A critique of the Amazon Leadership Principles

In this episode I will review the list of leadership principles published by Amazon.

Topics:

- On the Amazon recruitment website, they have published their core leadership principles.
- While most of them are good, some of the leadership principles on the Amazon website are very questionable in my opinion. You can find this here: https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles
- Let's look at a few of those questionable ones together just for fun, starting with the following:
- "Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers."
- Honestly as an Amazon customer myself, I believe this is more of a virtue-signal than an actual mantra they live by. I feel that customer service on the retail side has declined, based on my own experiences of missing or damaged parcels.
- Here is the unpopular truth about customers however: when you are creating new markets like Amazon has done in the past, you are also creating new customers.
- And these customers don't even know what they want yet. Why? Because you are creating new demand.
- Before Amazon came along, nobody wanted to buy books and DVDs online because nobody was doing it before: Amazon created (in large part) online retail in the 1990s.
- I am old enough that I lived through it!
- In fact, I remember in the early days of the Internet most people were afraid to share their credit card numbers online!
- In this instance, if Amazon "started with the customer", they would have never built a service that had no existing demand.
- In later years they went on to do the same thing for cloud computing, when everyone at the time was co-locating their own server hardware in rented rack spaces.
- The main takeaway for me: customers are often dumb, and have no idea what they need. Lead them, don't follow them.
- No let’s look at another principle, according to them good leaders are:
- "Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs."
- Oh boy, this really does read as confirmation bias waiting to happen.
- Very few people you meet in life "work to disconfirm their beliefs", instead they work to confirm their bias.
- Secondly, if you set your team up as "I am the leader, therefore I am right until you prove me wrong", your team may waste a lot of time and energy proving you wrong.
- Good judgement comes from making a LOT of mistakes, until you learn what works well and what doesn't. Basically, it requires experience.
- Being right should compound with the leader, based on inputs from the team and the working environment, but it should not come FROM the leader exclusively: that’s just ego.
- "Rightness" does not exist in a void.
- And now onto my least favourite principle:
- "Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers."
- Now I am cringing hard!
- Giving bold directions can lead to bold failures: being bold isn't inherently good.
- Sometimes, caution makes sense when the path forward is unclear, as smaller failures are less costly.
- Secondly, there is a lot of meaningless waffle in here, like "think big" and "think differently", in comparison to what? Aren't these terms relative?
- Lastly, we have the principle of:
- "Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense."
- So basically, this is a Spartan mindset: your suffering will make you stronger!
- In general, I agree that constraints are good and no budget should be limitless, but there is a problem: what if you go too far with this, and actually starve innovation due to underinvestment?
- I'm not saying this is true for Amazon, who are clearly a very innovative company, but I have doubts that they are practising what they are preaching here.
- In general though, it's a very good list of leadership principles, as it contains some real gems for any new leader to review and consider.
- But as Amazon state themselves in their list, leaders should be calling out stuff they disagree with: "Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious."
- Therefore, I am using this excellent principle to criticise some of the other principles in their list.
- I do hope they live by that one!

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