Disclaimer: It’s not a cultural change I actually managed to implement fully anywhere. I’d like to try it out more, but the energy required to change the culture around this is enormous and it never seemed to be the right time in the past to implement such a change. Maybe I’m hiding behind this, maybe it really is that hard and should be prioritised, maybe it’s not that interesting to warrant such a spend of energy and time. I personally think it is worth it and every now and then I run it as an experiment when I’m asked to run a presentation. I’ll tell you why below.

A 6-pagers is the Amazon-famous structured documentation/meeting tool famously used for decisions-based meetings. It is heavily documented.

Of course, there are even consultants that specilize in it. As a preface, I’d like to point out that I don’t believe in golden ideas, the one thing separating us from geatness. The one thing that’ll solve all of our issues.

That being said, I believe that this is a great tool. Careful not to see everything as nails, so don’t apply it blindly to all kind of situations.

I won’t dive to deep into what it is, I’ll focus more on outcome. If you want to learn more about it, this aforementioned consultant has a great article for you.

Where I believe this pattern can shine is for strategic/decision-making presentations, where you’re trying to both

1. Present a reasoning, a strategy
2. Gather feedback and are seeking adherence

Even with a favorable context, it’s hard to put it in motion, mainly for the investment it requires.

Heavy investment

from the author

A 6 pagers requires much more implication than what a presentation would, you need to go in-depth from the get-go — which is a good thing and the main attraction for this IMO. When you get started, you’re in it for a couple of hours. In the aforementioned posts about the process, it’s even said that it can take days or weeks.

At that point, it’s very hard to sell because a presentation can be done in hours, and you’re talking about potentially investing 100x that time, for what? Thing is, as usual, we’re not talking about the same thing. A 6-pagers is not a short-lived presentation that’ll surface a topic. It’s a in-depth analysis of a given situation or problem. If it serves initially the purpose of being the support of a presentation, it’s so, so much more. More on that later.

from the readers

Instead of owning the responsibility alone, as a presenter, of the presentation and its tempo, you’re asking your audience to share the effort, because the meeting will start with a 20-minutes read. It’s less entertaining and requires more effort. Once again, a nice combo quite hard to sell. On the other hand, if the audience makes the effort, it’s not a one-sided conversation lecture-style, it’s a debate that will go as deep as the subject is. Everyone is on the same page and will therefore be more involved.

Tough sell? Yep. But I still believe it’s worth it.

Heavier returns

short-term

The bigger short-term return is the one mentioned a couple of times above: focused meetings. You’re not just scratching the surface anymore, you’re diving head-first into the meat of what needs to be discussed. After the initial 20-minutes read, everyone is on the same page.

Before the meeting, it’s suggested that you send the document to all attendees. The goal is not for them to read it but get aligned on what’s being discussed: it serves as the meeting’s agenda. Everyone knows why they’re here.

During the meeting, it serves as a natural defence mechanism against bike-shedding because the objective being clearly established, even if some discussions can be de-railed, it’ll be easier to bring those people back in.

This structured approach minimises the risk of decisions being swayed by charismatic presentations or surface-level arguments. Instead, the decision-makers engage with a detailed and well-thought-out document, fostering a rational and informed decision-making process The Effective Project Manager

long-term

All this work is not in vain once the meeting is over. You have a 6-pagers, now what? It could serve as documentation, could be referenced in a subsequent ADR, whichever process you adhere to. If done correctly, this document becomes a fantastic time-capsule of:

• what was the context at that point in time
• what was the decision and why

When you start to have a timeline of such milestones, you naturally build resilience in your decision-making processes. Given the documentation you use has this kind of feature (Notion does it really well, Obsidian would as well, for the two I’ve tried), you’ll even be able to cross-reference documents, build upon them and trace how we reached this stage. That being said, I’m not saying it’s a killer-feature to trace back years, but going back to the n-1 stage is incredibly useful.

Async Culture

A word on Async Culture, as I believe this is an amazing tool that enables it even further. The kind of documents can prove useful to work more asynchronously by briging with them an entire context. It encapsulates everything into a single pod and, down the road, creates the link across the organisation that you so need when joining a company for example. Even if you’re not remote-first, I believe in fostering a culture of structured decision making. It does not mean that decision-making can’t be fast. I’d argue, even, that a structured proposition conveys more value and helps with velocity down the road for complex contexts. It kind of prevents precipitation and forces the author and audience to reflect on impact.