Jeff Bezos: preference

Transcript context

…How do you achieve time where you can focus and truly think through problems? I do little thinking retreats. So this is not the only way, I can do that all day long. I’m very good at focusing. I don’t keep to a strict schedule. My meetings often go longer than I planned for them to because I believe in wandering. My perfect meeting starts with a crisp document. So the document should be written with such clarity that it’s like angels singing from on high. I like a crisp document and a messy meeting. And so the meeting is about asking questions that nobody knows the answer to and trying to wander your way to a solution. And when that happens just right, it makes all the other meetings worthwhile. It feels good. It has a kind of beauty to it. It has an aesthetic beauty to it, and you get real breakthroughs in meetings like that. Can you actually describe the crisp document? This is one of the legendary aspects of Amazon, of the way you approach meetings is this, the six-page memo. Maybe first describe the process of running a meeting with memos.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.