Companies are designing purposeful and competitive cultures to address COVID disruption. Amazon, taking advantage of COVID disuption has it’s 14 principles:
- Customer obsession. Employees obsess over customers.
- Ownership. Leaders are shareholders and owners of the company. Workers think long-term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term benefits. ‘That’s not my job’ is not part of the Amazon culture.
- Invent and simplify. Leaders require innovation and invention from their teams and all employees with the goal of simplifying processes.
- Are right a lot of the time. Leaders are right a lot of the time because they seek input from diverse workers and perspectives.
- Learn and be cautious. Leaders focus on continuous learningand continuous Improvement.
- Hire and develop the best leaders. Company raises the performance bar for each new hire, team member, and supervisor.
- Insist on the highest standards. Leaders establish and pursue the highest standards of performance and high-quality products.
- Think big. Leaders communicate a bold vision and mission.
- Bias for action. Speed, thought, and action reward winners. Amazon believes in calculated risk taking and action.
- Frugality. Amazonfocuses on doing more with less. Less promotes resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, innovation, and invention.
- Earn trust. Leaders listen, speak candidly, and treat peoplefairly.
- Deep dive. Leaders operate at all levels of the organization, focusing on details, and establishing tough performance metrics.
- Have backbone, disagree, and commit. Leaders are obligated to challenge decisions and ensure that once a decision is made they commit wholly.
- Deliver results. Leaders focus on performance results including delivering the right productsat the right time with high quality.[i]
Work Lesson Earned: Amazon believes in ‘purposeful Darwinism’- sort of ’Survival of the Fittest’ or ‘Shark Tank – Amazon style’? This is real! They reduce headcount by 10% a year to cull under performers. Does your management ‘walk the talk.’ Then, at what personal cost?
[i] “14 Leadership Principles the Drive Amazon,’ Customer Think website, http://customerthink.com/the-14-leadership-principles-that-drive-amazon/.