Why doesn't deck culture scale? 

I was talking to a friend who was early at a company that ultimately went public. He told me how the deck and meeting culture that worked at 300 employees started breaking once they reached thousands of employees. They ultimately needed to change their approach.

Some of this may sound familiar to anyone who has worked at a big organization: it’s impossible to have everyone in the room for each conversation. Endless meetings don’t seem to drive consensus or clarity. “Immature oral presentations” mean that important information isn’t communicated or absorbed.

When information isn't written down and shared widely, you end up with diverging perceptions of what is true. Like the Allegory of the Cave, teams see the shadows cast by ambiguous presentations and ad-hoc conversations, and end up believing a projection of reality.

If decks lead to lost context, good writing is near-lossless compression of ideas.