Bezos Bans PowerPoint

A story about how Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon in favor of written memos to improve clarity of thinking.

"Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from Amazon. He realized that PowerPoint was this thing where the most charismatic, loudest voice in the room or somebody with good slide design skills could create an illusion of good thinking.

He forced everybody instead to write long-form memos - basically narratives. He said in the long-form written word, there's no place to hide. There's no way to use design or good presentation skills to make it seem like this is more well thought through than it is. It either is or it isn't, and you'll find out.

So it works inside of companies as well as it does externally to your customers and potential customers."