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Haphazard or deliberate leadership
I am fascinated by Amazon. ”The four” sets out how powerful Amazon is becoming. Whatever your opinion of Amazon, there are lessons to be learned from a management perspective. The key question; haphazard or deliberate leadership?
Working backwards
Hence “Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon”.
Haphazard leadership
To quote the book: Organisational culture comes about in one of two ways. It’s either decisively defined, nurtured and protected from the inception of the organisation; or — more typically — it comes about haphazardly as a collective sum of the beliefs, experiences and behaviours of those on the team. Either way, you will have a culture. For better or worse, Amazon is very deliberate about culture. They do that by hiring the best (they want missionaries, not mercenaries), small, flexible and autonomous teams (applying the two-pizza rule), one thread leadership (single focus), written narrative (no PowerPoints allowed), reward systems that focus on the long term (equity), embracing innovation, entrepreneurship, failure and metrics.
Covering core themes
- customer obsession instead of competitor obsession
- willingness to think long term, with a longer investment horizon than most of our peers
