Jeff Bezos and Winston Churchill do not have much in common, one is the managing director of a $770 billion company, and the other prevented the Nazis from invading Britain. Clearly the art of successful leadership is one shared trait, but it is the aspect of accurate and compact communication that make these two personalities worth looking into. The founder of Amazon and the British Prime Minister during the Second World War would definitely agree on one thing: the value of a memorandum.
In his latest Letter to Shareholders, Bezos commended Amazon’s senior leadership practice of starting all internal meetings by reading a concise briefing note, in much the same way practiced by Sir Winston Churchill, explaining the key topics to be discussed. Instead of watching a mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation or immediately starting the debate, Amazon’s leaders spend up to half an hour in complete silence, to fully understand the meaning of each individual’s raised items in advance.
This approach may seem eccentric, but it has a lot of advantages. Most employees of large companies usually spend too much time in meetings. In fact, some executives spend days travelling from one poorly ventilated location to another wasting their time and money; as shown by Rolls Royce’s recent cutbacks on employee travel. Furthermore, many meetings are disorganised and do lead to acceptable conclusions with participants intervening without really knowing the subject in-depth, or without noticing they are going off topic: it becomes a battle of rhetoric.
The impact of storytelling is evident in public speaking. Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conferences have become a worldwide reference for professional public speakers to ruthlessly refine their “Ted Talks” in the months leading up to it. Nobody is allowed to go on stage to improvise. A corporate meeting is not a TED conference, but it’s still a gathering that needs to be prepared in advance and located in an environment which promotes creative thinking and clarity.
If you’re looking for a suitable Liverpool office space to conduct regular business meetings, ABC Office Liverpool have everything you need to ensure successful corporate discussions. Contact us today for more information on our facility or to arrange a “Try Before You Buy” option.