How Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazons Competitive Advantage Jeff Bezoss six-page memos are legendary in the startup world for good reason.
Example of amazon narrative memo. The Six Page Narratives are typically consumed in Amazons infamous Reading Meetings where you have a number of senior leadership people who take the first 10-15 minutes of a meeting to read a Narrative or PR-FAQ before discussing. Some Amazon memos can be almost like dramas. If you have a traditional ppt presentation.
Here is an example of a simple narrative structure that will really help in the development and understanding of a memo assisting decision-makers to work out what might come next. The company recognises that dry presentations dont help. Instead Amazonians create six-page narrative memos that are read at the beginning of each meetingkind of like a study hall session he says.
Was wir deshalb hochspannend finden ist dass in den Führungskräftemeetings bei Amazon in denen Entscheidungen getroffen werden das Narrative Memo zum Einsatz kommt. Though Bezos admits that silently. The example I am going to share is from what we call an operational plan document.
I like the example that Diane Boerstler gave. While I probably am not allowed to share one from Amazon here is an example written in the same style. This ensures that everyone is up to speed on the meeting topic.
The senior leadership in these meetings are generally very smart and have years of experience. Its so easy to fool both yourself and your audience with an oral presentation or powerpoint slides. What Jeff Bezos found was that these tools were limiting high quality deep thinking that leads to better decisions and ideas.
I just simply thought that a 6-pager was something everyone learned in business school. A simple narrative structure for a six-page memo. Der Grund warum Amazon seine Topmanager solche Memos schreiben lässt deckt sich mit dem Grund warum wir Bücher schreiben.