Lex Fridman and Jeff Bezos Discuss "Crisp Documents & Messy Meetings"
Release of Big Bet Leadership
The Digital Leader Newsletter — Strategies and Techniques for Change Agents, Strategists, and Innovators
As you likely know, Jeff Bezos was a guest on the Lex Fridman Podcast. In it, they discuss not just how writing out memos is a different way to work but also the dynamics of a great discussion based on the memo.
This is a different way to work. It is the way Big Bet Legends work.
Stop here. Invest 6 minutes and 25 seconds to watch this video. It may make you millions of dollars and change the way you work, the way you think, and your career.
While the writing is a superpower, it is the combination of writing great narratives, reading and then the willingness to debate that creates better high-stakes decision making.
Enter Big Bet Leadership
The co-author of Big Bet Leadership is Kevin McCaffrey. Kevin ran new business incubation at T-Mobile and retained me in 2018 to advise this effort.
As part of this work, we took the principles of Amazon’s “working backwards” techniques, including the narrative writing and meeting debate approach, and designed an approach that would work for T-Mobile.
Too many people, especially former Amazon leaders, are under the false assumption that Amazon’s approach can just be “copy-pasted” into another company. That is rare. I have seen it fail time and again. The key is designing for the specific business, DNA, culture and the mission of the situation.
Going from Amazon’s “working backwards” to T-Mobile’s new business incubation served as the key inspiration for much of Big Bet Leadership. In the first section of the book, Big Bet Thinking, we outline the “Thinking In Outcomes” technique and a specific set of memos and templates which deliver the benefits Bezos is describing, while prescribing more direction than “just write a 6-page narrative and PR/FAQ (future press release, frequently asked questions)” approach.
Although Amazon and Bezos prescribe starting a meeting with 15 to 20 minutes to read the memo at the start of a meeting, what we have learned is that sending the memo at least three days in advance and giving senior leaders a chance to read, re-read and process the contents, creates an even better meeting when the topic is complex and high-stakes (that’s what a Big Bet is).
Advances in asynchronous collaboration tools can make the pre-read approach even higher impact. Jerry Dischler, the former GM of the Google Ads business, would not only read a document in advance of a meeting, he would add comments and questions to the document, “@’ing” the relevant stakeholders. Those stakeholders could then work with their teams to insert a concise, well-researched response into the document in a way that can be hard to do during a live meeting. By time the actual meeting took place, two things happened:
(1) The quality of the discussion was much higher because everyone had had a chance to process the materials in advance and otherwise distracting side-questions were resolved in the document. This tended to result in conversations that shifted towards big picture, long-term, strategic thinking upfront and tangible action items to close.
(2) The meetings were up to 75% shorter.
Shorter meetings that are simultaneously higher impact!? That’s a powerful combination and it’s unlocked via a willingness to invest in new ways of working, starting with a commitment to written narratives over slide presentations.
You Get More Than a Book
With purchase of Big Bet Leadership, you get access to a rich set of templates, tools, prompts and even a Big Bet GPT to put the book into action!
My promise to you…the combination of the book and the free resources will change the way you work on high potential, high risk initiatives. Or come back to me for your money back.
For a short time, the Kindle version is just $0.99! (in the US and many international markets)
Like a Signed Copy?
If you’d like a signed copy of Big Bet Leadership, upgrade to a paid subscription for The Digital Leader newsletter and then email me with your mailing address —>info@rossmanpartners dot com.
Onward!
John
About The Digital Leader Newsletter
John Rossman is an innovation coach and strategy advisor. The Digital Leader Newsletter is a weekly coaching session with a focus on customer-centricity, innovation, and strategy. We deliver practical theory, examples, tools, and techniques to help you build better strategies, better plans, and better solutions — but most of all, to think and communicate better.