Amazon is well known for its idiosyncrasies.
And how employees are expected to communicate at the company is one of its most widely talked about idiosyncrasies.
For example, at Amazon, there are no slides or powerpoint presentations, all documents are written in prose. Jeff Bezos believes this forces a clarity of thinking that can be masked if one uses bullet points in slides.
A friend recently shared with me an interesting LinkedIn post titled, ‘Write like an Amazonian’.
What I love about this post is that it crystallises many of the lessons generous bosses have tried to teach me over the years.
It’s not easy to follow these rules, but if you do, your communication in the workplace will be better understood, and better received.
Here are my favourites from ‘Writing like an Amazonian’:
- Use fewer than 30 words per sentence
- Replace adjectives with data (e.g., “Sales increased significantly,” becomes “Sales increased by 30%”)
- Does your writing pass the “so what” test? At the end of your document, has the reader learnt anything that will help them make a better decision?
- Use subject-verb-object sentences with “doers” and “action”
- Avoid clutter words and phrases (e.g., “due to the fact that,” becomes “Because”)
- Avoid jargon and acronyms as much as possible. They exclude newcomers and non-experts
- Remove weak words like: would, might, should, significantly, and arguably
H/T Dan for sharing the post with me.