In 2018, Jeff Bezos shared at the Bush Centre’s Forum on Leadership that Amazon outlawed PowerPoint presentations at meetings.
This might seem like an unusual statement to make. How else can you run a meeting if not with PowerPoint? Here is what Bezos and the team at Amazon did instead to get the most out of a scheduled team meeting.
Before starting a team meeting, each attendee had to sit in silence and read a "six-page, narratively structured memo" for approximately 30 minutes.
Here is Why Bezos and Amazon did that:
It allows everyone to be on the same page when the meeting starts.
It prevents people from bluffing their way through the meeting.
It prevents people from discussing things that have already been discussed and allows them to focus on future actions and decision-making.
The memo would be written a few days before the meeting, set aside for a few days and then reviewed one last time by the author to fine-tune their thinking before sending it out to everyone.
Bezos believed that eliminating PowerPoint not only made the meetings more engaging but also prevented situations such as junior executives giving a presentation and after a few slides, being interrupted by senior executives who then derail the meeting.
Implementing memos ahead of every meeting has been a proven way to make meetings at Amazon more effective, efficient and productive.