Think Like Amazon

Elizabeth spent 15 years at Amazon where she grew multiple billion-dollar businesses and held several roles including Director of Lawn & Garden and Director and General Manager of Business & Technology for Selling Partner Success prior to joining Kraft Heinz as VP of Global eCommerce.  In our conversation, Elizabeth shares the people-leadership practices that she built throughout her Amazon career and continues to apply in her role at Kraft Heinz. We also dig into how to balance flexibility with having relentlessly high standards and how to develop operational excellence when leading nascent businesses. You’ll be sure to enjoy Elizabeth’s candid advice, stories, and mechanisms throughout this episode.   Mentioned in the podcast:  Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-bennett-5b82361/

John Rossman joined Amazon in 2002 as Director of Merchant Integration where he led the launch of Amazon’s 3P marketplace business. John also went on to lead the e-commerce solutions business for enterprise clients such as Target.com and Toys R Us before leaving in late 2005 to advise many companies on innovation and digital strategy and write three books on applying Amazon’s principles and mechanisms in business.  In our conversation, we discuss the foundational considerations and steps to launching Amazon’s seller marketplace, including tradeoffs and key internal decisions to think long term about building a platform business. We examine the Invent & Simplify leadership principle and several practices leaders can take to better operate their businesses while continually innovating. Finally, we discuss Amazon’s newly-released leadership principles and what the next 25 years may look like for Amazon. Learn more about John:  On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-rossman/At Rossman Partners: https://the-amazon-way.com/rossman-partnersPublished Books: https://the-amazon-way.com/books/ More from the episode:  1:50 – What it was like joining Amazon in 20027:20 – Amazon’s early vision for its Marketplace business and focus on customer trust11:45 – The challenges to launching an integrated and seamless online shopping experience17:45 – Forcing functions to help leaders ensure simplicity and clarity21:50 – Early efforts to simplify selling on Amazon for brands and resellers26:10 – Clarifying and simplifying as hallmark attributes of Amazon28:50 – Learning from Amazon’s focus on measurement to create action and accountability31:26 – Thoughts on Amazon’s two new leadership principles

Godwin spent 5 years at Amazon as a senior leader of product, retail and program teams. In each role, he led new innovations or launches for Amazon customers. Post Amazon, Godwin spent two years leading a business turnaround and is currently the co-founder at a real-estate tech startup where he continues to leverage the innovation processes he practiced at Amazon.  In this episode, you’ll hear how Godwin uses customer focus and document writing to develop and refine new solutions for customers. Specifically, Godwin shares how he uses Press Release and Frequently Asked Question (PRFAQ) doc writing to clarify customer benefits and business requirements, which Amazon leadership principles he’s leveraged in businesses outside of Amazon, and why he continues to use written narratives in his startup work today.   Mentioned in the podcast:  Godwin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/godwinpavamani/Vive: https://gotvive.com/

Dave spent over 10 years at Amazon where he was a Technology Director prior to being asked to build the technology foundations for Bezos Academy.  In Part 2 of our conversation, Dave shares his experience as a bar raiser and member of Amazon’s Bar Raiser Core team, a committee tasked with directing how Amazon’s bar raiser hiring program would operate and grow. In this segment of the conversation, Dave shares how Amazon thinks about managing both the quality and quantity of bar raisers to meet the organizations growing needs and demands. Any business curious about designing, managing, or optimizing a hiring control program will find great insights from Dave’s thoughts and experience in this episode.   Follow Dave:  On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scarletink/Leadership blog: https://www.scarletink.com/

Dave spent over 10 years at Amazon where he was a Technology Director prior to being asked to build the technology foundations for Bezos Academy.  In Part 1 of our conversation, Dave shares his experience and advice on how to develop leaders and accelerate their learning and career development. During his years at Amazon, Dave coached, mentored, and promoted many Amazon leaders and was also promoted three times himself. Throughout the conversation, Dave shares insights, lessons learned, and best practices for developing the best talent. If you are working to develop your leadership scope or building your people management skills, you’ll be sure to pick up some actionable steps from this episode. Follow Dave:  On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scarletink/Leadership blog: https://www.scarletink.com/

Colin spent 12 years on Amazon’s senior leadership team, including two years as “Chief of Staff” to Jeff Bezos. During this time, Colin had a front-row seat to the development and implementation of Amazon’s core operating principles and mechanisms, such as written memos, single-threaded teams, and the bar raiser program.  In early 2021, Colin, along with fellow ex-Amazon VP Bill Carr, released the book “Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon.” In this episode, host Tyler Wallis sits down with Colin to discuss questions submitted by podcast listeners. The ensuing conversation dives deep into Amazon’s innovation machine, what it was like shadowing Jeff Bezos, and how companies of various sizes and industries are applying Amazon’s operating principles to realize growth in their own organizations.   Check out Colin’s book:  https://www.workingbackwards.com/ Follow Colin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinbryar/

John Olsen spent 7 years at Amazon as VP of Kindle Human Resources and VP of HR for Worldwide Operations. During these years of rapid global expansion for Amazon, John had to rely on proven principles and models to help ensure teams were making strong decisions, avoiding bias, and committed behind key goals. Since leaving Amazon in 2019, John has helped companies and boards learn to have backbone, disagree and commit in his roles as an advisor and investor.  During our conversation, John shares how the Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit principle integrates with the other Amazon leadership principles, mental models for how to determine when a decision needs to be debated further, how to foster healthy disagreement with remote teams, and much more.   Follow John:  On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-olsen-808650/  More from the episode:  3:40 – Why you can’t just disagree and commit without having backbone6:25 – How to recognize when it’s time to move a team forward with a decision7:49 – 6-page memos as a tool to facilitate having backbone9:40 – How to create a culture where it’s safe to respectfully disagree with other leaders14:00 – Decision or document bar raisers23:00 – How to encourage disagreement and speaking up with remote teams26:30 – When to commit and when to continue to disagree31:00 – Applying the leadership principle in advisor and governance work

Ethan Evans spent over 15 years at Amazon where he held multiple VP roles across Appstore, Twitch, and Amazon Gaming. During this time, Ethan led teams of over 800 people, launched Prime Video and Twitch Prime programs, and has been issued more than 60 patents. During Ethan’s time at Amazon, he helped craft part of the Ownership leadership principle and witnessed the S-team and countless teams demonstrate Ownership and long-term thinking.  In our interview, Ethan shares how leaders should act in behalf of the entire company and think long term. From examples of having to push back on a request from Jeff Bezos to working with Andy Jassy and other leaders at milestone moments in Amazon history, Ethan draws from his experience to illustrate how Ownership can be demonstrated and taught within an organization.   Follow Ethan:  On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/Website: https://ethanevans.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EthanEvansVPPodcast: https://theezcoach.libsyn.com/  More from the episode:  4:30 – The story behind drafting the Ownership principle at Amazon13:02 – How a billion-dollar Merch by Amazon business came to be from leaders seeing beyond their job descriptions17:22 – The business model that Amazon has built to encourage ownership thinking21:25 – The time Andy Jassy (incoming Amazon CEO) exemplified ownership by looking out for peer organizations in a time of crisis23:16 – Example of 50 VPs and Directors lending their top talent to help Appstore deliver a key deliverable26:54 – How Ownership can be taught through example and taking an outcome-focused perspective30:00 – Fear as the enemy of Ownership, and steps to overcome this obstacle

Allon spent nearly 7 years at Amazon, holding senior roles across both Amazon’s e-commerce retail category businesses and as Director of Prime Now. During these roles, Allon refined his ability to dive deep into a business and understand its critical levers, a skill he first acquired as a management consultant and now applies post-Amazon as he leads portfolio operations in private equity.  In this episode, you’ll hear how leaders can continue to stay connected to the key details of their business as their scope increases, how to prioritize when to dive deep, and why being data focused is key to the Customer Obsession principle. Tune in to hear more great ideas and approaches from Allon in this episode.   Mentioned in the podcast:  Allon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allonkatz/  More from the episode: 3:00 – How to stay connected to the details of a business as your scope increases7:50 – How diving deep can help unlock resources for your team8:35 – Ideas for being data driven in a nascent business10:10 – How Amazon leaders prioritize where to focus amidst large amounts of data13:25 – Finding balance between diving deep and operating at a high level15:57 – When to trust anecdotes over aggregate data [Prime Now example]20:34 – How a focus on data encourages an culture of ownership22:50 – Why investing in diving deep early in a role pays dividends later in effective problem solving24:01 – A mental model for pinpointing which data points to focus your time on25:44 – Applying the Dive Deep principle in private equity work

Kim spent 12 years at Amazon where she managed various retail functions across Books, Grocery, Outdoors, and Tools categories, ultimately serving as director and category leader over a multi-billion-dollar business. Over the years, Kim relied on a customer-first approach to quickly navigate new role transitions and grow successful category businesses. Kim now exercises her customer obsession as Chief Customer Officer at Microsoft where she has leveraged many of the practices picked up at Amazon to help her teams delight enterprise customers.Listen in to hear Kim share her experience with this core Amazon leadership principle and speak to the ways Amazon leaders use customer obsession to shape weekly business deep dives, team strategy sessions, partnerships with sellers and vendors, and mechanisms to empower frontline workers. You’ll likely come away with some new ideas to try and a renewed sense for how leaders can create value for customers through their work. Mentioned in the podcast: Microsoft Dynamics: http://www.dynamics.comKim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-mathisen/ More from the episode:3:38 – How to use a customer focus to quickly learn a new business9:12 – Amazon’s internal practices to keep focus on the customer16:08 – How Amazon leaders view sellers as customers22:00 – What the difference looks like between just wanting to help customers and really obsessing over customers27:20 – What sugar-free gummy bears can illustrate about Amazon’s customer obsession and order volume28:40 – How Kim has applied Customer Obsession in her subsequent work at Microsoft32:40 – Tips for building a stronger customer-centered culture in any business