Leadership principles are important for Amazon – when they hire, when they do evaluations in the job etc. If you are preparing for an interview with Amazon, you should be expecting a lot of behavioral questions around these principles – sometimes direct, sometimes embedded in a technical question. The questions usually start like ‘tell me about a time when…’ and you should answer them by employing a STAR [Situation, Task, Action, Result] or SBI [situation, behavior, Impact] approach. You should try to measure the impact with Data (eg: dollar value, reduced latency, more visitors, etc.).
The questions may be like:
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision but you didn’t have all the data available.
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision between two different technology choices.
- Tell me a time you failed at work.
- Tell me a time you had to disagree with someone
- Describe a time when you went above and beyond to help a customer
You need to sit down and think about your past experiences, write down 5-6 specific examples and think how that might apply to the leadership principles. Don’t use the same examples multiple times, have few examples handy. Pay attention to the data points – what did you do, what was your impact, not the team’s general impact.
Let’s go through the principles one by one, and I’ll share my thoughts and experiences around each.
1. Customer Obsession
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
This one is really close to me. My first job as a system administrator, where I handled customer queries for a large web-hosting company [offered traditional VMs and hosting at that time], taught me the values of customer empathy and what it means to truly understand customer pain points. We reminded repeatedly to think like the customer, to be in his shoes while we solve problems for him.
Amazon puts customers in the center of its universe. They understand their customers and innovate on their behalf.
It is important to actually know who your customer is – sometimes it is obvious, sometimes it is not. Once you identify the customer, understand their true needs. It may not be the task that they asked you to do, it could be something more. Talk to them and understand what they are trying to achieve. Feel free to share your wisdom, without imposing anything. You need to solve customer needs/ not just specific tasks.
There is a quote from Gandhi, that I love so much – “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.” .
2. Ownership
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job”.
Dare to take ownership! Dare to go beyond your “job”. Now, ownership can mean a lot of things. When you take ownership of an problem that has impacted a customer, you solve the problem first, obviously, but you don’t stop there. You will venture out to find the root cause of that problem, even if it is outside your team or work definition.
When you take ownership of an environment/product that you work on/support, you feel a sense of responsibility and accountability to keep that environment/product in the best possible state for the customer. You will look beyond excuses to ensure that the customer is getting the best possible experience.
3. Invent and Simplify
Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here”. As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Any company that fails to innovate, will inevitably become irrelevant. If you believe that your product/service is in its best possible state, and no further improvement is possible, you are not thinking hard enough. If you think that the first solution that you thought of when you heard the problem is the only/best solution, you are not thinking hard enough! Look for more solutions, improvements, ideas…There is always more! If you don’t find them, someone else will and the customer will love them more!
Simplicity is a key component. KISS! A complex architecture is difficult to improvise (and its implementation is usually hard to scale). If you cant express your idea without complexity, you either do not understand it fully or you haven’t spent enough time/thought on it. The Feynman Technique for learning has extra stress on simplicity. If you can’t explain it in simple words, you haven’t understood it enough.
Simplicity allows for faster, cheaper innovation!
4. Are right, A Lot
Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
Now, what do you do to be ‘right a lot’. There is no method to be ‘right’ all the time, but you can develop the right instincts with practice. And right instincts or that gut feeling is important for leaders. You may not have sufficient data all the time. You may need to rely on your instincts a lot! This will help you to develop strong judgment over time.
I have heard people suggesting to “get forgiveness, instead of permission”. If it’s a trivial, reversible decision, go ahead and take your best call. You can talk to your manager/tech lead later. Make sure they are aware, but maybe, not wait for that green flag.
5. Learn and Be Curious
Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.
I personally love learning new stuff, sometimes stuff that’s not exactly in my domain. I get excited when I hear about a new technology/method.
Hope you have heard about the ‘Day-1 mindset’ in Amazon. Maintain the curiosity that you have on day-1 of your job. Don’t be reluctant to ask questions.
Be open to learn new stuff. If you are fixed in your ways, you might become redundant very soon.
6. Hire and Develop the Best
Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.
“Q: What if we train them and then they leave our company?
R: What if we don’t train them and they stay!”
I have seen companies making their hiring decision based on factors like – whether the candidate will stay with the company for a longer time, whether they will ask for a pay raise/promotion immediately etc. These thoughts often go against hiring the right talent and thereby affecting the quality of the products/services these companies offer.
Amazon is different here. They hire only the best and ensure that they have the environment to bring out their best. If you hire the best people, but you are not willing to listen to them, you are missing the point.
Leaders move forward and improve with every person they hire.
7. Insist on the Highest Standards
Leaders have relentlessly high standards – many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
I believe the single most important job of a leader is to set the vision. A vision could be in terms of growth, quality, reliability or any matrix that they seem relevant for their team. Everything else should be aligned to this vision and to serve this vision.
Amazon leaders are expected to settle for anything less than the highest of standards. They shall never settle and always try to do better. They shall not ship something that doesn’t meet their quality standards. We can see it in all their offerings.
8. Think Big
Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.
Setting low targets and being content with achieving them might make some leaders happy, but this isn’t a sustainable trend. Leaders should always set high bars, stuff that’s borderline impossible! The should dare to think beyond the first idea that’s popping up in their mind.
9. Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.
Spending an unjustifiable time over every minute decision is pointless. It hampers innovation and affects time-to-market. When you cant decide between two options (especially if the decision is reversible), lean on your gut feeling to pick one and act, rather than doing nothing or waiting for someone to decide it for you.
10. Frugality
Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense.
Do more with less – this is what Amazon believes in. You can always do things cheaper – may be a bit slower, may be a lower quality.
11. Earn Trust
Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
Everyone makes mistakes, everyone! A leader is no exception. You are bound to go wrong once in a while, and that’s ok! What’s not ok is trying to cover it up or not taking responsibility. Your team is watching and they expect you to be honest with them. Be self-critical, notice the mistakes you’ve made and be bold to accept that it’s a mistake. If someone else is pointing out a mistake that you have made, thank them. Try to understand where you went wrong. Your team will trust you more.
Also, learn to trust other people. Trust is a two-way street. Assume good intentions and be willing to allow the benefit of doubt – this is particularly important in a virtual work environment where communication is a challenge.
12. Dive Deep
Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.
Build breadth and depth. Know your stuff! Know the obvious details, but don’t stop there – dive deep, where it matters. Do root cause analysis for incidents, look at the data/logs, understand what happened and what could be done to avoid it in the future.
13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
It was never easy for me to argue with someone when they’ve challenged something I did/said. Even though I am fully convinced that I did/said the right thing, I did not push back beyond a point. I have seen people doing that and wondered how! It took me a lot of practice to reach a state where I’m comfortable doing that. It wasn’t easy.
If you are not convinced with something – push back, discuss more, find more data, get more perspectives. At the end arrive at a conclusion that is acceptable for you and commit to it fully! You shouldn’t go back and forth after this point. Base your arguments on data, whenever possible.
14. Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.
Identify the key inputs to your business. Go beyond the obvious. Focus on ‘right’ quality, not the ‘perfect’ quality. Understand that time is a limited commodity and you don’t have all the time in this world to work on your task. Maybe deliver an MVP where it makes sense and continue to develop in the background, to the desired quality.
Focus on getting things ‘done’ in a timely manner!
That’s all! Please share your thoughts as well.
References
- https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles
- https://www.scarletink.com/interviewing-at-amazon-leadership-principles/
