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While dense writing makes it harder for the presenter to gloss over details, it makes it that much harder for the audience to grasp the idea. PowerPoint is des
by writepub 8y ago
While dense writing makes it harder for the presenter to gloss over details, it makes it that much harder for the audience to grasp the idea. PowerPoint is designed for the audience.
Maybe a presentation for a live audience, and a dense paper for offline consumption is the optimal setting. The audience can remain engaged, and if an idea seems worthy, a deeper dive into the dense paper format occurs
- xfitm3 8y agoThe entire point is that presentations are easier to game than a narrative. If the audience can’t be bothered to read the paper it’s time for the audience to be replaced.
- GoodJokes 8y agoYou’ll make a good dictator one day.
- jrauser 8y agoTo the contrary, clear writing make it much easier for the audience to assemble complex ideas. Poor writing definitely makes it harder, and it turns out that the vast majority of people are poor writers, mainly because they don't practice. You might not have experienced high-quality business writing because it's so rare. Powerpoint does have its uses; I've written and delivered lots of talks using powerpoint. But informing an audience about to make a high-stakes decision is not among them.
- tverbeure 8y agoAbout a year ago, I decided to start writing about my home hobby projects on a blog. It's a nice plus when others read it (but I have no idea because there are no trackers) but the two biggest advantages are: 1. I'm now much more inclined to finish a project. 2. Writing about it forces me to truly understand the subject. There have been many times where things became clear only because I had to explain it to myself in words. And you're right: the more I do it, the easier it becomes. It's very satisfying.
- mooreds 8y agoI wrote about this a few years ago. http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188 http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188 I find blogging to be immensely helpful in crystalizing my thoughts as well as giving back.
- SubuSS 8y agoYay Amazon/Snap reunion! I think the mix up between enlightenment/information vs decision making is the key here. You see presentations at Re:Invent all the time, because they are the former. Leadership decision making definitely requires the nuance a standalone document can provide. Amazon takes it a step ahead by imposing a condense requirement: now you need to write well too. RE other comments about fluffing / buzzwords, you probably are highly misjudging the level of intelligence of this particular audience. IOW I would love to try and see someone try to push such a doc with Jeff et al :)
- xfitm3 8y agoMy interest is piqued. Can you point us to some examples of high quality business writing?
- jrauser 8y agoJeff's letters to shareholders are pretty good. Here's a recent one: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518121161/d456916dex991.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312518... Because of its audience and goals it's necessarily less technical and more essay-like than a typical s-team memo. For obvious reasons, I can't link to any of those. An example that's close and is in the public domain is Jacobsen's TCP slow start paper: https://ee.lbl.gov/papers/congavoid.pdf https://ee.lbl.gov/papers/congavoid.pdf. He's advocating a specific change in the TCP protocol and marshalls evidence beautifully to make his argument.
- dingaling 8y agoThere's a lot of padding and ambling in that memo. For example the entire first paragraph would have been more parsable as a list of achievements. And then there is this: "may be because customers have such easy access to more information than ever before – in only a few seconds and with a couple taps on their phones, customers can read reviews, compare prices from multiple retailers, see whether something’s in stock, find out how fast it will ship or be available for pick-up, and more." Everything after the clause "... then ever before" is superfluous. Shareholders know what sort of information customers can obtain, and how. He implies that with the weak "and more" at the end. But too late, he has already wasted the reader's time. I'm not particularly impressed by that writing style, it reminds me of 16 year olds trying to impress me with their verbose history essays. The idea of business writing is to COMMUNICATE. If the reader reads an entire paragraph and hasn't learned anything new then the author has failed. If the reader needs to use a highlighter to pick-out pertinent information from a sea of words, the author has failed.
- maxxxxx 8y agoBased on a lot of meetings I attend I suspect that the people who don't read or understand the 6 page format shouldn't maybe be at the meeting. A lot of meetings spend a lot of time with catching up unprepared people and almost nothing of substance gets achieved.
- a-priori 8y agoIn the Amazon format, meetings begin with dedicated reading time. The presenter hands out copies of the memo, and everyone spends 20 minutes or so reading silently. Then they discuss the memo as a group. People aren't expected to read it beforehand.
- foobiekr 8y agoI would love this rule. Love it.
- ahartmetz 8y agoI think PowerPoint is for convincing. Text is for understanding.
- deathanatos 8y agoI feel like your message implies that the PowerPoint should come first. Why should I allow you to convince me of something that I do not understand? No, I should read the text first, to understand (which hopefully will simultaneously convince me!) and then the PowerPoint is no longer needed.
- ahartmetz 8y agoMy message implies that PowerPoint serves to convince people of things that they don't understand, that's right.