<story><title>Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon&apos;s Competitive Advantage</title><url>https://slab.com/blog/jeff-bezos-writing-management-strategy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>busyant</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Writing is nature&amp;#x27;s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Indeed!&lt;p&gt;Every so often, I have a coding question and I have an urge to ask that question on StackExchange.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item><item><author>jrauser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve written documents for Jeff, and IMO, the six-page narrative memo is a key part of Amazon&amp;#x27;s success.  It&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s leadership makes better decisions than their competitors in part because they are routinely supplied with better arguments than their competitors.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Writing is nature&amp;#x27;s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.&amp;quot;  -Dick Guindon, via Leslie Lamport</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zwayhowder</author><text>If only everyone did that.&lt;p&gt;A former colleague of mine had a teddy bear on his desk, before you could ask for his advice you had to take the teddy and explain your problem out loud to it. Easily 80% of the time you&amp;#x27;d return the teddy and go back to your desk with the solution.&lt;p&gt;I found when I quit smoking my ability to solve complex problems took a dip, because I wasn&amp;#x27;t taking the cognitive break to step back and reflect on problems. Once I replaced my smoke break with a walk around the building my work went back to it&amp;#x27;s usual level.</text></comment>
<story><title>Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon&apos;s Competitive Advantage</title><url>https://slab.com/blog/jeff-bezos-writing-management-strategy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>busyant</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Writing is nature&amp;#x27;s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Indeed!&lt;p&gt;Every so often, I have a coding question and I have an urge to ask that question on StackExchange.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item><item><author>jrauser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve written documents for Jeff, and IMO, the six-page narrative memo is a key part of Amazon&amp;#x27;s success.  It&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s leadership makes better decisions than their competitors in part because they are routinely supplied with better arguments than their competitors.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Writing is nature&amp;#x27;s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.&amp;quot;  -Dick Guindon, via Leslie Lamport</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>module0000</author><text>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.</text></comment>