On the subject of operating the “perfect meeting”, Amazon’s co-founder Jeff Bezos thinks he’s cracked the code.
Earlier than Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, he beforehand declared that utilizing PowerPoints in meetings was a big no-no—and he nonetheless stands by that logic.
As an alternative, the tech billionaire thinks that making ready a crystal-clear six-page doc on what’s about to be mentioned is the successful formulation for a productive assembly overflowing with concepts.
“My perfect meeting starts with a crisp document… and a messy meeting,” he stated on the most recent episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast. “I don’t keep to a strict schedule. My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to because I believe in wondering.”
New staff at Amazon and his newest area enterprise, Blue Origin ought to anticipate “the weirdest meeting culture you ever encounter,” he added, together with silently finding out the lengthy doc for half-hour firstly of every assembly earlier than opening up for dialogue.
Not like PowerPoints, which Bezos says are simple to create and conceal “a lot of sloppy thinking in bullet points”, this course of requires rather more effort from the assembly chief. In the meantime, members can’t “pretend to do the reading”.
“Now we’re all on the same page, we’ve all read the memo and we can have a really elevated discussion,” he concluded.
Get your groups ‘unfiltered’ concepts
The very best concepts come from numerous considering—however as instinctive people-pleasers, it’s laborious to voice your opinion if it’s totally different from that of the boss.
So by asking a crew member to create the six-paged assembly memo, you will get their real opinion on a subject.
“The author of the memo has got to be very vulnerable, they’ve got to put all their thoughts out there and they’ve got to go first,” Bezos stated. “That’s great because it makes them really good and you get to see their real ideas—you’re not trampling on them accidentally in a big PowerPoint presentation.”
One other approach that Bezos stated he empowers each individual in his crew to say what they’re actually considering—with out being swayed by his opinion—is by letting his staff lead conferences.
In truth, to listen to everybody’s “unfiltered” opinion, he recommends staff take the ground so as of seniority with probably the most junior going first, as a result of, he says, our minds may be simply modified by these you respect.
“If I speak first, even very strong-willed, highly intelligent, high judgment participants in that meeting will wonder, ‘Well, if Jeff thinks that, maybe I’m not right’,” he stated. “If you’re the most senior person in the room, go last.”
What to do when information and anecdotes disagree
One other approach Bezos has prevented having unproductive conferences, the place employees don’t really feel trusted to share their opinions, is by giving their concepts the good thing about the doubt, even when the info isn’t there but.
“A lot of our most powerful truths turn out to be hunches,” he stated. “They turn out to be based on anecdotes, they’re intuition-based and sometimes you don’t even have strong data.”
As an alternative of disregarding their judgment because of the lack of proof, Bezos recommends digging deeper into their instinct—particularly if what you’re listening to resonates with your individual intestine feeling.
“Let’s try to see if we could actually know whether it’s right,” he stated, including that in the end even when the info doesn’t again up your employee’s hunch, they’re in all probability nonetheless on the cash.
“When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right,” Bezos concluded. “And it doesn’t mean you just slavishly go follow the anecdotes. It means you go examine the data… It’s usually that you’re not measuring the right thing.”
