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&lt;p&gt;Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has found a way to master meetings. In his recent annual letter to shareholders, Bezos revealed his strategy for making meetings more productive and, thus, more &lt;a href=&quot;https://fairygodboss.com/articles/how-to-be-successful&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;successful&lt;/a&gt;. And with Bezos&#39; three simple rules, you too can become a master of meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Two-Pizza Teams&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bezos says &lt;a href=&quot;/company-profiles/retail/amazoncom,-inc/company-overview.aspx&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt; tries to create teams small enough so they can be fed by only two pizzas. He calls this &quot;the two-pizza team rule.&quot; Making teams small and nimble, Bezos aims to eliminate the confusion and difficulty of having too many opinions in one room, which can waste time and make a group more divisive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Replace PowerPoint&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bezos has eliminated the presentation tool PowerPoint at Amazon headquarters and replaced it with six-page narratively structed memos. These memos are &quot;not just bullet points,&quot; says Bezos. They have &quot;real sentences and topic sentences and verbs and nouns.&quot; Bezos also says that the memos can take up to a week to craft, and are often &quot;written and rewritten, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can&#39;t be done in a day or two.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Begin Meetings with Silence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bezos starts each meeting by giving team members a half hour to actually read the prepared memos prior to discussing them. Bezos claims that executives, &quot;just like high school kids,&quot; will act as though they&#39;ve read the memos, regardless of whether or not they actually have. &quot;And so, you&#39;ve got to actually carve out the time for the memo to get read, and that&#39;s what the first half hour of the meeting is for. And then everyone has actually read the memo, they&#39;re not just pretending to have read the memo. Everybody sits around the table, and we read silently ... and then we discuss it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Implementing Bezos&#39; three simple rules could not only help increase productivity but also make meetings less dreadful and boring. And, let&#39;s face it, nobody truly enjoys PowerPoint anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A version of this post previously appeared on&#160;&lt;a href=&quot;https://fairygodboss.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Fairygodboss&lt;/a&gt;, which helps women get the inside scoop on pay, corporate culture, benefits, and work flexibility. Founded in 2015, Fairygodboss offers company ratings, job listings, discussion boards, and career advice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Leah Thomas via Fairygodboss

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