Running effective meetings is important. The cost of a meeting grows exponentially with the more team members you have in the meeting and the “who” in the meetings.
I have run poor meetings and I have run wonderful meetings. It’s obvious when you are in either.
I love learning how other leaders run their meetings. Unfortunately, many do not share the details behind their meetings but every leader understands the importance of running a good meeting.
Every Amazon meeting starts with a document detailing the purpose of the meeting and the proposed strategy. The document is written as a narrative. Bezos has a strong distaste for PowerPoints and prohibits them from being used in meetings.
The team spends the first 10-15 minutes reading the document and leaving feedback as comments in the document. After everyone is up to speed, the meeting continues with a discussion towards the decision that needs to be made.
Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square shares a similar meeting strategy (source):
Most of my meetings are now Google doc-based, starting with 10 minutes of reading and commenting directly in the doc. This practice makes time for everyone to get on the same page, allows us to work from many locations, and gets to truth/critical thinking faster.
At Amazon, the meeting documents are circulated and continuously improved. They are very many living documents. Bezos shares the below in regards to the source of the memos (source):
The great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can’t be done in a day or two.
Jeff shares that “[It] is harder for the author, but it forces the author to clarify their own thinking. It totally revolutionizes the way we do meetings at Amazon.” (source: Forum on Leadership).
Learn how to run effective meetings to save cash and more importantly your team’s time.
Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash.