Amazon-Style 6-Page Memos
Replace PowerPoint with structured narrative thinking for better meetings.
Amazon famously banned PowerPoint from its most important meetings and replaced it with the six-page narrative memo. Instead of a deck of bullet points, the person proposing something writes their thinking out in full sentences and paragraphs — the problem, the options considered, the recommendation and the data behind it — and the meeting opens with everyone reading it in silence.
The discipline is the point: prose forces a clear, complete argument in a way that bullets never do, and reading it together means the discussion starts from shared understanding rather than a live sales pitch. This guide covers how to structure a six-pager — from the opening framing to the appendices — and how to run the silent-reading meeting that goes with it.