A writing culture = a knowledge sharing culture
Why do established companies like Amazon and upcoming startups like Stripe swear by a writing-oriented culture? Because they believe that the use of Powerpoint-like communication leads to poorer decisions and to sub-standard information sharing inside an organization. As teams become more diverse and distributed, knowing how to capture information crisply but accurately can help scale decision making and company culture.
But installing such a culture is not easy. The reason Amazon & Stripe have done this is because:
This is an article of faith for their leaders which has been passed down the ranks
It has visibly resulted in better decisions. They may take longer, but they are less brittle
Written artifacts live longer and can be discovered by newcomers to the organization
There is a lot of support (training & feedback) focused on helping non-writers learn to write
[Also read Slab’s piece on how Stripe built a writing culture]