Amazon Needs To Restore Brand-Culture Fusion

In his last letter to shareholders as Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos made an addition to the company’s mission.?“We are going to be Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work,” he wrote.?Amazon certainly needs to do things differently, but this approach is unlikely to help the company achieve its goals.? Instead, Amazon should cultivate brand-culture fusion – the full integration and alignment of external brand identity and internal organizational culture.

Those of you who have read my book, FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies, may be surprised to hear this.?After all, I open the book explaining how Amazon’s culture was unfairly criticized in a 2015 New York Times article and I praise the company as “the perfect example” of brand-culture fusion.?I still believe my assessment of Amazon was correct at the time (early 2018), but I now see that the company’s culture has fragmented and, in some areas, devolved.?

But this is not yet another article about how wrong Amazon’s culture is.?After all, LinkedIn ranked Amazon at the top of its Top Companies 2021 list and Amazon was ranked number two on Forbes World’s Best Employers 2020 list ?-- at the same time that employees are threatening unionization efforts; customers and current and former employees are speaking out against the company; and regulators and government officials are investigating its treatment of workers.

To properly diagnose and correct the problems at Amazon, we need a more nuanced understanding of what’s going on. ?The problem is not simply that Amazon's culture has gone awry; more importantly, it has become disconnected from the company’s brand.??

The problem is not simply that Amazon’s culture has gone awry; more importantly, it has become disconnected from the company’s brand.        

You see, Amazon’s brand has always been grounded in the company's aspiration to become “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.”?And its leaders have used the organization’s core values, “Leadership Principles”, to guide the company in service of that vision.??So, in the past, the company’s organizational culture was well-integrated and aligned with its desired brand identity.?

But now it seems that some of the attitudes and approaches at Amazon have become perverted so they actually now detract from the brand mission.?The operational challenges the company faced during the COVID-19 pandemic both revealed and exacerbated these issues.?What’s more, Bezos’s remarks seem to suggest that the company’s brand and culture are now viewed as distinct (albeit important) and are to be managed separately.?

To get back on track, Amazon needs to restore brand-culture fusion.?Here’s how:

Align and integrate customer and employee efforts.?

In his shareholder letter, Bezos wrote, “We have always wanted to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company. We won’t change that. It’s what got us here. But I am committing us to an addition. We are going to be Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”?He continued, “If any shareowners are concerned that Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work might dilute our focus on Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, let me set your mind at ease. Think of it this way. If we can operate two businesses as different as consumer ecommerce and AWS, and do both at the highest level, we can certainly do the same with these two vision statements. In fact, I’m confident they will reinforce each other.”

But, adding employer goals to customer goals suggests that employee and customer efforts are distinct, whereas they need to fully integrated and aligned.?The company shouldn’t have two objectives – become the most customer-centric company and the best employer; it should retain its single objective – become the most customer-centric because it is the best employer.??

Amazon should retain its single objective – become the most customer-centric because it is the best employer.        

This difference is not a matter of semantics; it has serious consequences.?Two objectives leave open the question of priority – i.e., which is more important, the customer or the employee??And while Bezos suggests that the two vision statements will reinforce each other, retaining a single vision would no doubt be more effective in focusing, aligning, and unifying the organization.

Furthermore, the way in which Amazon has articulated its employer goals suggests they are supplemental instead of instrumental.?The introduction to its Leadership Principles now states “Our Leadership Principles describe how Amazon does business, how leaders lead, and how we keep the customer at the center of our decisions,” (emphasis mine).?But then it goes on to state the company’s three-pronged mission (“Earth’s most customer-centric company, best employer, and safest place to work.”)?That’s confusing.?And the Leadership Principles that have been added, “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer” and “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility”, and their corresponding descriptions, differ so significantly in tone and style from the other principles that its clear they have simply been bolted on as after-thoughts.

Instead of adding goals and values, Amazon should have maintained its single-focused vision and refreshed its Leadership Principles to ensure they speak to its relationships with customers and employees.?For example, the principle, “Think Big” description could have been re-written as “They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers and engage employees.”

Engage employees with customers.

Amazon needs to engage, or re-engage, its employees with its customers. ?Of course, employee engagement isn’t achieved through perks and parties – nor is it only realized through mechanisms and measurements.?Amazon is not likely to attempt to use the former, but it might think the latter is enough – and it’s not.

Brad Stone’s latest investigation into Amazon, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, reports that Bezos once told David Niekerk, a former Amazon vice president in charge of warehouse human resources operations, that “the perks factored into those high-profile media surveys of workplace desirability—like lavish compensation, unlimited vacation time, and free meals and massages had little to do with the passion and purpose employees brought to their jobs.” ?Bezos was absolutely right on this point -- but the company might default to its own version of misdirected employee engagement efforts.

You see, Amazon tends to be very data- and tactics-oriented.?A recent New York Times article described the company’s data science teams as “'the brain' of Amazon operations — a division of thousands of employees finding tiny efficiencies to optimize for cheaper, faster and more predictable deliveries.”?This quantitative, metrics-driven approach may work for most of the company’s operations, but employee engagement requires the company to adopt a more human-centered and holistic approach.

Right now, Amazon seems to be very numbers and process-driven in its employee efforts. For example, a recent blog post by Senior Vice President of People eXperience and Technology, Beth Galetti, outlines the company’s DEI efforts.?The progress and goals she reports on include “Ensure that 100% of Amazonians take company-wide required inclusion training” and “Build scalable mechanisms that address new instances of non-inclusive terms in our code and document repositories or development tools,” as well as a lot of numeric targets for hiring or advancing BIPOC.?These are admirable efforts but they do not account for the perceived, emotional, and qualitative dimensions of progress that must also be achieved for any employee effort to be effective.

Likewise, in his letter pledging a greater focus on employees, Bezos reports extensively on the company’s efforts to address musculoskeletal disorders among warehouse workers as evidence of its commitment to employee well-being.?Again, these measures are valuable, but they represent only one dimension of truly caring for employees.?Amazon must appeal to the humanity of its people and engage employees more holistically.

An effective way to do this is to connect employees with customers – through storytelling, dashboards, first-hand interactions and observations, collaborative customer problem-solving, and more.?Indeed, employee:customer connections throughout the organization are essential to achieving brand-culture fusion. ?By cultivating customer intimacy and empathy, Amazon has the opportunity to transform its “obsession” with customers from a burdensome mindset that pits employees against customers into a powerful motivator that fuels a passion for them.

By cultivating customer intimacy and empathy, Amazon has the opportunity to transform its “obsession” with customers from a burdensome mindset that pits employees against customers into a powerful motivator that fuels a passion for them.        

Embrace culture change as the path to sustained success.

The letter from Bezos acknowledged the need for change, saying, “…it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for how we create value for employees – a vision for their success”.?But the company doesn’t only need a new vision, it also needs a new path toward that vision.

Here’s what I mean.?Back in 2018, Bezos answered questions from employees in an all-hands meeting about whether or not the company should be more closely regulated.?He responded, “It’s reasonable for large institutions of any kind, whether it be companies or governments, to be scrutinized.”?He went on to explain that the way they should respond to increased scrutiny is to “conduct ourselves in such a way that when we are scrutinized, we will pass with flying colors.” He seemed to suggest that regulation provides the motivation for operating with integrity.?

Now, it seems that the company’s new focus on employees has been prompted by potential negative repercussions from reports of its workforce practices.?It’s no coincidence that the letter from Bezos was issued only weeks after a failed employee unionization attempt in Alabama.

But Amazon must change its culture not out of the fear of consequences from outsiders, but out of the belief in its insiders.?Culture change can’t be externally imposed – it must be internally inspired.?If the company pursues culture change to appease external stakeholders, it is likely to prioritize virtue signaling and external reporting over sustainable, substantive change.

Culture change can’t be externally imposed – it must be internally inspired.        

This why brand-culture fusion must be the aim.?The company’s commitment to its brand mission as Earth’s most customer-centric company has been – and will always be -- unwavering.?Integrating its culture with this identity, instead of pursuing it as a separate tack, ensures the commitment to culture change will be as strong.?When brand and culture are fully aligned and tightly intertwined, culture-building is not a short-term tactic, something to do while waiting for the criticism and threats to subside. ?Rather, with brand-culture fusion, a healthy, vital, effective culture becomes a long-standing strategic priority.?

I always say, brand-culture fusion is not a destination; it’s a journey.?It’s a journey to sustained success. ?Amazon needs to embark -- and continue -- on this journey.

***

Learn more about brand-culture fusion in my book, FUSION: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World’s Greatest Companies (first chapter available for free) or check out my LinkedIn Learning course, Brand Leadership: Integrating Brand and Culture: https://linkedin-learning.pxf.io/qnzAWg.?