
Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint” - raymondh
http://conorneill.com/2012/11/30/amazon-staff-meetings-no-powerpoint/
======
kevinburke
When I was in high school I tried to ban powerpoint, arguing that it inhibited
our ability to grow as public speakers. I wrote Edward Tufte and told him
about it and he shipped me 20 copies of "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint:
Pitching Out Corrupts Within" (<http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp>).

Some teachers opposed it and I ended up losing. I'm sure Powerpoint was more
convenient for them. I use deck.js for slides now but mostly for images - the
other slides tend to have 3-4 words while I try and tell a story to draw in
readers.

My last project pitch to management I printed out copies of a written proposal
and had everyone read for ten minutes to start the meeting. It was actually
really nice.

~~~
Maro
Have you tried Prezi?

<http://prezi.com>

(I work there.)

~~~
draugadrotten
Prezi looks good but only replaces boring bullet points with pretty bullet
points.

To really focus the presentation to the speaker's voice I find that HAIKU DECK
for iOS really removes bullet point syndrome. <http://www.haikudeck.com/>

(I don't work there.)

~~~
nahname
Not available in Canada. My daughter really likes their music in the video
though.

------
nostromo
I'm in love with this idea. The information density (in terms of time) of a
well written memo is much greater than that of a presentation. Many 30 minute
presentations could be read in 5 minutes.

The written word is also a great equalizer. A "presenter" can be judged based
on their content rather than their public speaking ability.

~~~
ekianjo
6 pages is a bit too long, though. In a famous Ranked 1st Consumer Goods
company (i'll let you guess which one) all team memos to management are only
allowed to be of a single page. This is really hard to adapt to it at the
beginning but decision making is so much faster.

~~~
_pmf_
> This is really hard to adapt to it at the beginning but decision making is
> so much faster.

Yeah. God forbid that anyone making decisions should have to deal with actual
details; in the worst case, this would actually make them have to think.

~~~
ekianjo
It does not mean it does not have details, but you have to sort out the
details that matter for management. That's how they can make decisions instead
of drowning them in pages and pages of information.

~~~
agent00f
While it is a valid goal to cut down on irrelevancies (like empty lingo), it's
the exact the wrong mentality to consider detail the enemy of good decisions.

Good decision making stems from understanding a problem comprehensively, not
via often misleading generalities. I would even question whether it's possible
to accurately summarize anything more trivial problems in a single page; the
sort of menial issue that doesn't warrant a widely-distributed memo in the
first place.

~~~
ekianjo
Then your doubts are not limited to 6 pages either. How do you determine the
right number of pages then? 6 pages may be summarizing thousands of pages of
information for all you know. How is this enough ?

In the end what really matters CAN and SHOULD be summarized, and if additional
details are needed there is always a place for sharing and discussion with
management.

~~~
agent00f
I was remarking on this point:

>In a famous Ranked 1st Consumer Goods company (i'll let you guess which one)
all team memos to management are only allowed to be of a single page. This is
really hard to adapt to it at the beginning but decision making is so much
faster.

I'm sure less info makes decisions faster, but this seems rather the opposite
of a virtue. Eg. GWB "the decider".

~~~
ekianjo
It does not mean there is less info. It means the info is more dense, more
concise, well prepared and summarized and straight to the point. It's not
because you have 6 pages that it's a guarantee to avoid putting 5 pages of
garbage or unnecessary prose.

~~~
mpyne
It also means you can, by definition, not put more than 1 page of details into
a given issue.

As usual the Navy/DoD seems to have this figured out:

BLUF: "Bottom-Line Up Front": Concise description of the problem, recommended
solution w/out corroborating detail.

FYSA: "For Your Situational Awareness": This may help the boss understand the
problem better, but it isn't something they _need_ to know or understand right
now.

FYI: "For Your Information": Boss, you need to read this before making your
decision.

If you can't trust your underlings to use each appropriately so that you can
triage what you have time for, then you either need new underlings or you need
to take responsibility for training them better.

A 1-page limit on decisional memorandums is just as artificial as a 64-KB
limit on code page size for executable programs.

~~~
ekianjo
> is just as artificial as a 64-KB limit on code page size for executable
> programs.

Well look at the intros of 64kb, you can still do amazing things with no space
:)

------
adrianhoward
It's odd how tied some folk are to slides even when it's a completely
inappropriate tool for the situation at hand.

On the viewing side as as well as the presenter side.

I occasionally workshops on various things. Some (not all) of them <gasp>
_don't have any slides_.

None.

On the grounds that the point of the workshop, as far as I'm concerned, is to
pay a lot of attention to what I'm telling you - and do the practical
exercises. You learn by doing - not by reading. A slide deck just gets in the
way of that. It's a barrier between me and the class.

Every time there's one or two people who _really_ hate that and complain about
the lack of the deck. Not the quality of the workshop - that they're fine with
- but the fact they don't have a slide deck.

Occasionally it's because they want to take away the deck and run the workshop
inside their own company for free (and hey - I don't mind about that. Honest.
It actually helps sales ;-).

But more often folk seem to need "a thing" to take away and look at again. Not
so much as a learning tool, but as token that they were there.

I'm seriously considering making some physical "things" for folk. Maybe
postcards with the key learning points on and a reading list. Just to see if
that'll help.

~~~
eldridgea
I do a bit of magic (the performance art, not the card game) and attend
lectures. Typically it's just a guy with no tech demoing new effects and
methods. At the end they always sell lecture notes. It's a detailed overview
of everything they did that night and it's usually indexed well so I can jump
straight to a particular effect I want to learn.

I really enjoy this approach. It allows my to pay attention without worrying
about remembering or note taking during the presentation and still allows me
an almost perfect reference.

------
IvyMike
In my experience the people who give shitty presentations with powerpoint
would also be perfectly capable of giving shitty presentations without
powerpoint.

~~~
saosebastiao
In my experience at amazon, a shitty presentation never gets presented. "I
won't schedule a meeting with our VP if you don't fix this" is the basic
filter they use, and it works.

------
VLM
I want to know the new dominance ritual. At non AMZN type companies a major
dominance ritual lower ranks spending inordinate amounts of time adding
meaningless flair to powerpoints, as an illuminated manuscript work of art
rather than a professional business communication to show off to the boss. So
whats the new dominance ritual if its not powerpoint anymore? Buying the
audience coffee? Charging their cellphones for them? Traditional stuff like
kissing up and brown nosing? Buy the audience ceremonial donuts? Physical
trinkets/gifts? "Here's a printed out copy, of the email you already read,
about the results we previously discussed on the phone, as a physical artifact
to remind you of the meeting and your superiority over me"?

You don't get rid of a behavior by suppressing one of its minor
manifestations. You're just going to get a new manifestation of the same
behavior. So what is it / will it be?

~~~
pasbesoin
> flair

Thank you for finally providing me a concise word for so much of what goes on
with typical Powerpoint use.

\--

P.S. For those unfamiliar with the term (in this context).

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=flair>

I was thinking particularly of its use in the movie "Office Space".

~~~
VLM
"I was thinking particularly of its use in the movie "Office Space"."

I didn't invent it, I have personally been subjected to a conversation right
out of the movie WRT powerpoint at a previous employer, "Yes, I know you have
the corporate minimum of 25 pieces of flair in your powerpoint, but you only
have the minimum 25 pieces, and brownnoser over there has 47 pieces of flair
in his powerpoint, isn't that great, and you wouldn't want my boss to think
you only want to do the minimum, would you? I mean I'm not telling you that
you have to add an animated dancing robot to card #72, but I'm hoping you
yourself will want to add an animated dancing robot, without my having to tell
you to do more than the minimum..." What a steaming pile of coaching. I am
thankful not to work there anymore... It wasn't word for word outta the movie
(didn't use the word flair, I believe it was "animations and font color
changes") but close enough. Actually I think the coaching conversation
happened before the movie?

~~~
saraid216
I... I think I'd quit the company after that conversation.

------
fishtoaster
I don't think powerpoints are inherently bad, but they're misused enough that
I wouldn't begrudge anyone who wanted to ban them outright.

The two best ways to use them, from experience, seem to be:

\- Super dense slides. These slides have a lot of text and are information-
rich. You're not expected to read them, and the presenter will just skim over
them, presenting a high-level view of each topic, but definitely not reading
off of the slides. The slides are there as a rough guide to the talk, and as
an in-depth resource afterwards. \- Super spare slides. These slides have few-
to-no bullet points, and are heavy on pictures. They're pretty much there to
guide the speaker's narrative, and nothing else. At worst, there might be an
inherently visual data element, like a graph.

The common element being that the slides are there to guide the talk, not _be_
the talk. The reason powerpoints are so reviled is because people tend to just
write a speech, put a bullet point in front of each sentence, and read it off
a projected slide.

~~~
sliverstorm
My preferred powerpoints _support_ the talk. They provide things the speaker
cannot- pictures, tables, graphs. Sometimes bullets are nice for openings and
closings to summarize.

~~~
Osiris
I did a presentation recently regarding Git and git-enabled workflows to a
room of people with SVN and TFS backgrounds. The only slide I relied on was
the git-flow workflow graph. Everything was a live demonstration of the
workflow by actually using git live on the screen.

A projector during a presentation should be used to show what you cannot say
or to clarify a point graphically.

------
iyulaev
PowerPoint is a presentation tool, and like any tool it can be misused to the
point of frustration. At best, PowerPoint offers a good way to provide a
visual aid for a presentation. People who present crappy PowerPoint decks
would have no trouble delivering a similarly crappy speech, or writing an
indecipherable memo.

One great book on delivering awesome presentations - Presentation Zen
([http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-
Editi...](http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-
Edition/dp/0321811984/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368520578&sr=8-1&keywords=presentation+zen))

~~~
agent00f
As I mentioned to a similar comment, powerpoint has become the ubiquitous
hammer of the business presentation which has everyone searching for nails.

There is a time and place for slides with a few talking points per, but in
many ways it's contorted most all meetings into PR events even when there's
nothing to sell.

------
lispython
Edward Tufte's article "PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques
for Technical Reports"([http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1)) has a wealthy of information about why and how
to avoid Powerpoint.

------
VLM
"Powerpoint is easy for presenter, hard for audience"

My observational experience is the opposite. A powerpoint must have
"professional" design and "professional" multiple fonts and "professional"
multiple colors, and "professional" multimedia such as stock photos and such.
A lack of extensive customization shows a lack of motivation or a lack of
respect. It doesn't matter if it contains actual content as long as it looks
nice, because all actual content was already discussed interactively via email
or phone call or written reports. So a presenter starts with generating 30
minutes of content then spends 6 hours adding meaningless flair, getting it
approved by boss, bosses boss, then endless editorial changes to the
multimedia, "move that stock photo a little to the left", etc. The graphics
arts load on the presenter is huge and extremely expensive, yet provides no
monetary value, especially for internal presentations.

On the other hand the reviewer doesn't really learn anything because any
important topic was discussed in written email format in detail, the
presentation is a mere formality / dominance ritual. So powerpoint is pretty
easy on the audience, if its a powerpoint, that means you should tune it out.

------
jonchang
A more in-depth treatment "no Powerpoint" at Amazon is given here by Steve
Yegge:

[https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzV...](https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/AaygmbzVeRq)

~~~
waster
This just doubles my question from reading the original post: A full half-
hour, for a six-page memo? Are these incredibly dense and full of new
information to the readers? People don't really read that slowly. Average
adult reading speed is something like 250 wpm. Average memo might be, what,
300 wpp? So, six minutes to read, maybe ten if you're taking your time?

Not sure anyone has the answer, but that length of reading time vs. the
presumed number of words to be read struck me as notable.

~~~
mallipeddi
I worked at AWS for a while. So a lot of times when I've been in such
meetings, the 6-page document was actually full of technical details (design
docs, product FAQs, post-mortem reports, etc). So taking 20-30 mins to read
through the full document, re-read some sections and write down
questions/comments is not that unusual.

~~~
gt384u
Maybe it's just being on a team that's more focused on nontechnical users, but
I still see plenty of PowerPoint. Product, sales, and business process people
seem to swim in the stuff.

------
nivertech
This reminded me the way we did Design Reviews at some multinational
corporation.

I would write and print a design document of 30-50 pages long, schedule a 1-2
hours meeting and send the document in advance to those 5-10 people attending.
Off-course only 1-2 persons would actually read in advance.

Then we were reading it page by page and discussing it, giving special
attention to various diagrams, such as flow charts, sequence diagrams, FSMs
and UMLs.

We almost never were able to finish in time, so the next meeting should be
scheduled (in 1 or 2 weeks because of scheduling constraints) ...

------
6d0debc071
All the meetings I do are voluntary. Most of the people who attend work with
the problems in some way.

Your time is incredibly valuable. If you're sitting there for 30 minutes while
someone reads your memo, if you're getting everyone together in one place to
read your memo, with all that implies for their schedules, then that's a waste
of a lot of extremely important time for a lot of people.

Meetings are for discussions that you can only have with everyone together.
They're so that people who don't understand something can ask you questions,
or so that you can work with others who do understand the problems. Not for
reading groups.

~~~
ozh
While this is totally true (what's the point in gathering people to get them
to _read_ instead of talk?) this is just how it works in most places. Ask
people to read something before a meeting: 80% show up without having read, no
matter how easy to read or important the paper is.

------
pshc
Oh hey! This is exactly what Edward Tufte taught us at his course the other
week. Now I'm curious as to who originated this practice...?

~~~
jasoncrawford
Yeah, I think this practice originated at Amazon not long after Edward Tufte's
article “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” was published. I think I heard
that Bezos read that article and was influenced by it.

~~~
xaritas
Probably true. The reason I was introduced to Tufte is when he was invited to
give a talk at an Amazon Fishbowl (informal, internal lecture/music series).
This had a strong stamp of Jeff-approval. I don't think that this particular
practice was adopted immediately but Bezos plays a long game and this was
probably an opening move.

------
lifeisstillgood
This seems pretty much what Steve Yegge said a few years back - cannot find
the ref but he had to write a essay for Bezos to read - no PowerPoint.

I think it's sensible - you can write a PowerPoint in ten minutes and not have
to think things through. Try not thinking while writing 6 pages of argument -
it will be impossible or achingly clear when it's read.

------
afreak
This reminds me of when I was back in school and the instructor would have
stuff in Powerpoint on the projector screen. It was only interesting when a
photograph or image would be displayed (this was an East Asian history class)
but the rest of the time was just me listening to him speak about the topic
rather than paying attention to the slides at hand.

Why? Because he was pretty much just narrating what he already had on the
screen.

I have always found that Powerpoint is useless for displaying anything in a
meeting or seminar and yet I still find myself doing that when I myself choose
to give a presentation. Additionally, I have yet to see anything that replaces
it well enough that also mimics the speed and simplicity of the application,
and I also find more value in just listening to the person rather than seeing
what is on the screen.

~~~
jrdn
I had so many professors that just read me the powerpoints. I would literally
miss nothing from the lecture if I just downloaded the slides after every
class, but no, attendance was mandatory. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to
know that I'm still paying off an education I could've gotten most of by
reading a few pages of bullet points every week.

~~~
pestaa
Had to upvote you for the being in the same boat. Even worse though when the
slide is two lines and contains the following only:

    
    
                           [Title]
        
        * [Title]
    

I'm not kidding, I've seen this a couple of times. And worse yet is that there
is literally no extra content to listen to in the class.

(Not all courses of mine are like this one, though.)

------
CurtMonash
I posted "Death to PowerPoints" --
<http://www.strategicmessaging.com/powerpoints/2008/02/02/> \-- 5 years ago,
and still live by it. I almost never sit through a conventional presentation
in a 1-on-1. I almost never attend presentations where a deck is presented to
a group.

That said, I frequently edit slide decks for my clients to inflict on other
people. And on the rare occasions I give presentations, I use PowerPoint,
commonly in old-fashioned bulleted-outline style.

Complicating the discussion yet further:

* I write stuff for people to read MUCH more than I give presentations.

* My writing involves a lot of lists of bullet points. :)

------
Moto7451
I'm not sure about just reading a six page memo out loud to everyone. That
seems like a great thing to email to everyone. Some of my least favorite
memories from college are the couple of classes I went to where the professor
basically read the book to us. The difference is, I'm guessing, that
attendance isn't optional at an Amazon meeting.

Personally I like keeping presentations on the short side - only using slide
shows for ancillary data like citations (which I find awkward to fold into the
flow of a speach) and graphical data. Unless something is really interesting
or very important, it's only going to get 5-10 minutes of people's attention.

~~~
aclements18
For clarification, the 6 page memo is not read aloud. Each person is provided
a copy at the beginning of the meeting and the first 10-15 minutes of the
meeting are completely silent.

This actually works pretty well because in the real world people usually only
skim the info provided in advance of most meetings because they only need to
"get the gist" of what's being said. This forces everyone to have a thorough
understanding and promotes more thoughtful discussion.

------
zobzu
As an audience person (ie, listening to talks) I believe "Powerpoint is easy
for presenter, hard for audience" is crazy talk.

I generally follow using the slides, not listening to the dude who's talking
for 30min-1h thank you very much.

Making things simple as you present something complex has nothing to do with
having a powerpoint presentation or not. Nothing.

Giving a paper to read is just the same as powerpoint, except if the speaker
sucks, you don't have to endure that. So yeah. Wrong punch line, okay
approach.

------
r4dius
The idea that everyone abides by a standard protocol is a dead giveaway that
the author has never spoken with an actual Amazon employee.

------
dakrisht
One of the hardest things I've learned over the years is how to condense
information into quick slides, quick demos, quick presentations. People don't
have the capacity that some of us might have. We're used to the material, so
it's second nature to us. And other people don't see things that way.
Especially when you're communicating with older people who will be lucky to
understand 50% of a keynote, product demo, idea, task, problem, etc. They need
the facts, and they need them quickly. I love the Amazon approach behind
memos, and everything being shorter and to the point in general. The way to
go. It's crazy how much you can condense that shouldn't have been there in the
first place. Beautiful.

------
icoder
Although I've seen all the 'bad examples' come by, on average I don't have
much of a problem following ppt backed presentations, contrary, apparently, to
others.

Nevertheless I think this is a great idea on itself. I've seen too many
meetings where there was reading material but so few people read it that the
talk actually focussed on them.

There's one issue though, and only experience will tell whether it is
relevant. I for myself am fond of taking in knowledge via paper but the
effectiveness of this highly depends on the moment I'm reading. Also I've
noticed I find it harder to concentrate when I'm reading 'together in a
group'. I feel a bit rushed by it. But perhaps that's just me or something
that is easy to get used to.

------
denrober
Amazon, when I worked there, had the worst meeting discipline of all the
companies I have worked for. Meetings normally started 10 minutes late and
most people didn't show up until 5 minutes after the start time. Being
punctual it drove me up the wall.

~~~
raphman
How does this relate to the 'reading group' concept? Did people who arrived
late just sit down quietly and start reading?

~~~
Pfhreak
This is pretty accurate. Most of the meetings start with reading, and if
people arrive a few minutes late, they grab a memo and get to marking it up
silently without disrupting everyone.

------
k-mcgrady
I'm guessing you copy/pasted the title in from the blog but you should
probably remove the CAPS.

I like this way of doing meetings, I haven't heard of anything similar before.
Although I've always hated slide shows. Do I read the bullet points? Listen to
the presenter? Does the presenter read the bullets and go into detail on each
one? What does it mean if there is a bullet but the presenter doesn't mention
it during the presentation? There's too much going on at once. A good slide
show can work very well (using a slide to illustrate your point with a graph
etc.) but most people can't create good slide shows.

~~~
yareally
Not the OP, but the last time I submitted an article on HN, it auto corrected
the title to match what the link said (which was much more vague than the
title I gave). Perhaps HN auto corrects verbatim, including caps.

------
webdisrupt
This article could not have been posted at a better time! I seriously think
that these form of presentations do put their audience to sleep whilst also
being non productive.

I personally don't think one can do without slides as sometimes it helps the
audience visualise what one is discussing. Therefore I believe it should be
more about the essence of the content.

In summary, just keep each slide to a max of 2-3 words or just one image that
best describes the topic you are discussing.

I feel that this could work well for many organisations, irrespective of their
size, especially when one factors in how much time could saved on meetings.

------
rlwolfcastle
Powerpoint is not the problem, it is the poor presentations people give using
it.

------
wjruoxue
I once went to an IDEO talk and noticed that all words in the speaker's
Powerpoint are capital letters. After the talk, I asked the guy why he made it
like that and his answer was that since capital letters make it harder to
read, you would force yourself to write concisely on the Powerpoint. He also
mentioned that many people inside IDEO follow this rule.

Badly made Powerpoint is just useless while 6-page memo might be too time
consuming and inconvenient. Capital letter approach could be a good compromise
between those two.

------
alan_cx
I think blanket rules like this are a bit silly. Clearly PP (Powerpoint) has
its uses. A picture is still worth 1000 words.

My suggestion would be to have a default ban, but insist that if a presenter
really "needs" to use PP (s)he should have to get some sort of permission
first. The reason for that is that the person wanting to use PP would then
have to consider and justify its use before using it. Basically, just give
them pause to think and consider.

------
cobralibre
The wonderful thing about the linked article is that it's essentially a
bullet-pointed summary of a much longer source.

------
epo
The real drawback to this approach is that it ensures no one will prepare for
the meeting and the 'discussion' will consist of kneejerk reactions to what
they have just read. It is eminently unsuitable for discussing anything
important and if it is not important then why have the meeting in the first
place.

------
nell
I was at the Edward Tufte's class and he talked about this practice at Amazon.
He was strongly advising all of us to follow it. He also mentioned that Apple
uses a 11x17 information sheet that is shared to all meeting attendees.

------
walshemj
Sorry if you haven't read the papers prior to the start of the meeting with
out a good excuse I would consider giving you a verbal warning and if repeated
a written one and putting you on poor performance procedure.

~~~
pgeorgi
Try that with someone superior in the corporate ladder.

~~~
walshemj
If I am chair I run the meeting - I once told the company founder to sit down
and let some one else speak :-)

This rule should come from the top if I was chairman of a company and any
director/attendee turned up having not read the papers I woudl be having words
with them.

------
zozu
It is a good point and I surely see its potential. However 6 pages seem a bit
long.

And my general opinion is that the presentation should be supportive towards
the presentator. Not the other way around.

------
jpalomaki
I think the best points: \- Reserved time for everybody to read and understand
the issues before meeting starts \- Something tangible for those not able to
participate in the meeting

~~~
iyulaev
The sad issue is that most people would gladly spend that time doing other
things rather than reading :(

------
kingnight
Should the title of the article match the visual type of the article... or
ignore the 'text-transform: uppercase' css. I vote the latter :-)

------
SCAQTony
One sentence and an image or illustration to resonate that sentence or
illustrate that sentence and a PowerPoint preso can be effective.

~~~
Pfhreak
No one is saying all powerpoint presentations are valueless. They are saying
most powerpoint presentations are valueless.

------
codex
Did Bezos learn this practice at DE Shaw?

------
davidf18
Dov Frohman, founder of Intel Israel (8,000 employees) and inventor of the
flash memory states in his book, "Leadership the Hard Way" the following story
about a five-page proposal sent to Andy Grove:

Quote:

'Something about the very distance in my relationship with Andy seemed to
invest small things with large significance. For example, when I was a young
manger at Intel Israel, I sent Andy a five-page proposal for shifting the
Jerusalem fab production line from memories to microprocessors. He returned
it, unread, with a stamp reading “Please respect my time.” His message: the
proposal was way too long. He wanted one page, not five. Grove’s request –
“Please respect my time” – had an enormous impact on me.'

