Jeff Bezos: Productive Amazon meetings

Launched on 5th July 1994, at a time when use of the World Wide Web was growing at an astonishing rate of 2300% per year, the business became known as “The Everything Store”.

Capitalising on a market ready for a new style of shopping, his ground-breaking online store initially sold books, but went on to offer a vast range of products at low prices with convenient home delivery.

With a personal net worth of £159 billion, Bezos became the world’s wealthiest person in 2017. Today, with £168 billion, he’s the world’s second-richest person behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to Forbes.

Bezos is open about sharing the secrets of his success, including his innovative ideas on how to run meetings to result in maximum productivity. The 60-year-old billionaire believes the structure of a meeting is the key to helping attendees understand the importance of all the topics and how they are interrelated.

How old was Jeff Bezos when he started Amazon?

Born in January 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Bezos was 30 years old when he founded Amazon as an online bookstore with his then wife, MacKenzie Scott, in a rented garage in Bellevue, Washington.

Having completed the University of Florida’s Student Science Training Programme, he aspired to become a theoretical physicist. He majored in physics at Princeton University, but later switched to computer science and electrical engineering, graduating with a BSc in Engineering in 1986.

After working at fintech telecommunications startup Fitel, where he built a network to enable international trade, he worked for a new hedge fund, DE Shaw & Co, between 1990 and 1994.

On learning of the boom in web use, he and his wife took a gamble and left their jobs to launch their own e-commerce company, Cadabra, which was soon renamed Amazon after the South American river. This was mainly due to the fact it began with the letter “A” so would appear higher up in business listings when displayed in alphabetical order.

At first, retail industry magazines scoffed at his idea, but Bezos was resolute in his ambition, insisting the growth of the internet would lead to online shopping overtaking traditional competition.

In 1998, Amazon diversified into online video and music sales, adding more consumer goods by the end of the year and gradually expanding into today’s global retail empire.

Jeff Bezos meetings

Throughout his long career, Bezos has insisted on a unique way of holding meetings, ensuring they achieve maximum productivity. He has created various strategies to ensure the whole team follows the company ethos. While all meetings serve their purpose, when it comes to particularly important meetings that have a direct impact on Amazon’s future, there can be no margin for error.

Bezos’ non-traditional style of management includes outlawing traditional presentations using PowerPoint. Addressing delegates at the Bush Centre’s 2018 Forum on Leadership, he said, “It’s probably the smartest thing we ever did.” Instead, meetings begin with delegates sitting quietly for 30 minutes and reading a “narratively structured” six-page memo to create the “context for a good discussion”.

Distributed to everyone at the same time at the start of the meeting, delegates are encouraged to take detailed notes. Bullet points are also banned in documents, as Bezos feels they encourage attendees to simply jot down the points quickly, without considering the message behind them.

In traditional circumstances, executives tend to “bluff their way through the meeting”, rather than reading the memo properly, he claims. Making attendees spend time studying the memo starts everyone off on a level playing field and leads to a better debate. His philosophy is, “If you don’t understand the details of your business, you are going to fail.” Listening to a speaker, reading text on a screen, making notes and trying to understand the information simultaneously is difficult to sustain, hence his way of handling meetings.

He sent an email to senior team members telling them that the “narrative” memos were superior because they allowed for “better thought and understanding of what’s more important”. Starting a meeting by reading a memo that has just been handed out ensures employees all have the same amount of time to prepare for the ensuing debate.

Bezos feels it slows down a meeting when people arrive with various levels of preparation due to their own workloads and time constraints, making the meeting less productive.

Two pizza rule

Another tip from Bezos is the importance of having the right number of people at meetings, as he believes small meetings are essential for maintaining purpose and productivity.

He introduced the “two pizza teams” meeting standard, meaning Amazon’s executives could hold meetings only when two pizzas were enough to feed those in attendance. He says unnecessarily large gatherings take up too much time and are hard to manage, so delegates leave feeling less engaged.

Bezos’ focus on smaller teams promotes improved collaboration and encourages more contributions between members. He has outlawed social loafing – a term used to describe how a person working in a group tends to make less effort to achieve their goal than if they’re working alone.

Engaging an audience by storytelling

Research shows that putting the focus on storytelling is at the heart of any successful meeting. A practice Bezos has always followed; just as stories keep children and adults interested when it comes to reading a book, or watching a film, this method of presenting a meeting grabs attendees’ attention.

Every Amazon meeting involves providing context to new ideas to ensure delegates understand the messages contained in the presentation. Many studies have confirmed that we retain important information better when it has been presented in story form. Bezos has described this method as being “so much better than the typical PowerPoint presentation for so many reasons”.

The meeting is structured around an engaging narrative that contains ideas, inspiring attendees to consider the topics carefully. Psychologists liken this idea to the structure of a successful film franchise, such as Star Wars, for example.

The narrative starts with a hero who has a goal, but who faces a challenge. The hero begins a journey to achieve the goal, facing many obstacles along the way, but gradually overcomes them, ultimately winning victory.

Following this narrative framework is a trusted way of gaining and sustaining delegates’ attention. It helps you to put a message across, ensuring people listen and think about it.

Importance of meeting venues

Your choice of meeting venue is a significant part of any event. It sets the tone for the whole experience including the atmosphere, accessibility, ambience, comfort and functionality.

Many companies choose meeting room hire over their regular office because it emphasises the importance of the event, as well as removing distractions such as phone calls.

When you book a meeting room in London, you can choose from a selection of venues that can be booked per hour at prime locations.

Research reveals it can be harder for delegates to feel engaged at an onsite meeting when so much is happening throughout the week. Bringing people together offsite enables greater engagement and the chance to get to know each other better.