Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

by Colin Bryar

“Work hard, have fun, make history.”

“You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it—not creating

Amazon’s Leadership Principles6

begins with everyone reading all the interview feedback.

“The best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody’s part-time job.”

Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.

“When you encounter a problem, the probability you’re actually looking at the actual root cause of the problem in the initial 24 hours is pretty close to zero, because it turns out that behind every issue there’s a very interesting story.”

The leader should have reserved judgment instead of attacking, then begun to understand what actually happened. People are only trying to do the right thing; they’re not trying to sabotage the business, and they don’t hate customers. They feel tremendous responsibility for what they build.

evidence that a punishing environment can leave indelible marks. The second is that this team learned from these early missteps, made adjustments, and eventually built a better process.

customer obsession, encourage thinking long term, value innovation, and stay connected to the details.

Defining the basics of the culture, articulating leadership principles, regularizing essential practices—Bar Raiser hiring, teams with single-threaded leaders, written narratives, Working Backwards, focusing on input metrics—

Here are a few suggestions: Ban PowerPoint as a tool to discuss complicated topics and start using six-page narratives and PR/FAQ documents in your leadership team meetings. This can be implemented almost instantly. There will be pushback and grumbling, but we’ve found it produces results swiftly, and eventually your leaders will say to themselves, “We can never go back to the old way.” Establish the Bar Raiser hiring process. This approach is no longer unique to Amazon and we have seen it work in many companies. It too can be established relatively quickly, once a training process is in place. It also delivers short-term results by improving the quality of the process and enabling learning for everyone involved in the loop. It should reduce the number of poor hires and, in the long run, improve the overall quality of thinking and performance in each team, and in the company as a whole. Focus on controllable input metrics. Amazon is relentless about identifying metrics that can be controlled and have the greatest impact on outputs such as free cash flow per share. This is not an easy process, because it requires patient trial and error as you seek the input metrics that best

allow you to assume control of your desired results. Note too that this is not an argument for abandoning output metrics. Amazon does care a great deal about free cash flow per share. Move to an organizational structure that accommodates autonomous teams with single-threaded leaders. As noted in chapter three, this takes time and requires careful management, as it invariably raises questions about authority and power, jurisdiction, and “turf.” You’ll also have to be on the lookout for dependencies and roadblocks that are preventing autonomy in your organization. But it can be done. Start with your product development group, and then see what other areas, if any, work better in teams. Revise the compensation structure for leaders so that it encourages long-term commitment and long-term decision-making. Avoid making too many exceptions for “special cases.” Make sure that leaders in all areas of the company are compensated with the same basic approach. Articulate the core elements of the company’s culture, as Amazon did with long-term thinking, customer obsession, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Then build these into every process and discussion. Do not assume that simply stating them and displaying them will have any significant effect. Define a set of leadership principles. These must be developed with participation from many contributors. Don’t assign the task to a single group or outsource it to a consultant or service provider. Do it yourselves. Hash out...

upon the flywheel. Evaluate everything you do in light of its positive or negative effect on one or ...