The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company

by John Rossman

Jeff understands the same thing that Steve Jobs did: the best design is the simplest. Simple is the key to easy, fast, intuitive, and low cost.

By contrast, we defined three main design principles that were important to us in building our third-party marketplace business:

We had to provide a simple-to-use, highly intuitive tool for sellers, as well as a system that would somehow cull subpar sellers from the marketplace in order to keep customer trust high.

Similar to intuit

Under Clifford Cancelosi’s direction, our team built tools, metrics, dashboards, alarms, and other capabilities to help the sellers meet all of their contractual

commitments to us and to help them live up to our marketplace’s high standards, and, ultimately, the expectations of their customers. We also built various technological and operational tools for monitoring their performance.

Eventually we built a seller’s trust index based on all the touch points between merchant and customer,

reward high-performing sellers—for

Follow these rules to make them effective:

Press release pointers

Once it has been reviewed and approved, teams have a difficult time backing out of the promises it implies. As the project continues, a leader can refer to the press release and use it to remind and hold teams accountable.

Prefulfillment Cancellation Rate.

Late Shipment Rate.

Refund Rate.

everyone behaves like a leader,

every new technological process should improve efficiency and eliminate operational friction.

The move toward free cash flow (FCF) as the primary financial measure at Amazon.com began in earnest when Warren Jenson became CFO in October,

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”

Amazon.com has what I would call a two-strike culture. Leaders are expected to be right—a lot. They are encouraged to take risks,

but they must be calculated risks.

“One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.”1 Every dollar saved is another opportunity to invest in the business.

the company still hands out the Door Desk Award, a title given to select employees who have a “well-built idea” that creates significant savings for the company and enables lower prices for customers.

True collaboration is only possible in an atmosphere of trust.

Fortunately, there are proven ways to earn the trust of others. Here are six I have adapted from the blog of intentional leadership guru Michael Hyatt:

What truly matters isn’t team size—it’s autonomy and accountability.

The dive-deep philosophy is also driven by Jeff’s awareness that a company is very much like an ecosystem.

Every manager is expected to maintain a strong presence throughout a project’s implementation, making continuous deep dives into the data, the processes, and the performance of every team member.

There is a balance between knowledge exploration and exploitation; it takes experience to learn when it’s necessary to dive deep and when it’s better to leave things at an abstract or aggregate level.

This well-known management slogan isn’t an Amazon leadership principle, but it could be. The ability to combine data, facts, and a customer-centered approach, along with an uncanny ability to dive deep into the details—these

The backbone necessary to disagree with some of the smartest business minds in the world and commit to your own vision requires an immense

amount of mental toughness. Psychotherapist Amy Morin compiled a list of traits that characterize mentally strong people. When I read it, I immediately thought of

Print these

The real test of someone’s ability to rise to the top rests more in perseverance—the tenacity they display when confronted by obstacles or conflict.1

Welcome to the future of service, where leading companies

will be differentiated by the level of immediacy, empowerment, personalization, and customization their self-service capabilities offer customers.