One essential skill for executives is the ability to process complex information at speed. This skill can be developed. Amazon executives become exceptional at interpreting large, complex datasets and narratives through two core mechanisms:
a) The Weekly Business Review (WBR), which covers 200–300 metrics in a single meeting
b) The six-page narratives that begin many meetings, which are packed with data, observations, problems, opportunities, and multi-causal arguments.
When I introduce these practices to other companies, I consistently see two reactions.
First, many executives feel overwhelmed by the idea of a WBR with 200–300 metrics. The prevailing wisdom is: “Just pick a handful of metrics that matter most.”
Second, they find it mentally taxing to spend the bulk of their day reading, analyzing, and discussing numerous dense narratives (my typical day included five or more 6-page narrative document meetings).
When this happens, I pose a choice to the CEO:
Would they rather:
1) Develop an incredibly deep, regularly updated understanding of their customer experience and business across all dimensions?
2) Or would they prefer a narrower, shallower view and rely on each team’s good intentions to have an in-depth understanding of the customer experience and operations?
Choosing the second path doesn’t just limit your understanding as CEO. It also fragments understanding across your leadership team. It causes each executive to hold a compartmentalized view of the business and the customer experience. The first path enables not just the CEO but every senior leader to have a shared, in-depth understanding of the business that is powered by a vast array of metrics.
At Amazon, the top ~50 leaders of the retail business met weekly for an in-depth Weekly Business Review that covered 200–300 metrics. We didn’t discuss every metric. We examined only those with notable variances or exceptions. The report used a 6-12 format, plotting the current 12 months against the trailing 12 months, along with the current and trailing 6 weeks. This line chart facilitated the brain’s ability to quickly identify meaningful variations, focus attention where it mattered, and ignore metrics that were within normal limits.
The same can be said about the process for conducting each meeting with a written narrative – the detail deeply informs not just the CEO, but every leader in the meeting. Yes, it is mentally taxing to review many dense, data-rich narratives per day, but if you exercise this muscle daily, you learn to process the information.
The result of using metric-rich WBRs and dense narratives is a system that keeps not only the CEO but also top leaders deeply informed about the business and customer experience across a comprehensive range—from marketing and website experience to operations, supply chain, retail sourcing, CS, etc.
(cont. in comments)
