Why We Write a Memo Before Big Decisions — Transcript

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1. 0:00Every big business decision that we have
2. 0:02made at acquisition.com over the last
3. 0:04how many years, we use something called
4. 0:06a memo system.
5. 0:07And a memo system is crystallized,
6. 0:10written down documentation of a thinking
7. 0:12process of how we are thinking through a
8. 0:15higher-stakes decision.
9. 0:16And so, everything that you have seen
10. 0:19from, you know, ACQ,
11. 0:21uh the the the content that we the
12. 0:23content cadence that we that we're on,
13. 0:25um the book launch,
14. 0:26um Scale Advisory,
15. 0:29uh every subcomponent of like, you know,
16. 0:31the playbooks, all of these things, even
17. 0:33feature sets that we're adding to
18. 0:35ACQ.ai, all of these things first exist
19. 0:38as memos.
20. 0:39All right? And so, they're memorandums.
21. 0:41And we do that to memorialize the
22. 0:44thinking process so that they can be
23. 0:45disseminated throughout the
24. 0:46organization. And so, as you're like,
25. 0:49I'm getting a little bit ahead for some
26. 0:50of you guys, but as your organization
27. 0:52grows, one of the most difficult things
28. 0:54to translate throughout the org is
29. 0:56shared thinking.
30. 0:58Because as you get two, three, four
31. 1:01levels of leadership away from
32. 1:02ownership, that's when people kind of
33. 1:04like go rogue. They start their own mini
34. 1:06cultures within your business, mini
35. 1:08contexts. And so, if you've ever had
36. 1:10rolled out any new change in a business,
37. 1:12this will probably be for people who
38. 1:12have at least one layer of management,
39. 1:14and it wasn't rolled out by your
40. 1:15managers or leaders well, it's typically
41. 1:17because they did not provide adequate
42. 1:19context. And so, how do we do that? How
43. 1:21do we operationalize context of
44. 1:22decision-making within a business? So,
45. 1:24at acquisition.com, we use memos. And
46. 1:27so, everything is memos. And that's
47. 1:29because it forces everyone in the
48. 1:31business to slow down and actually think
49. 1:33about what decisions they want to make
50. 1:35and the costs and benefits. And you have
51. 1:37to be willing to defend your memos to
52. 1:39other intelligent people.
53. 1:40And because of that, you have to start
54. 1:42anticipating what you think your
55. 1:43naysayers and the people who might be
56. 1:45against your ideas might say, and then
57. 1:47start pre-solving those problems ahead
58. 1:49of time in the memo. And so, when you do
59. 1:52this enough times, it clarifies your
60. 1:53thinking and you get very good at
61. 1:54thinking. Now, what I have done and the
62. 1:57what I do is that I write my memo and I
63. 1:59also have a memo prompt
64. 2:02that I take my memo, I pair it with my
65. 2:04memo prompt, and a data source, and I my
66. 2:07best memo of all time, and I say, "Hey,
67. 2:10make this look like that using these
68. 2:13instructions." And then it outputs a
69. 2:15cleaner version of my memo and any other
70. 2:18questions that I did not think about
71. 2:19that I can make my memo more complete.
72. 2:22And so, in my memo prompt, it'll have,
73. 2:25"Hey, make this look like that and bring
74. 2:27up any potential blind spots that I have
75. 2:29that I haven't uh considered." Now, it
76. 2:32might bring me 20 questions that I
77. 2:34didn't answer. 10 of them might be
78. 2:36irrelevant.
79. 2:37Five of them might be obvious I'm not
80. 2:39going to include, but five might be good
81. 2:41and then I weave those back in and then
82. 2:43that makes a very robust memo. My goal
83. 2:46as founder is that when I want to have a
84. 2:48new initiative,
85. 2:49I I I want to have I want to have
86. 2:51one-hit KO memos, which is like I have
87. 2:54thought through every
88. 2:56angle you could possibly imagine for
89. 2:58this not to work and I'm telling you
90. 3:00this is why this will work. And so,
91. 3:02think about it as a real-world sales
92. 3:03letter except with far more details of
93. 3:06how we're going to execute this, how
94. 3:07we're going to implement it
95. 3:08to your team to sell them on your ideas.
96. 3:11And then this becomes an artifact that
97. 3:13you can literally track throughout the
98. 3:14history of our company like anybody
99. 3:16who's new who comes in, guess what they
100. 3:18can do first? They read the memos cuz
101. 3:20they know all the decisions that we've
102. 3:22made, why we're making them, the context
103. 3:24for those decisions, and they can see
104. 3:25the direction of the company and how
105. 3:27good we are at executing against those
106. 3:28things. And what you'll find is the more
107. 3:30you adopt this, the first thing that
108. 3:32will happen is that you'll realize that
109. 3:33a lot of the people that work for you
110. 3:34aren't that smart.
111. 3:36And so,
112. 3:38if you're like, "Man, if I try to get my
113. 3:39team to write memos," it's like, "Right,
114. 3:40that's probably cuz your team's not that
115. 3:42good." And that's probably why the
116. 3:43business isn't big.
117. 3:45Right? If your team is not capable of
118. 3:47articulating even why they think they
119. 3:49should make a decision, do you want
120. 3:50those people making decisions?
121. 3:53Right?
122. 3:55Real.
123. 3:56And so, um, the memo system is one of
124. 3:59the is one of the core heartbeats of how
125. 4:00ACQ works and how we scale
126. 4:02decision-making across the org and how
127. 4:04we get buy-in across all levels of the
128. 4:06company so that everyone knows in
129. 4:08intricate detail what the plan is for
130. 4:11every single thing that rolls out
131. 4:12because we have written documentation of
132. 4:14why this is doing this way, what the
133. 4:16considerations were, what risks we
134. 4:17believe, why we're willing to take those
135. 4:19risks, and how we're willing to mitigate
136. 4:20them.
137. 4:28Word?
138. 4:31And to be fair, we're not the ones who
139. 4:32invented this. Bezos is one of the first
140. 4:34ones who like at least that that we
141. 4:36found out the whole memo system from.
142. 4:38Um, I'd say the only difference that we
143. 4:40have versus Amazon
144. 4:42um is that Amazon begins their meetings
145. 4:44by everyone reading the memo. Um, we we
146. 4:47kind of uh send memos out ahead of time,
147. 4:50people put all their comments in, and
148. 4:51then we get to the meeting, we pull up
149. 4:53the memo, and then we basically handle
150. 4:55the comments.
151. 4:56So, that's how we do it. Um, but I don't
152. 4:59think there's anything wrong with doing
153. 5:00it their way. I think Bezos said that
154. 5:01like when we told people to read the
155. 5:02memos ahead of time, many people didn't,
156. 5:04and then that would be a waste. Um, we
157. 5:06don't have enough big memos that people
158. 5:09aren't reading them ahead of time. So,
159. 5:11people people do read them, they put
160. 5:12comments beforehand. So, that's that's
161. 5:14how we do it. So, didn't want to melt
162. 5:15minds, but I have a memo like and my
163. 5:18memos are assets, right? They are data
164. 5:20sources that I can create future memos
165. 5:21from. I can't give you every single SOP,
166. 5:22that would be ridiculous, it would be
167. 5:23like this long, but these are the top
168. 5:25five SOPs that we have used to scale
169. 5:27that Leila [music] actually put together
170. 5:29for us cuz she's really been the one who
171. 5:30operates the business. And so, yeah, I
172. 5:32don't know what's inside of it, but um
173. 5:34it's good. So, be sure to check it out
174. 5:35cuz Leila made it and she makes good
175. 5:37stuff. [music] It's free.