
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