How to write a Six Pager: My new 10 Step Guide
10 steps on how to prepare and implement an Amazon Six Pager memo
How do you write and implement an Amazon Six Pager has been amongst the most common questions to anyone curious about this new methodology. Your goal is to prepare the document as efficient but effective as possible. I outlined a 10 step approach that will guide and assist you in your process. If you follow these steps you will benefit from faster decision making, achieve stronger buy-ins, reduce conflict and jumpstart your project or product.
1) Subject
A Six Page Memo is ideal for larger decision- and change making of fundamental scope. Examples I’ve seen include outlining a team- or product roadmap, elaborating on a business or product strategy, conducting customer analysis, implementing policy changes or performing risk assessments.
2) ROI - Return-on-Investment - Should I invest the time to write?
Before getting started in your writing process, I recommend an evaluation to determine if writing a comprehensive document is worth your- and other people’s time. Here’s a simple 5 step checklist that you can use:
Checklist:
Audience: Who is the audience for the Six Pager memo? What type of medium do they prefer? Does the scope involve multiple stakeholder teams that need to contribute and decide on?
Purpose: Are you writing a document that has complex and comprehensive information that the reader needs to understand in order to make the right decision? Or is the content rather for informational purposes that could be covered in a slidedeck?
Longevity: Is there value in keeping the written document for future reference? One of the benefits of a Six Pager is that it can stand by its own and can be read without much context weeks, months or years later.
Time: Do you have sufficient time in preparing a memo?
Complexity: Could the decision be controversial or could there be even tension between stakeholders if background info is not known and understood? A memo is ideal to reduce ambiguity.
3) Collect Feedback
As a next step after going through the previous checklist, I recommend a couple of meetings with critical stakeholders on your subject. These meetings are primarily note taking meetings for you to collect feedback and insights that you can start incorporating into your document. One of your first discussions on the subject should be with your superior.
4) Start writing
Depending on your writing style and expertise on the subject, the writing process can start in various ways. I usually start with a Six Pager template and add content snippets to various sections. Snippets could be rough ideas, verbose sentences or even copied and pasted content from some of your previous documents relevant to the subject. Eventually you will have sections of your Sixpager with a lot of content and even too much, while other parts might be lacking substance. Your initial snippets will turn into flashed out sentences and ultimately into well formed paragraphs. For the sections that lack substance I encourage you to collect specific input. Sometimes tagging a colleague with a comment to this section might suffice, other times it might require a meeting or even a workshop. The guiding categories for your Six Pager are Introduction, Goals, Tenets, State of the Business, Lessons Learned, Strategic Priorities. (See also Six Pager Template)
Content: The state of the business sections provides the reader a detailed snapshot on the current situation. This section can outline how you are structured, how you are executing and how well you are doing against your goals.
5) Early Draft
An early draft of your document should be shared with at least 2-3 additional people to collect further feedback on which to iterate on.
6) Get Feedback
I find leaving comments directly in the document most useful to collect feedback. When I receive lots of comments from one specific person, I even set up a brief meeting to talk about their input in more depth. Addressing a comment means that you update your writing, reflecting the feedback received and then resolve the open comment. As you go through all the comments step by step, all comments will ultimately be resolved.
7) Share narrative with wider audience
When your memo reaches a state of maturity you can share it with a wider audience. From my experience, the audience can be divided into three groups:
Your team: These are colleagues working with you. Some might directly be involved in the subject some others not. Depending on your company culture I find it valuable getting friendly feedback from your immediate colleagues early on.
Impacted Stakeholders: People and teams that are impacted by the subject and its decision. For example their roadmap or projects are changing and/or you ask them to collaborate.
FYI Stakeholders: People that should be aware of the matter but might not have a particular decision power or opinion on the subject.
Before you send out the invite ensure that readers have comment access.
8) Send meeting invite
The meeting invite should be sent at least 3-4 days before the actual review day, for better attendance even a week ahead of time. Your invite needs to include:
A link to the Six Pager memo
Adding participants
I usually indicated in the meeting invite that this is a memo review by stating in the invite “[Doc Review]”.
For example: [Doc Review] Team XYZ - Strategic Plan 2024
9) Monitor, respond to comments
After the invite was sent, you will start receiving first comments on the document. Respond to them in a timely manner. Comments usually fall into three different buckets:
Affirmation: For example: “+1”, “we have also encountered this issue w/ product x”
Questions: “Can you clarify xyz”
Disagreement: “From my experience, this results in xyz”
Tip: When one of your document readers leaves a comment with a question, likely other readers will have the same question. The best way to avoid duplicated questions is updating the actual narrative with a clarification and then resolving the comment simply by stating “updated the text with further clarification XYZ”.
Tip: Some comments might need further discussion and can be tabled for the review session.
10) The review session
The Six pager review session is the actual meeting when your meeting participants together with you read, review and discuss the narrative. This session starts with a 15-20 min reading session, followed by discussions. Depending on the type, quantity and controversy of new comments you can either tune into specific comments for broader discussion or you walk through each comment one by one starting from the beginning.
Going through all the 10 implementation steps is usually a 2-3 week process. For your first Six Pager, I’d even account an additional buffer. The most time lag usually derives from ensuring critical stakeholders are available with you to meet. What might sound like a lot of time, will quickly benefit and pay dividends in the execution phase. You achieved an in depth alignment early on which will increase project speed, success and satisfaction.
You read completely to the end of this long article! Wow, thank you! It looks like you are interested in taking advantage of the Six Pager approach. Feel free to check out my premium offering that jumpstarts your journey!
