This text initially appeared on Enterprise Insider.
Jeff Bezos just isn’t a fan of utilizing slide displays for conferences.
The billionaire has a really particular manner he likes his conferences to go, and the “good assembly” begins with days of preparation. Bezos spoke to the podcaster Lex Friedman about his penchant for crystal-clear memos and lengthy, rambling conferences.
“I like a transparent doc and a messy assembly,” Bezos stated.
New hires at Amazon and its rocket firm Blue Origin can count on “the weirdest assembly tradition you’ve got ever met,” says Bezos. They start by having contributors examine a six-page observe in silence for half-hour, adopted by a dialogue.
In contrast to PowerPoints, which Bezos says are straightforward to create however troublesome for audiences to totally perceive, reminders require far more effort and time from the writer.
Meaning an worker may spend weeks placing collectively a six-page memo for a gathering. However “there is a type of magnificence to it,” if finished proper, Bezos stated.
The method permits assembly contributors to ask extra productive questions and search the reality as an alternative of “hiding loads of messy pondering in clues.”
In his efforts to encourage extra truth-seeking at work, Bezos is recommending that folks hand over on compromise. As an alternative, they need to “attempt to get as near the reality as potential.”
“In our society and inside corporations, now we have a bunch of mechanisms that we use to resolve these sorts of disputes,” Bezos stated within the podcast. “Quite a lot of them, I believe, are actually dangerous. An instance of a very dangerous approach to attain an settlement is compromise.”
Bezos has additionally carried out the “two pizza rule” in his previous work conferences. If two pizzas are usually not sufficient to feed the entire group, there are too many individuals within the assembly. The rule is meant to extend productiveness and keep away from groupthink.
The tech billionaire was succeeded by Andy Jassy as CEO of e-commerce big Amazon in 2021. Whereas on the helm, Bezos had a “Day 1” philosophy that inspired staff to work on the identical pace and risk-taking as a brand new startup.
Immediately, Bezos is chairman of Amazon’s board and is utilizing a number of the free time he is gained from not being CEO to get extra concerned with Blue Origin.