Operating leverage is a little like trimming the sails of a sailboat as it picks up speed. Bezos and his lieutenants on the S-team asked the same questions of the executives in their older, more mature business units: How could they reduce costs in their operations while maintaining sales growth? How could they maximize the productivity of every hour they were getting from their employees? Where could automation and algorithms stem the growth in headcount or replace employees altogether? Each year the company would try to get more efficient and improve leverage by even the smallest margin. The
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