01 Jan 10 Leadership Lessons from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com
Jeff is one of my favorite business leaders. He like other great tech giants Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started Amazon.com in a garage in Seattle. Now his Net worth is 19 Billion and he is among worlds 30 richest men. Amazon’s stock is up 397% in last five years.
This article from Forbes talks about his style of leadership.
No 7 is my favorite.
1 Base your strategy on things that wont change.
Selling lipstick, tractor seats, e-book readers and data storage are all part of one big plan with three big constants: offer wider selection, lower prices and fast, reliable delivery.
2 Obsess over customers.
Early on Bezos brought an empty chair into meetings so lieutenants would be forced to think about the crucial participant who wasnt in the room: the customer. Now that surrogates role is played by specially trained employees, dubbed Customer Experience Bar Raisers. When they frown, vice presidents tremble.
3 We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Many of Amazons expansions look like moneylosing distractions at first. That sometimes sends the companys stock price skidding and evokes analysts scorn. Bezos shrugs. If the new initiatives make strategic sense to him, a five-to-seven-year financial payoff is okay.
4 There are two kinds of companies: those that try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Lots of retailers talk about holding down costs and passing the savings to the consumer. Few do so as intently as Amazon, where frugality is one of eight official company values. The reward for putting up with cheap office furniture: a $90 billion stock market valuation and 35% revenue growth.
5 Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.
Specs for Amazons big new projects such as its Kindle tablets and e-book readers have been defined by customers desires rather than engineers tastes. If customers dont want something its gone, even if that means breaking apart a once powerful department.
6 Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove well settle for intense.
Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it a culture of metrics. With dozens of these gladiator-style showdowns under way each week, there isnt much time for soothing words or elaborate rituals of social cohesion.
7 If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.
Early on the company hired a lot of editors to write book and music reviewsand then decided to use customers critiques instead. A foray into auctions flopped. Bezos regards such stumbles as a part of life, as long as Amazon can learn something useful.
8 In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
Amazons ad budgets are surprisingly small for a retailer of its size. Bezos believes old-fashioned word-of-mouth has become even more important in the digital ageso he prefers low-key process improvements that are meant to get happy customers buzzing. One favorite: Amazons war on clamshell packaging, so toys and other shipments will be easier to open.
9 Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.
Complaints can be devastating in the age of viral tweets and blogs. Bezos asks thousands of Amazon managers, including himself, to attend two days of call-center training each year. The payoff: humility and empathy for the customer.
10 This is Day 1 for the Internet. We still have so much to learn.
Bezos first made that observation in 1997, in his initial letter to Amazons shareholders. He hasnt budged from it. At Amazons new headquarters two of the largest buildings are Day 1 North and Day 1 South. In interviews Bezos still talks about the Internet as an uncharted world, imperfectly understood and yielding new surprises all the time. G.A.
Thanks +Forbes
This article from Forbes talks about his style of leadership.
No 7 is my favorite.
1 Base your strategy on things that wont change.
Selling lipstick, tractor seats, e-book readers and data storage are all part of one big plan with three big constants: offer wider selection, lower prices and fast, reliable delivery.
2 Obsess over customers.
Early on Bezos brought an empty chair into meetings so lieutenants would be forced to think about the crucial participant who wasnt in the room: the customer. Now that surrogates role is played by specially trained employees, dubbed Customer Experience Bar Raisers. When they frown, vice presidents tremble.
3 We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Many of Amazons expansions look like moneylosing distractions at first. That sometimes sends the companys stock price skidding and evokes analysts scorn. Bezos shrugs. If the new initiatives make strategic sense to him, a five-to-seven-year financial payoff is okay.
4 There are two kinds of companies: those that try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Lots of retailers talk about holding down costs and passing the savings to the consumer. Few do so as intently as Amazon, where frugality is one of eight official company values. The reward for putting up with cheap office furniture: a $90 billion stock market valuation and 35% revenue growth.
5 Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.
Specs for Amazons big new projects such as its Kindle tablets and e-book readers have been defined by customers desires rather than engineers tastes. If customers dont want something its gone, even if that means breaking apart a once powerful department.
6 Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove well settle for intense.
Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it a culture of metrics. With dozens of these gladiator-style showdowns under way each week, there isnt much time for soothing words or elaborate rituals of social cohesion.
7 If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.
Early on the company hired a lot of editors to write book and music reviewsand then decided to use customers critiques instead. A foray into auctions flopped. Bezos regards such stumbles as a part of life, as long as Amazon can learn something useful.
8 In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
Amazons ad budgets are surprisingly small for a retailer of its size. Bezos believes old-fashioned word-of-mouth has become even more important in the digital ageso he prefers low-key process improvements that are meant to get happy customers buzzing. One favorite: Amazons war on clamshell packaging, so toys and other shipments will be easier to open.
9 Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.
Complaints can be devastating in the age of viral tweets and blogs. Bezos asks thousands of Amazon managers, including himself, to attend two days of call-center training each year. The payoff: humility and empathy for the customer.
10 This is Day 1 for the Internet. We still have so much to learn.
Bezos first made that observation in 1997, in his initial letter to Amazons shareholders. He hasnt budged from it. At Amazons new headquarters two of the largest buildings are Day 1 North and Day 1 South. In interviews Bezos still talks about the Internet as an uncharted world, imperfectly understood and yielding new surprises all the time. G.A.
Thanks +Forbes
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