Why meetings suck ?

Most meetings suck. The cure: Make it messy.

Here's why.

"I like a crisp document and a messy meeting." - Jeff Bezos
My perfect meeting starts with a crisp document.
The document should be written with such clarity that it's like angels singing.

I like a crisp document and a messy meeting. The meeting is about asking questions that nobody knows the answer to and trying to wander your way to a solution.

When that happens just right, it makes all the other meetings worthwhile. It feels good. It has an aesthetic beauty to it. You get real breakthroughs in meetings like that.

Meetings at Amazon and Blue Origin are unusual. A typical meeting will start with a six-page narratively structured memo and we do study hall for 30 minutes.

We sit there silently together in the meeting and read, take notes in the margins. And then we, then we discuss.
The reason, we do study, is people don't have time to pre-read, and they end up coming to the meeting having only skimmed the memo, or maybe not read it at all.
They're trying to catch up. They're also bluffing pretending to have read. It's better just to carve out the time for people. And do it together.

So now we're all on the same page, we've all read the memo, and now we can have a really elevated discussion.

The problem with PowerPoint:
1. With slides, you try to sell your idea. The last thing you want to do is sell.
You're truth-seeking. You're trying to find truth.
2. With PowerPoint is it's easy for the author and hard for the audience. And a memo is the opposite. It's hard to write a six-page memo. A good six page memo might take two weeks to write. You have to write it. You have to rewrite it. You have to edit it. You have to talk to people about it. They have to poke holes in it for you. You write it again. For the author, it's really a very difficult job, but for the audience, it's much better.
3. With PowerPoint, Senior executives interrupt with questions halfway through the presentation. That question is going to be answered on the next slide, but you never got there.


Personally, clarity of thinking and writing are the best gifts I got from my 12 yrs at Amazon. I use them every single day.