Jeff Bezos and Writing Ideas

“On the other hand, it is important that when you start to present or formulate your own views on a topic, on a strategy, on a way of thinking, that it be done with rigor. That’s where the writing comes in. Jeff Bezos, as I point out in the book, forces his senior managers to write down, in six pages, anything that they want to propose to the company. And then for meetings, he thinks of it as study hall where everyone has to be there. He maintains this policy where the first 20 or 30 minutes will be everybody reading the memo. The reason is not only to force the person writing to think clearly and logically and without gaps, but also to force everybody else to read a sustained presentation about a subject, so that everyone is not dealing with dribs and drabs of ideas that may be disconnected or unconnected.”

~ Jordan Shapiro, in “Here’s Why Nothing Prepares You For The 21st Century Like A Liberal Arts Education” at Forbes.com