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The Amazon Way

The Simplicity of the Amazon Way

 
The Amazon Way is a book by a former executive on the 14 leadership principles that drive their success. Above all though, it is clear the only thing that really matters is the customer. At the core of everything Amazon does from systems to the way in which they compensate their employees is this obsession over the customer. The Amazon Way is your guide into how Jeff Bezos built the Everything Store that now dominates.

14 Principles of Leadership Determine it All for Amazon

At the core of everything they do lies 14 leadership principles:
1.      Obsess Over the Customer
2.     Take Ownership of Results
3.     Invent and Simplify
4.     Leaders Are Right-A lot
5.     Learn and Be Curios
6.     Hire and Develop the Best
7.      Insist on the Highest Standards
8.     Think Big
9.     Have a Bias for Action
10.  Practice Frugality
11.   Earn the Trust of Others
12.   Deep Dive
13.   Have a Backbone – Disagree and Commit
14.   Deliver Results
These 14 leadership principles make up The Amazon Way. The following picture is my visual representation of what the Amazon Way represents to me.
The 14 Leadership Principles that make up the Amazon Way exist solely to put the customer first above all else. By obsessing over the customerfirst and working backwards from what they need, Amazon has built a rocket-ship of a company that is light years ahead of the competition.
Outsiders to the organization usually focus their attention on Amazon’s holy trinity of (1) pricing of products (2) selection of products and (3) availability of products. And while this trinity of competencies is formidable, Amazon’s true strength lies in the fact that they have built a frictionless, highly intuitive, and completely self-service platform that drives customer trust and loyalty.
As an owner of the business, each Amazon employee is expected to fully master their domain, and tenaciously manage every potential business-derailing dependency. And since they hire and develop the best, Amazon has created an organization of A-players that take complete ownership of their results.
In closing, the real scary proposition for anyone competing with Amazon is that fact that at its core, is an organization that has a pervasive fear of turning into a Day 2 company. As a result, no one is ever satisfied with what they have accomplished, and no one there seems to willingly rest on their laurels. At Amazon, it’s always Day 1 and everyone there seems to embrace this mentality. Most organizations can’t instill this relentless desire to keep learning, and this is the real challenge when it comes to competing with them head on.


Extras…

Brian Nwokedi’s Book Review on Goodreads
Brian Nwokedi’s Twitter
Direct Link to Book: The Amazon Way
Author’s Website: THE AMAZON WAY
Author’s Twitter:@johnerossman


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Plain Talk: Lessons From A Business Maverick

There are nine principles of management that Ken Iverson holds himself to. These nine areas of focus helped him build a strong and long-term oriented company at Nucor:

1. Establish a higher cause
2. Empower your employees to trust their instincts
3. Destroy the hierarchy
4. Employees are the engine of progress
5. Give your people a stake in the business
6. Stay small
7. Take smart risk
8. Ethics > Politics
9. Cash performance = long-term survival

 









Establish a higher cause within your organization that employees and managers can rally around.

 













Give your employees a consistent set of tools that will empower them to trust their instincts and intuition.

 












Destroy the hierarchy and focus on establishing an egalitarian business culture that can sustain employee motivation.














Dedicate your management career to creating an environment in which employees can stretch for higher levels of performance because they are the true engines of progress.

 










Give your employees a simple stake in the business. The more they produce, the more they should earn.

 













Small businesses allow for things to really get done. That’s the virtue of smallness.


 













Aversion to risk can be deadly in business. Managers who avoid risk and fear failure spend a lot of time cheating themselves, their people, and their companies from good risks and adventures.
 
 












Place ethics over politics… simple enough








What really matters in a business is bottom-line performance and long-term survival. Focus your efforts there.