Latest / No Days Off with Brian Gubernick
890. Why Bezos Banned PowerPoint: The Six-Page Memo, Silent Reading, and Better Decisions
Brian discusses the meeting mechanism Jeff Bezos built at Amazon in 2004, when he banned PowerPoint from senior leadership meetings and replaced it with something almost nobody outside the company was doing: a written narrative memo, read in total silence by everyone in the room before a single word of discussion.
Bezos's own explanation for the change was about clarity of thinking. Brian argues there's a second effect that may matter more for a growing business, and it has nothing to do with writing quality — it has to do with who gets listened to and why.
Brian also discusses why sending…
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