Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

by Jeff Bezos

If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.

starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making.

customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.

experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight.

You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right.

The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us?

you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering.

Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly.

use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes. This

high standards are domain specific, and that you have to learn high standards separately in every arena of interest.

What do you need to achieve high standards in a particular domain area? First, you have to be able to recognize what good looks like in that domain. Second, you

must have realistic expectations for how hard it should be (how much work it will take) to achieve that result—the scope.

Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high.

None of this would be possible without a culture of curiosity and a willingness to try totally new things on behalf of customers.

If the size of your failures isn’t growing, you’re not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle.

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.”

In most occupations, if you’re in the ninetieth percentile or above, you’re going to contribute.

Cleverness is a gift; kindness is a choice.

Gifts are easy—they’re given, after all. Choices can be hard.

You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to t...

will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

Will you be a cynic, or will you be a builder?

In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

“I would much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid,”

We already had the money we needed, so we just needed to continue to progress.

People always accused us of selling dollar bills for ninety cents,

You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions.

None of the people who report to me should really be focused on the current quarter.

Nobody gets a seven-year head start,

we’re data efficient and power efficient.

you develop a reputation is by doing hard things well over and over and over.

Usually it’s about whether you have energy. Is your work depriving you of energy, or is your work generating energy for you?

“Look, none of us knows what the right decision is here, but I want you to gamble with me. I want you to disagree and commit. We’re going to do it this way. But I really want you to disagree and commit.” And here’s the important part: Sometimes this disagreement happens between the more senior person and a subordinate.

two different kinds of failure. There’s experimental failure—that’s the kind of failure you should be happy with. And there’s operational failure.

I know for a fact that Amazon customers are going to want low prices ten years from now. That’s not going to change. Customers are going to want fast delivery. They’re going to want big selection. So all the energy we’ve put into those things will continue to pay dividends.