The memo was never the point. The point was to clarify your thinking
In 2004, Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from Amazon’s senior leadership meetings in favor of narrative memos, read in silence at the start of each meeting. The idea was that a well-structured and tightly argued memo communicated its ideas in a way that a deck built around bullet points could not. As Amazon moves into the AI era, it is developing internal tools that can help produce polished…
Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from Amazon's senior leadership meetings in 2004 and promoted narrative memos instead. He believed these memos forced clear thinking and disciplined readers. A recent AI tool, Cedric, claims to produce six-page narratives in seconds, undermining the value of the memo-writing process. However, the memo itself was never the point; the thinking behind it was crucial.
Bezos stated that writing a memo with a narrative structure forced clear thinking. Writing often led writers to change their minds several times, which was beneficial. Meetings began in silence, allowing everyone to work through the same argument before speaking. If the memo lacked substance, the value of reading it diminished. AI can break the link between thinking and text production, leading to a decline in the value of reading well-written but empty texts.
Workers are adapting by asking for longer documents to summarize with AI. A survey showed that 42% of workers who received low-effort AI-generated work saw the sender as less trustworthy. The memo had three functions: forcing thinking, providing evidence of the thinking, and giving readers a shared understanding. Simple substitutions of AI work for human work won't restore these functions.
Instead, businesses should focus on how work produces value in aggregate and redesign workflows to achieve the same results without relying on individual steps.
Written by urgent.news from Fast Company's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
