Amazon is one of the most innovative companies in history. They’ve revolutionized dozens of industries, including retail, cloud computing, logistics, publishing, smart speakers, and more.
One of Amazon’s secret weapons is the way they communicate within the company. Most organizations rely on PowerPoints and spreadsheets to present new ideas. But at Amazon, PowerPoint slides are banned and replaced by six-page written narratives. The first twenty minutes of every meeting are eerily quiet as everyone reads the narrative from the product lead.
The PR/FAQ is a style of narrative developed specifically for new product development. Two long-time Amazon executives, Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, cover the process in detail in their excellent book, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon.
“Written narratives will convey your ideas in a deeper, stronger, more capable fashion while adding a key additional benefit: they will act as a forcing function that shapes sharper, more complete analysis,” said the authors.
The PR/FAQ is a tool every founder should use when considering a new product or service to deliver. It shifts the conversation from, “What’s good for the company?” to “What’s good for our customers?” It’s fundamentally an exercise in empathy.
The PR/FAQ is split into two sections:
Press Release:
A press release is something typically released at the end of product development and right before launch. But Amazon flips the conventional model on its head.
Product owners write the press release at the very beginning of the development process. This is how they introduce the project to the rest of the team.
It forces the product owner to think through the most important question: “Why should the customer care?”