
Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon's Competitive Advantage - smalter
https://slab.com/blog/jeff-bezos-writing-management-strategy/
======
jrauser
I've written documents for Jeff, and IMO, the six-page narrative memo is a key
part of Amazon's success. It's so easy to fool both yourself and your audience
with an oral presentation or powerpoint slides. With narrative text that has
to stand on its own, there is no place for poor reasoning to hide. Amazon's
leadership makes better decisions than their competitors in part because they
are routinely supplied with better arguments than their competitors.

"Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is."
-Dick Guindon, via Leslie Lamport

~~~
busyant
> "Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is."

Indeed!

Every so often, I have a coding question and I have an urge to ask that
question on StackExchange.

Before I actually post the question, I write a draft question. I usually
revise my draft a few times to make it as clear as possible. About 50% of the
time, the process of revising my draft makes me realize an obvious solution to
my own problem that I had overlooked.

~~~
module0000
The internet needs more of you. Thinking about your problem and a question to
solve it leads to introspection, which is sorely lacking in most StackExchange
questions. Most posters just let their stream of consciousness out, post it,
and curse the lack of answers.

~~~
dspillett
If you've ever had to deal with customer problem reports, you'll know that
isn't just people using SO and related sites.

~~~
kashyapc
Yeah, as someone who has to deal with bugs from systems layer to userspace, a
non-trivial chunk of reports (not from customers per se) are: "crap blows up,
please figure out".

FWIW, some four years ago I wrote this for this "bug filing
recommendations"[1] guide for the OpenStack community when triaging lots of
bugs.

In my experience, the most and informative and delightful bug reports I've
ever come across are from Japanese customers. And obviously, I prioritize
those bugs that are competently written.

[1]
[https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/BugFilingRecommendations](https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/BugFilingRecommendations)

~~~
jjeaff
My most common from end users is, "it won't let me..."

It won't let me login. It won't let me change my profile. It won't let me go
to the page I want.

Such a waste of time. Two seconds of thought should allow anyone to realize
that is not enough data for me to even begin troubleshooting your problem.

------
ak217
Article starts out well and then veers off into strange and scattershot
coverage of unrelated Amazon factoids.

It doesn't fully cover the communication principles of the 6-pager. The
missing parts are:

\- 6 pages is the upper limit; the memo can be shorter

\- The format is designed to drive the meeting structure by requiring
attendees to read the memo in the first 10 minutes of a meeting, followed by
discussion

\- You can push extra information into the appendix if needed to convince
those looking for more evidence

\- The memo is self-sufficient as a unit of information, unlike a Powerpoint
that relies on the presenter (or a video of them) to contextualize and connect
the information

The basic thrust is to bring the discipline of scientific style article
writing into office communications (and avoid Powerpoint anti-patterns in the
process).

~~~
philipodonnell
I too was frustrated with this article. What is a narrative memo? Is there an
outline? Examples?

~~~
eyjafjallajokul
Amazon employee here - Here's an overview of how Amazon does "Working
Backwards" narratives -
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovatorsdna/2017/08/08/how-
do...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/innovatorsdna/2017/08/08/how-does-amazon-
stay-at-day-one/)

~~~
mwexler
That was a good read. Thanks for pointing it out.

~~~
jamesblonde
The first few lines are a straight out lie! Alexa was not developed internally
at Amazon - it was bought in, on the cheap -
[https://www.logicalclocks.com/what-is-it-with-european-
data-...](https://www.logicalclocks.com/what-is-it-with-european-data-
companies/) .

~~~
sib
> Alexa was not developed internally at Amazon - it was bought in, on the
> cheap

That's a flat-out lie itself.

A knowledge graph was acquired. Alexa - which, at this point, represents many
thousands of years of engineering effort, was most certainly developed in-
house.

Source: I wrote the 2-pager recommending the acquisition of said knowledge
graph company.

------
bilater
The memo idea is a brilliant idea when Jeff Bezos and his team use it.
Unfortunately it has been bastardized by inept middle managers. I saw this
firsthand at Amazon. People spending hours debating about spelling errors and
sentence phrasing; talking about how a paragraph is going to confuse a
hypothetical person who would in reality never read it. Instead of using the
memo for what it is meant for...to communicate about your project in a clear
way. I saw people spend 45 min on a paper about a product and then 5 min on
demoing the actual product. I think the paper applies more in high level
strategic meeting and is not a universal panacea for every project you do. But
people are not that subtle and its either all papers or nothing.

~~~
cm11
Of course your last sentence is true. Just hypothesizing, but I imagine the
ensuing discussion is the point. Perhaps the discussion took place because:

\- There's disagreement... in which case, this is a needed conversation. It
probably should happen before the meeting, but it's way better to have now
than to kick down the road because sentence phrasing seemed beneath us.

\- There's politics/personality issues... in which case, maybe the
conversation isn't enjoyable, but that clash is going to happen at some point.
If not this meeting, then the next.

One of the larger points going on in this thread is that articulating things
forces reality checks—between you and your idea, between your idea and others'
ideas, between the team's ideas and reality, etc.

~~~
bilater
Good points but nowhere close to why this happens most of the time. I can't
see how sentence phrasing can cause a whole project to go in a direction it
was not intended for. Often times the people most active in these white paper
discussions are non-technical people who don't do any actual work rather than
running from meeting to meeting who are trying to get in their two cents to
show how valuable they are. At the end of the day - this creates an atmosphere
for the PM to shine and the Engineer to take a backseat. Maybe it's different
in more technical parts of the company but this is the dynamic in
Finance/Legal/HR.

------
ahartmetz
This just gave me a lot of respect for Bezos. Leader type personalities
usually can't (be bothered to) write well and often seem to be more doers than
thinkers. Bezos has a very clear and pleasant writing style and obviously
understands the usefulness and practicalities of deep thinking.

~~~
fastball
The more books you read, the better your own prose (generally).

I'd imagine the guy that started a company to sell books online has read many
of them.

------
sys_64738
I think he's right in general about capturing the detail. You must be able to
write down succinctly what you're selling before you talk about it to an
audience. It's analogous to writing down your design for software before you
actually code it. If you can't then something doesn't add up.

If you want to produce a bullet point powerpoint from the document then it
should be possible to do it in a few hours. But the reverse isn't true.

------
codemac
A surprisingly effective tip from an Edward Tufte seminar was using 11x17
paper to create a 4 page "booklet".

Unsurprisingly non existent from Tufte was figuring out how to apply any of
this to my current work culture.

~~~
jrauser
I've seen a couple companies try to adopt the Amazon-style narrative, and they
both failed. I think the only way it can happen is if leadership demands it
and is absolutely unrelenting. People will resist at first, but in time
(years) they will come around. Some people may have to exit the organization
and be replaced for this change to work. Amazon's organization circa 2004 was
large and resilient enough to support this kind of change. A random startup
might not be able to.

There are important norms in Amazon's culture that support this method. Time
is always set aside at the beginning of the meeting for people to read the
paper. They know that no one will read it before-hand, so they make time in
the schedule. Also, the main document is at most six pages, but you can supply
an endless number of appendices. This gives people a place to put supporting
information that feels too important to cut entirely.

~~~
maxxxxx
" I think the only way it can happen is if leadership demands it and is
absolutely unrelenting. "

I should add that the leadership should do it themselves and lead by example.
When we introduced Agile the developers were the only ones who went to
training while management continued as usual so our Agile quickly devolved
into micromanagement. Same for code reviews. It's very important that the more
experienced devs closely follow agreed-on coding styles.

~~~
jrauser
I agree completely. It's also important that the audience can actually tell
the difference between good writing and poor writing and give useful feedback.
You can't just ask people to write and hope for the best.

~~~
maxxxxx
That’s why leadership has to lead by example and not just tell people to write
well.

------
arooni
I realized I want to read all of these shareholder letters from 'Day 1'.
Luckily some guy has already compiled them all into one PDF that I just sent
to my [Amazon] Kindle. Reading about Amazon on an Amazon device lol. Hope this
helps you too:

[https://medium.com/@austenallred/every-amazon-shareholder-
le...](https://medium.com/@austenallred/every-amazon-shareholder-letter-as-
downloadable-pdf-4eb2ae886018)

PS: Have any of you read all of Buffet's shareholder letters? Would those be
worth reading from the beginning?

------
reubenswartz
I highly recommend making writing part of the interview process if it will be
important for the job. Some people sound brilliant when talking, but as others
have noted, having to write out the details forces you to organize your
thoughts.

~~~
mooreds
Commit messages count as writing, IMHO.

~~~
deathanatos
And some people are better at it than others. I just watched three to five
commits scroll by with subject lines of "updates" and no body … which tells me
nothing about _why_ the code is changing, or why this is the right change.

------
empath75
Is there an example of one of these memos online anywhere?

~~~
harshitaisanerd
His letters to shareholders? [https://www.zachpfeffer.com/single-
post/2017/10/21/Links-to-...](https://www.zachpfeffer.com/single-
post/2017/10/21/Links-to-all-of-Jeff-Bezos-Letters-to-Shareholders-1997---
2017)

------
gnicholas
If PPT and even bullet points are disallowed, what about charts/graphs? It
would be pretty annoying if every chart/graph had to be described in prose.

~~~
otterley
I work for Amazon. Charts, graphs, and other supporting data are permitted in
the appendix, which can be of any length. They are forbidden in the narrative
itself, however.

~~~
sandGorgon
if charts and even _data_ is prohibited, then how do you make a business case
for something ?

~~~
Aeolun
You use ‘it is known’ a lot, with a bunch of references to the appendix?

~~~
otterley
Typically you'd make a succinct verbal statement in the narrative like
"customers tell us ____" or "___% of ______ do ______", and show the survey or
other relevant data that supports the statement in the appendix.

------
kpwagner
The emphasis on the word "narrative" is a little odd to me. In the book "The
Everything Store", Brad Stone, the author, describes an awkward encounter with
Bezos: one of the first questions Bezos asked Stone was "with this book, how
are you going to avoid the narrative fallacy." The narrative fallacy basically
means crafting stories where there should be none (e.g. interpreting data with
a neat reason that seems plausible, while the reason may be completely wrong
and is not proven by the data). See Nassim Taleb for more on the narrative
fallacy.

------
yawaramin
The part about actually sitting down and writing out a proposal and finding
the challenges with it hits home with me. Over the past year or so I've become
(I think!) a little more cautious about things that I claim, whether it's
online or in person, especially in a technical context or when carrying out an
argument. And I've often found that actually questioning my own claims and
then having to go and research them and figuring out whether I can actually
make a claim, gives me a better overall understanding of the arguments.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think corporations are going to have to learn a lot from Open Source
practises - Agile is probably the first in road that "code" is making into the
corporate world despite its mutated appearance

One of them is discussion over email (ie persuasive long form writing,
combined with data driven evidence)

The other is of course ... voting

------
calebm
I think writing gives you an incredible edge in life. If you really believe,
you can write the story of your life.

------
nkh
I'm curious to how much time is allocated for writing these six pagers? Both
total leadtime and actual writing time. Anyone with experience have any
insight?

~~~
zacherates
Bezos discusses how long they take to write in the 2018 Amazon Shareholder
Letter [1]:

"... they mistakenly believe a high-standards, six-page memo can be written in
one or two days or even a few hours, when really it might take a week or
more!"

[1]
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518121161/d456916dex991.htm)

------
zeofig
Narrative and brutal exploitation, a winning combo!

------
gcb0
love the (intentional?) irony that the first 20 something paragraphs say
absolutely nothing besides "bezos like longform narrative, and he wrote it in
a very short email once".

------
sonnyblarney
I suggest what might be happening has less to do with writing rather than the
structured approach required to do such writing.

Obviously all of this works for Amazon so that's great, I wouldn't see any
reason to change it, but it's probably worth thinking about a little.

I do not believe PowerPoint is inherently a bad format, nor do I believe that
written is better, moreover, I think a lot can be lost in prose.

The reason I believe this is due to some military experience with SMEAC NATO
orders format [1]. This format can be used by Corporals on up to Generals, by
all NATO forces such that a Polish recruit could sit in on a US General's
Orders and effectively understand what is going on.

Aspects of SMEAC exist to enable tired and sleep deprived commanders and
soldiers to create coherent and complete plans, and to ingest them as well.

Little things like: " You must always repeat the mission twice so that any
squadies not paying attention have a chance to catch what it is they are meant
to be doing."

At all levels, the Mission Objective (which is a specific format) is repeated
twice. Always. The impetus is twofold: if well trained staff understand the
mission objectives, then the rest is 'details' meaning, even if everything
falls apart, training and skills can take over so the mission could be
achieved. The 'say it twice' is essentially a double affirmation of the
objective.

Once everyone is on this same wavelength, it's interesting to see how people
can become operationally synchronized.

My feeling is that a SMEAC-like format for meetings would likely be ideal;
something that requires a specific approach, with checklists that force
product/technical etc. to contemplate various issues.

If this were to be done well, then it could be abbreviated into another
format.

Another reason I'm just a little skeptical, is that every big movement has a
series of behaviours and attitudes that help embolden the koolaid. Amazon
started as a _book selling_ company, so in a way, it kinds of makes sense for
them to value the 'literary' in some way, and this odd behaviour (which
actually does work) helps them differentiate their 'movement' in a material
way and reinforce ostensible 'culture'.

It's probably worth some further analysis, and maybe some data points as well,
because there are many things that make growing companies unique, I wonder if
we should just assume those unique things are drivers or just arbitrarily
correlated aspects.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_paragraph_order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_paragraph_order)

------
pixelpp
Yep, they are using it right now to draw attention away from Jeff's naked
drama.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
What part is Jeff trying to draw attention away from? If anything he's been
incredibly open and forthright about the entire "drama", which seems to be the
exact opposite of what the blackmailing parties want.

------
writepub
While dense writing makes it harder for the presenter to gloss over details,
it makes it that much harder for the audience to grasp the idea. PowerPoint is
designed for the audience.

Maybe a presentation for a live audience, and a dense paper for offline
consumption is the optimal setting. The audience can remain engaged, and if an
idea seems worthy, a deeper dive into the dense paper format occurs

~~~
jrauser
To the contrary, clear writing make it much easier for the audience to
assemble complex ideas.

Poor writing definitely makes it harder, and it turns out that the vast
majority of people are poor writers, mainly because they don't practice. You
might not have experienced high-quality business writing because it's so rare.

Powerpoint does have its uses; I've written and delivered lots of talks using
powerpoint. But informing an audience about to make a high-stakes decision is
not among them.

~~~
tverbeure
About a year ago, I decided to start writing about my home hobby projects on a
blog. It's a nice plus when others read it (but I have no idea because there
are no trackers) but the two biggest advantages are:

1\. I'm now much more inclined to finish a project.

2\. Writing about it forces me to truly understand the subject. There have
been many times where things became clear only because I had to explain it to
myself in words.

And you're right: the more I do it, the easier it becomes.

It's very satisfying.

~~~
mooreds
I wrote about this a few years ago.

[http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188)

I find blogging to be immensely helpful in crystalizing my thoughts as well as
giving back.

