Colin Bryar on the Practice of Amazon's Weekly Business Review
Nov 16, 2023
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Former Amazon senior leadership team member, Colin Bryar, discusses his experience working at Amazon and being Jeff Bezos's shadow. They delve into the practice of Amazon's Weekly Business Review, the challenges of measuring controllable input metrics, and the importance of customer understanding and innovation. They also discuss the qualities of a good operator, the concept of operating cadence, and career planning.
The Amazon Weekly Business Review (WBR) is a secret operating weapon that drives operational excellence by analyzing customer experience and business performance.
The WBR is a comprehensive process that can be applied to various areas of a business, including inventory management, HR, and recruiting.
Being a good operator requires a deep understanding of the business, data-driven decision-making, effective time management, and a continuous focus on customer experience.
Deep dives
Operating well as a business leader
Colin Breyer, former Amazon executive, discusses the key principles and practices for operating a successful business.
Colin's journey to Amazon
Colin shares his background in engineering and operations research, his early experiences with computers, and how he ended up joining Amazon.
The evolution of the Weekly Business Review (WBR)
Colin explains how the WBR at Amazon originated from the need to balance supply and demand during the holiday season, and how it evolved into a comprehensive data-driven process for analyzing customer experience and business performance.
Controllable input metrics and the importance of customer focus
Colin highlights the significance of measuring both customer experience and business outcomes, and emphasizes the importance of identifying and tracking controllable input metrics that directly impact customer satisfaction and business success.
Implementing the Weekly Business Review (WBR)
The podcast episode discusses the Weekly Business Review (WBR) as a valuable tool for businesses to drive operational excellence. The speaker emphasizes the importance of random sampling in inventory management using statistically relevant samples to identify inventory discrepancies and root causes. The WBR is applicable not only to customer-facing processes but also to internal functions like HR and recruiting, allowing organizations to identify and address workflow inefficiencies and candidate sourcing issues. The process of implementing the WBR involves ensuring leadership buy-in, defining input metrics, establishing consistent data reporting, and conducting regular WBR meetings. The speaker also highlights the need for a deep qualitative understanding of customers, emphasizing the importance of developing hypotheses beforehand and using data to validate or disprove them.
Characteristics of a Good Operator and the Importance of Operational Excellence
The podcast explores the qualities of a good operator, noting their deep understanding of their business area and the ability to focus on details. The speaker highlights the teachable nature of being a good operator, mentioning the importance of data-driven decision-making, time management, and managing input metrics instead of just focusing on output metrics. The concept of operating cadence is also introduced, referring to the set of rituals and processes that enable effective business management. Additionally, the podcast emphasizes the significance of internal motivation, pride in operational excellence, and the continuous measurement and analysis of customer experience.
Colin Bryar joined Amazon really early in its life and spent twelve years as part of Amazon's senior leadership team.
For two of those years he was 'Technical Assistant' to Jeff Bezos, as known as 'Jeff's shadow', during which he spent each day attending meetings, traveling with, and discussing business and life with Jeff. After Amazon, he and his family relocated to Singapore for two years where Colin served as Chief Operating Officer of e-commerce company RedMart, which was subsequently sold to Alibaba. Along with his ex-Amazonian colleague Bill Carr, Colin is co-author of Working Backwards, a book on an insider's look at how Amazon works. Bill and Colin are co-founders of Working Backwards LLC, where they coach executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon.
This podcast is a really deep dive into the practice of the Amazon Weekly Business Review, which remains to this day one of Amazon's secret operating weapons, and a big part of what makes for a great operator.
Working Backwards, book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/53138083 Working Backwards https://www.workingbackwards.com/ Commoncog summary of Working Backwards: https://commoncog.com/working-backwards/
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:24) - Colin's Background
(04:00) - Joining Amazon
(06:31) - The Data Situation in Early Amazon
(08:22) - Being Jeff Bezos's Shadow
(10:37) - Living in Singapore
(12:07) - Writing Working Backwards with Bill Carr
(15:17) - The History of the Weekly Business Review
(17:50) - How the Amazon WBR is different
(20:45) - Customer Experience Metrics vs Business Metrics
(22:33) - Controllable Input Metrics vs Output Metrics
(30:39) - What a Typical WBR Looks Like
(34:22) - Why Glancing at Metrics is Important
(35:43) - What kinds of discussions should you have in the WBR?
(37:30) - Understanding Variation
(41:28) - Stories About Figuring Out Controllable Input Metrics
(48:19) - Applying the WBR to internal business functions
(49:49) - Introducing the WBR to a New Company
(55:55) - Applying the WBR to New Products
(01:01:04) - Not Using Surveys as Primary Research on Customers
(01:04:17) - What Makes for a Good Operator?
(01:05:23) - Operating Cadence
(01:07:05) - What Colin Wishes All Operators Knew Tomorrow
(01:07:57) - What You'd Wish You'd Known
(01:09:50) - Would Many of These Lessons Apply to Early Stage Startups?
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