Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, speaks during the New York Times annual DealBook summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 04, 2024 in New York City.
If you ever find yourself taking a meeting with Jeff Bezos, don't expect the billionaire Amazon founder to speak first.
When Bezos conducts meetings, he instructs everyone to speak in reverse order of seniority, starting with the most junior person there. Bezos, typically at the top of that hierarchy, usually speaks last. The strategy helps combat "group think," he said Wednesday at The New York Times' DealBook Summit.
The idea is to keep the boss' thoughts from unduly influencing the opinions of everyone else in the room, allowing for genuine discussion instead of a room full of people falling into line. Bezos only speaks up in the middle of meetings in the "very rare case" that he has an unwavering opinion on a topic, he said.
"I'm actually personally very easy to influence ... but a couple percent of the time, no force in the world can move me, because I'm so sure of something," said Bezos, 64, who's served as Amazon's executive chair since stepping down as CEO in 2021.
Bezos described his ideal meeting as "messy," saying he wants each one to be so full of discussion and back-and-forth that it runs late — which does often put him behind schedule, he noted. His most productive conversations "wander" around, instead of strictly following the agenda, he added.
"Most of the meetings that are useful — we [hand out] six-page memos, we do half-hour study hall [where] we read them, then we have a messy discussion," Bezos said. "I am very skeptical if the meeting's not messy."
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'Probably the smartest thing we ever did' at Amazon
Money Report
In a 2018 speech, Bezos said reshaping his company's approach to meetings was "probably the smartest thing we ever did" at Amazon.
First, he did away with PowerPoint presentations, replacing them with roughly 30 minutes of silence for attendees to read detailed memos covering the planned discussion topics. Then, employees would offer their thoughts on the memo before Bezos did.
The silent period created "the context for what will then be a good discussion," and ensured that attendees actually read the memo, said Bezos: "Executives will bluff their way through the meeting as if they've read the memo, because we're busy."
While Bezos values conversations that wander, he does view the memo as a way to keep each meeting from veering too far off topic, his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez — founder of Santa Monica, California-based aerial filming company Black Ops Aviation — told the Wall Street Journal last year.
And while Bezos' ideal meeting may run late due to enthusiastic discussion, he at least tries to keep each one under an hour in total, said Sanchez. Spending too much time in meetings — from hour-plus marathons to back-to-back shorter sprints — can increase your stress levels and distract you from your work, multiple studies have found.
Bezos' meeting method is favored by other tech executives, too. For example, Jack Dorsey — former CEO of Twitter, now called X — likes to start meetings with attendees reading notes from a Google Doc for 10 minutes, he tweeted in 2018.
"This practice makes time for everyone to get on same page, allows us to work from many locations, and gets to truth/critical thinking faster," Dorsey wrote.
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