Why Jeff Bezos Banned This Tool at Amazon

If you ever have occasion to work or present at Amazon, you’d better leave your PowerPoint slides at home. According to a directive from Jeff Bezos, PowerPoint is now a thing of the past at Amazon.

Why?

Well, for the world’s richest man, time really is money ($4 million an hour at last count!). And Bezos is convinced that meetings with a “narrative structure” are more efficient, easier to comprehend, and just provide a better outcome than reading bullet points from a PowerPoint presentation.

Is there a larger takeaway here?

Yes. It’s not just the rich and powerful whose time is valuable. The time your customers spend reviewing your reports, or prospects spend reviewing your website for solutions to their problems, well that’s valuable time they’d rather be spending somewhere else.

But you can make that time a little more enjoyable, more relatable, more effective and more interesting by simply incorporating elements of storytelling into your brand message. Like this email, for instance.

Ditch the bullet points. Tell a great story.