This has two big benefits... As described

Narrative form is the main agenda item.

This has a number of effects. First, it means the proposer has to think deeply about their proposal. As Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, put it: “The reason writing a good 4 page memo is harder than ‘writing’ a 20 page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what’s more important than what, and how things are related.”

But there is a deeper reason why this technique is powerful: it commits people to deciding what they think before learning the opinions of others. They have the space to bring their diverse ways of thinking, reasoning through the weaknesses and strengths of the proposal, before discussion. This reduces the risk that diverse perspectives will fail to surface. And even when discussion does start, the most senior person speaks last, another technique that protects diversity of thought.

Bullet points are camouflage for missing thought. “Strong demand. Attractive market. Rapid rollout.” Three claims stand in a vertical line, dressed alike, and everybody assumes they know one another. They do not. The slide never says whose demand, compared with what, in which market, or why any of it justifies moving quickly. Twenty people can nod at twenty private arguments and leave believing agreement occurred.

Prose is less hospitable to that nonsense. A sentence needs the connective tissue: demand appears strong because these customers did this; the market remains attractive despite that cost; therefore we propose this sequence. The writer has to choose a cause, acknowledge a conflict and own a conclusion. Weak thinking becomes visible before an expensive team is asked to manufacture confidence around it.

Silent reading matters for the same practical reason. Everybody meets the argument before they meet the hierarchy’s preferred reaction. The junior specialist can write “This demand figure includes renewals” before the director calls it exciting. The operations lead can notice that “rapid” means hiring forty people by June. Once the senior voice has supplied the mood, objections become social acts rather than observations.

Four pages of prose can contain industrial quantities of rubbish. Every claim must nevertheless connect across sentences. A glossy deck can move from a market-size number to a photograph of a smiling customer without stating the logical connection. A memo leaves the connection absent in a specific paragraph. That paragraph can be found, argued over and rewritten before design, production and approval begin.