Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

by Colin Bryar

One of the major pitfalls of needing to hire a lot of new people very quickly is urgency bias: the tendency to overlook a candidate’s flaws because you are overwhelmed with work and need bodies.

As much as we respect PowerPoint as a visual communication tool and speaking aid, we learned the hard way that it’s not the best format to communicate complex information about initiatives and ongoing projects in a one-hour meeting. We found, instead, that a six-page narrative written by a given team is the method that best enables everyone in a meeting to get up to speed quickly and efficiently on the project that team is working on.