How to write narrative business review documents the "Amazon way"

Many people have heard the story that Amazon doesn't allow PowerPoint for internal business reviews. What is the thinking behind it, and how does it actually work? I've pulled together some thoughts from my own 9-yr experience at Amazon. I'm such a fan of this approach that I rolled it out in my current role as CEO at YT Industries in our regular board meetings.

What are narrative business review documents?

Narrative business review docs share content in the form of complete sentences and coherent paragraphs, and which tell a “story”. At Amazon, these documents are max 6 pages in length plus appendices. Typical use cases for Narrative docs are regular business reviews, planning documents, initiative / project reviews, or post-mortems / retros.

Why do companies like Amazon use narrative documents?

People who have used narrative documents argue that they lead to better decision making based on the following arguments:

1. It forces “clarity of thought” of the writers. Writing in prose forces the writer to fully understand the concept, and the process of writing often uncovers logical inconsistencies. While it’s easy to create a powerpoint from a well-written doc, it’s not easy the other way around. Making the effort to formulate a coherent and concise paragraph achieves a deeper understanding than throwing up a few bullet points on a slide supported by a graph.
2. Meeting participants can process documents at their own pace; in a presentation everyone has to move at the same speed as the presenter - some members of the audience are always bored (as they’ve seen that part before) or overwhelmed (as new complex concepts are shown too quickly). Narratives allow readers to focus their attention on sections and appendices they are most interested in; they can skip sections they know well and read slowly through things which are new.
3. The format improves the quality of discussion as everyone is equipped with the necessary background, the options available, and the data supporting the recommendation.
4. Documents have higher stand alone value - you can quickly share them with people who were unable to attend the meeting and you “only” miss out on the Q&A which can be captured well via minutes.
5. Documents reduce unconscious biases. The audience doesn’t think about the gender or age of the presenter, what they are wearing today, or how nervous they may look - you focus on the quality of the narrative in front of you.
6. The quality of the meeting is driven by the overall quality of the document (team effort) rather than the ability of one presenter.

How do meetings at Amazon with narrative documents actually work?

The meeting owner brings enough printouts to the room for everyone attending in person and sends out a digital copy to all participants a few hours in advance.

The first 1/3 to 1/2 of the meeting time is designated as “reading time” where everyone reads the doc and browses the appendices in silence. Participants make notes on margins or circle areas which they want to challenge / find out more about.

The document owner does not need to introduce anything verbally, state the intention of the meeting, or add background. If any of this is important, it is simply included in the document text. The meeting starts with everyone reading.

The rest of the meeting time is used for Q&A. The document owner opens the floor to questions / comments from the audience. Typically the Q&A starts with high level feedback on the doc, then working through the doc page by page. Meetings that end early are either a sign of a great doc (totally clear, fully aligned with the recommendations) or a very poor doc (requires rescheduling as the quality of the doc makes it impossible to have a productive discussion).

Amazon docs always include line and page numbers. This way, the person asking the question can always start by referencing the page and line number so everyone can quickly find the section in question. One person in the meeting is designated to take minutes with the goal to capture decisions made, key discussion topics and action items along with owners and due by dates. The minute taker is typically NOT the meeting owner as the owner should be focused on answering the questions rather than taking minutes.

Why does Amazon include reading time at the beginning of the meeting rather than asking everyone to pre-read?

The effectiveness of pre-reads is based on the “good intentions” that people will find the time to read the document beforehand. Invariably some people in the meeting will not take the time to read the document in detail, and will be embarrassed to admit it. This lack of preparation could lead to bad decisions being made or inefficient use of discussion time as the person is not operating with the full level of knowledge. Blocking time at the beginning of the meeting ensures that everyone has time to prepare in detail and participate with the full information available.

Why does Amazon limit docs to max 6 pages?

It’s “easy” to write a long document and harder to think carefully about what the most important messages are that you want to communicate to your target audience. What are the most important insights? Where do you need help? How much background do you have to give? It was not uncommon for my firsts drafts of narrative docs to exceed 10 pages and much of the “art” of writing is the process of cutting the text down to a more efficient length.

How do I get better at writing narratives?

1. Set the agenda/storyline before you start writing.
2. Think about who your audience will be. How much background do you have to give on the topic? How familiar are the participants with your business? How quickly can you jump into the details, particularly in a highly complex topic? Can some background be moved to the Appendix?
3. Assign owners of each section early and leave time to integrate / consolidate.
4. Proofread beginning to end, not piece wise.
5. Challenge yourself to ask “so what?” to assertions and hypotheses that are made in the document. If you don’t do it, the meeting audience will do it for you and it’s better to pro-actively address these.
6. Ask colleagues to proof-read your doc.
7. Read other people’s docs, if you have access to them, and attend other meetings. Consider what “works well” and the impact that poorly written/thought through sections have.

So how do these things actually look like?

Formatting

• Typical narratives are max 6 pages long to fill a 60-90 min meeting slot. A good rule of thumb is 2 pages per 30min of meeting, but never exceeding 6 pages.
• Narratives are single spaced and have no smaller than 10pt font (Calibri).
• Appendices have no page limit.
• Always include page numbers and line numbers
• Consider adding a cover page (page 0) which shows all your most important KPIs in tabular form

Writing Style

• Stick with a “narrative” (prose) approach using full sentences.
• Assign owners to specific sections and ensure you have enough time to review their input and how it fits into the overall doc. You should be reviewing first drafts latest 1 week before a meeting!
• Be explicit in the doc when you need a decision or feedback.
• Replace adjectives with numbers where possible.
• For example “Top Line was good in Q2” should be replaced by “Q2 Total Net Bookings came in at $24.5M up 14% / +$1.2M YoY and beating plan by 2.1% / $245K.”
• Bullet points and lists are helpful when you have 3 or more elements to describe
• Acronyms should be written out the first time you use them but it’s ok to abbreviate once you’ve defined them

Incorporating Data Tables

• Inserting succinct tables with key data/bridges is helpful to support your analysis
• Large tables should be moved to Appendix and narrative should reference these (“See Appendix 1 for more detailed information”)
• Large tables should always have row numbers and column letters to facilitate Q&A
• Create tables in Excel and copy/paste into Word as images to maintain intended formatting. Make sure you save copies of your Excel tables in accessible locations to your team (ideally in the same shared folder as the doc) to support edits to the tables

Talking about Data

• Text should not “simply” repeat what the reader can extract from data tables in the text – it should add commentary or additional insight/actions
• When citing YoY or vs plan, always include both absolute change and % change to provide full context. For example, “Total Net bookings in Q2 were up 24% / $1.4M YoY”
• Be precise in your use of KPI name and currency
• K = Thousand, M = Million, B = Billion
• e.g. “24K customers, $3.2M Contribution Profit, $1.2B Net Bookings”
• Be conscious of significant figures: 2-3 should cover 98% of use cases
• When talking about variances in an absolute number use %: “Total Revenue was up 10% / $1M YoY to $11M”
• When talking about variances in a %, use basis points: “Variable Contribution Margin improved 130bps YoY from 11.0% to 12.3%”. Note - 100bps equals 1 percentage point of change!

Related articles and resources for more background

• A good article around the history of narrative writing at Amazon on slab.com
• A shorter but similar article on Amazon from CNBC
• An article from the Financial Times discussing the similarities around how Jeff Bezos and Winston Churchill placed an inordinate weight into the value of narrative writing.