The perfect meeting starts with a crisp document and a messy meeting.
The meeting should be about asking questions that no one knows the answer to. The organization should be truth-seeking. If something can be known for sure through data or research, find the answer.
6 pages memo
A typical meeting will start with a 6 pages narratively-structured memo. For 30mins, everyone in the meeting will read silently the memo quietly and write down questions they might have.
If people were asked to read it beforehand, most are too busy and they would only skim the document. Or pretend they read it.
Order of speaking
Once the memo is read and people need to discuss it, the most junior person should speak first. And the most senior person should speak last. Often, when people hear the senior’s opinion, they might question their stance or modify it even though it wasn’t their opinion in the first place.
Much better than a powerpoint
Powerpoint is designed to persuade, it’s kind of a sales tool. Internally, the last thing you want to do is sell, you’re truth seeking.
The other problem with powerpoints is that it is easy for the author and hard for the audience.
And a memo is the opposite. A good 6 pages memo might take 2 weeks to write. You want to write it, rewrite it, talk to people about it. They have to poke holes in it for you, you write it again. So the job for the author is much more difficult, but for the audience, it’s much better.
Other problems with powerpoint is that senior executives might interrupt with questions about a slide. What they don’t know was that this question was answered on the next slide, but you never got there.
Roadmap to Billions 