Six Lessons From Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is worth over a hundred billion. What can we learn from the business magnate, who continues to innovate and grow his organization, despite the fact he could buy the world?
Continuing my 'six lessons' articles, where I explain what we can learn from successful people across the globe, I've been studying Jeff Bezos this week and wondering "What can we learn from the guy who quit his job and took a huge bet on himself, when he clearly didn't have to?'
Bezos didn't have to quit his well-paid financial consulting job and start Amazon in the mid-nineties.
Image source: CNBC
But he did. And he started from humble beginnings.
What can we learn from his journey over the last thirty years?
Reverse engineer customer's need
A focus on the customer.
"What we have always wanted to do, is raise the standard of what it means to be customer-centric, to such a degree that other organisation, whether they be other companies, hospital, government agencies, they should look at Amazon and say "How can we be as customer-centric as Amazon?" - hopefully competitors as well. If that could be our legacy, to raise the general idea of what it means to be customer-centric, that would be accomplishing a mission that is bigger than ourselves."
That's Bezo's mission statement for Amazon.
To change the way companies focus on the market.
He also states that you can not only listen to your customers, but you must act on their behalf. They are not there to invent the best customer-focused approach... you are.
Reverse engineer their needs.
Look at what they want, what they will want in the future, and deliver.
"We know customers want low-prices. We know they want fast delivery. And we know that will be true twenty years from now. And it's something we can put a lot of effort into."
Day one mentality
Amazon's fundamental rule, since day one, has been the 'day one mentality.'
In his first memo to investors, Bezo's described the need to stay nimble, to be adaptable and agile at all times.
As a company scales, Bezos suggests, it can become too large to maintain this framework of the 'day one mentality.'
I couldn't describe it any better than Bezo's did when describing what 'day two' looks like for a company:
“Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?”
That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic.
“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”
How can you maintain a day one mentality?
"Innovators have the ability to be a domain expert, have their 10,000 hours practiced, but also have a beginner's mind... that's the key to inventors."
Have a vision... but be flexible
Bezos is clearly a visionary.
Leaving his high-paid job, to the dismay of everyone around him, he started Amazon as 'Abracadabra' in the mid-nineties, when most of his 'investors' did not know what the internet was.
He had a vision.
But he talks about being flexible with the details.
You need the vision to keep you engaged, to stay motivated long-term.
You need to be flexible on the details in order to succeed in this ever-changing world and to know that other people may have great ideas that you can implement that compensate your vision over the long-term.
"You need to be stubborn about your vision. Because it can be very easy to give up. But you need to be flexible on the details."
Always experiment
AWS.
Kindle.
Amazon Prime.
All of those things, says Bezos, are just examples of experiments that work. Billions of dollars have been wasted at Amazon, says Bezos.
The failures don't matter.
Companies that don't embrace those failures, they end up in the desperate position - they make 'bet the company bets'... and they lose.
If you continue to make bets on yourself, experiment and continue to innovate, you will die.
"You need to encourage bold bets. And if you're going to take bold bets, they're experiments... and you don't know how they're going to work. But a few big successes, compensate for dozens of things that don't work."
The two-pizza rule
This has undoubtedly been one of the greatest assets to the organisation, as Jeff Bezos suggests all the innovation and ideas that we see from Amazon Prime, Kindle, Audible and the off-shoots of the organisation that we see today, are made from nimble groups of employees.
This deserves a video, where Bezo's gives insight into the experience of meetings and the 'two pizza rule' they employ at Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp5uBTQ8QfA
Is your organisation getting too big? Do you need to give teams more autonomy to work together closely and innovate?
Don't allow your employees to feel small and useless in a team of hundreds or thousands.
Give them the space to breathe and innovate in small teams.
And feed them with pizza.
Be a missionary, not a mercenary
"You can have a job. You can have a career. You can have a calling."
Jeff Bezos compares the two with the idea of 'mercenaries' or 'missionaries', mercenaries want to flip and get a quick buck, missionaries want to change the world through their work.
An interesting perspective, right?
Are you doing something because of the money you can earn, the ease of the job, to satisfy yourself from month-to-month?
Or do you have a calling? Are you in this for life? Are you willing to work hard to make a change in the world?
Which are you, a missionary or a mercenary?
"Don't chase what is the hot topic for the day... Always take the long-term point of view. A lot of people want to live for the now, but I think you should look at the great expanse of time ahead of you, and make sure you work to be satisfied."
Bonus: be proud of your choices
There is nothing to be proud of, besides your choice to become great.
Be grateful for your talent.
But don't over-rely on it.
Be proud of the choice to take your talents to the next level.
To put in the hard work.
To become great.
Have you ever met someone like this?
All the ability and potential in the world. But no hard work, no dedication, no follow-though.
It's much better to be hardworking than it is to fall back on innate talents. And innate talents were given to you, it's not something you can be proud of.
You can be proud of the hard work and dedication.
"You can't skip steps, you have to take your time. There are no shortcuts. But you want to take those steps with passion and ferocity."
Can you take anything from any of the above points?
How could you implement any of these ideas into your business to become more successful?
My favourites are the two-pizza rule and the day one mentality. Remember...
“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”