<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>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>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></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>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>primitivesuave</author><text>My cofounder&amp;#x2F;CEO used to work for Jeff Bezos as a GM and the most valuable lesson he imparted to us is the six pager. Before a high-level meeting begins, everyone grabs a red pen and reads&amp;#x2F;annotates the six-pager for 20 minutes. The discussion that follows is between informed participants, and has more structure. It is a highly effective technique for decision making, and a practice I would certainly carry forth to whatever I work on in the future.</text></comment>