8 - “What” decisions versus “Who” decisions - Bill Carr on the Amazonian Way

Bill speaks about some of the elements of Jeff Bezos’s leadership that make him distinctive. While some of those elements are in-born and hard to replicate, he teases out some of the elements that we could learn and imbibe as we go through our journeys.

Bill speaks about the story behind the evolution of the 14 leadership principles at Amazon. He speaks about how Amazon reinforces these 14 principles in the way it hires, conducts performance appraisals and the way it brings it to life when it comes to making hard decisions.

Bill speaks about how Amazon uses the Bar-Raiser process to ensure that it recruits great leaders into the company. He specifically speaks about the role of a Bar Raiser and how he/she is empowered to uphold quality standards without being pressurized by the “here and now” demands of the business. He also speaks about how Amazon trades off the Type 1 and Type 2 errors that often occur while recruiting.

Bill decodes the Amazon Leadership Principle – Are right a lot. He speaks about how Amazon thinks about good judgment and the nuances between 1 way door decisions and 2-way door decisions. He speaks about how Amazon creates a culture of openness to multiple perspectives in the spirit of enabling good quality decisions.

Bill speaks about how decisions are made and how well people are listened to which ensures that there is minimal dissonance post the decision leading to “passive aggression”. He links it back to the writing culture in Amazon to ensure that complex ideas are presented with all the nuances for people to appreciate the various trade-offs.

Bill speaks about how Amazon uses written word as a source of differentiation and a competitive advantage. He speaks about how meetings are run in Amazon and the impact on productivity and effectiveness when people submit written documents. He also speaks about the PR/FAQ process which, in a way, is the backbone of the Working Backwards culture at Amazon.

Bill speaks about how Amazon drives a culture of risk taking by being open towards failures. He also goes onto speak about the distinction between good failure and bad failure and how companies should ensure they don’t mistake one for the other

Bill speaks about how Jeff Bezos made the distinction between “what” decisions and “who” decisions. He takes us back to 2004 when the whole media world was transitioning from physical to digital. Bill lays out how Jeff thought about the decision and first focused on deploying the most prized resources (the who) in the company to go after the opportunity, who put in place a set of processes (the how) to explore new opportunities that eventually led to them going after the opportunity (the what).