TMBA 669: Working Backwards And The ‘Write First’ Culture

Books: seeking out good ones, talking about them, and implementing some of the things we discover in their pages has long been a theme of this show.

However, as longtime listeners will know, Dan is often disappointed by one category in particular: business books. But one he read recently, ‘Working Backwards’ by former Amazon executives Colin Bryar and Bill Carr, really blew him away. And he was thrilled when one of the authors, Colin Bryar, agreed to drop by the show.

Colin joined Amazon in the late 90s, and worked closely with Jeff Bezos. That time at the company covered a period of incredible innovation - Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Echo and Alexa, and Amazon Web Services

Dan talks to Colin about the principles and practices, many of them counterintutive to traditional business thinking, that drove that incredible succes, and how they can also be applied to the smaller businesses many of us are growing.

They include: ditching the powerpoint in favor of narratives at meetings, why it’s essential for your best people to take on key projects in ‘single-threaded leadership’, and much more.