Think Like Amazon

Nick spent over 5 years at Amazon where he co-founded Amazon Game Studios and led teams to grow Amazon’s partnerships with game developers. During this time, Nick also became an Amazon Bar Raiser, interviewing over 350 Amazon candidates and mentoring multiple bar raisers in training before leaving Amazon to educate job candidates and enterprise clients on Amazon’s hiring process through his company, Amazon Bound.Listen to Nick share his tips on attracting strong applicants and developing strong performers from his time building Amazon Game Studios. You’ll also hear Nick explain what a Bar Raiser is and walk through this key role at Amazon, sharing best practices from his deep experience.Whether you are looking for tips to improve your own ability to make strong hiring decisions or curious about what your organization should consider when developing its own Bar Raiser program, you will find battle-tested steps and advice from Nick’s experience in this important space. Mentioned in the podcast: The Day One Syndicate: https://angel.co/day-one/syndicateAmazon Bound: https://amazonbound.today/Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickdimitrov/  More from the episode: 7:12 – The origin of the Amazon’s relentless focus on hiring top performers8:45 – How to attract top performers to your business11:00 – Why you should develop fungible, general athletes and move them around the organization16:41 – The Bar Raiser role at Amazon19:26 – How to help a team make the right hiring decision by focusing on the atomic data points21:20 – When Amazon will decide to “recycle” a strong candidate23:00 – How Amazon centers hiring decision on data25:23 – What pre-requisites an organization should consider to successfully implement a Bar Raiser program28:53 – The role of the Bar Raiser in training and developing interviewers32:23 – What should managers be thinking about to improve their hiring

Andrea spent 10 years at Amazon where she led over 15 product categories, helped launch Amazon’s automated pricing system, and ran Amazon Prime for Amazon Canada. During this time, Andrea made and oversaw many decisions where speed was critical to grow nascent programs and delight customers. Since leaving Amazon in 2015, Andrea has consulted hundreds of manufacturers and helped grow an agency business while continuing to make quick, calculated decisions and learn from mistakes.  In this episode, Andrea shares several examples from key moments in Amazon’s history where speed was critical. You’ll hear how Amazon’s Bias for Action principle can help marketplaces, service industries, and manufacturers better serve customers and make smart decisions, and you’re sure to enjoy a few fresh ideas from Andrea’s examples and advice.  Mentioned in the podcast: Andrea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreakleigh/Andrea Leigh Consulting: https://andreakleighconsulting.com/Ideoclick:  https://ideoclick.com/ More from the episode: 6:00 – A litmus test for when to lean on Bias for Action8:50 – [Amazon Fresh example] When it’s hard to experiment with an existing customer base11:12 – [Amazon Pricing example] How decisions can be both calculated and fast15:55 – [Amazon Grocery example] Acting quickly to unwind a decision19:27 – How Bias for Action can look different within a services business22:58 – The opportunity for manufacturers to have bias for action in understanding their competitive set25:25 – How creating an organizational tolerance for failure fosters Bias for Action

Dave Glick spent 20 years at Amazon as a VP responsible for building much of Amazon’s pricing, warehouse management systems, and fulfillment technology. As an early executive at Amazon, Dave played a major role in Amazon’s adoption of tenets and in how the Are Right, A Lot principle is practices at the company. In this episode, Dave shares the stories behind Amazon’s use of tenets and the focus on diverse perspectives in Amazon’s leadership principles. Dave also shares his personal best practices for helping his teams make high-judgement decisions. Since leaving Amazon, Dave has spent the last two years at Flexe where he continues to grow teams and help craft the organization’s mechanisms. Whether you are looking to help your team make stronger decisions or are interested in benchmarking and improving your own judgement, you are sure to take away a few great nuggets from this chat with Dave. Mentioned in the podcast: The Lab: https://www.thelabconsult.com/Flexe: https://www.flexe.com/Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidglick1/ More from the episode: 3:24 – This story behind Amazon tenets and how they help to “reload the cache”6:10 – How tenets help teams to “disagree and commit”7:58 – How a good tenet helped an Amazon team prevent customer complexity9:32 – What to consider when creating tenets11:30 – Why hiring good, diverse people is fundamental to teams that “are right, a lot”13:57 – The Costanza method to practice being right a lot15:29 – How to help your team make better decisions17.22 – Ideas to help small teams access diverse perspectives19:00 – Establishing must-have points to help improve decision making21:05 – Sources for benchmarking your judgement

Stefan Haney is a 15-year Amazon veteran, where he led multiple product, data, and technical teams during formative years of the Amazon marketplace. In addition to participating in countless narrative document reviews with Amazon’s senior leadership team, Stefan brings experience as a former instructor of Amazon’s internal writing class. In this episode, Stefan shares why writing has become a critical exercise for improving thinking and efficient decision making at Amazon. You’ll hear Stefan share best practices for business writing, including how to get started and how to get the most out of a document review meeting.  Since his time at Amazon, Stefan has gone on to advise many companies on how to use document writing to clarify values, goals, and decisions and to efficiently review business performance. With the variety of tips, examples, and best practices Stefan shares, there is something useful in this episode for everyone – whether a novice writer or an experienced document editor.  Mentioned in the podcast: Stefan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-haney-05016/Vantage Leader: https://vantageleader.com/ More from the episode: 5:06 - Why written narratives are critical for outlining and testing thinking at Amazon9:00 - What your primary goal should be when writing a business document 10:05 - How to use "intro-clusions" to prime your reader12:05 - Using specificity to drive efficient decisions13:57 - Balancing how much data to use in writing, and how to avoid over writing your document15:53 - Why you should look out for adverbs in your doc writing17:36 - Two ways to make sure you are considering diverse functional perspectives in document writing20:38 - Why you need an FAQ section in your document, and how to approach it23:11 - Four steps to test a document-review process in your work27:08 - Three examples of businesses that have found value in adopting a writing culture29:05 - How to become a better business writer today

Alejandro Bethlen spent 8 years at Amazon, first as a general manager for multiple Amazon US Retail teams and then in key executive and program roles in Amazon EU. In our interview, Alejandro expounds on Amazon’s approach to separable, single-threaded leadership and shares examples of how it sped up decision making for organizations. Alejandro pulls back the curtain to share how maintaining a single-threaded leadership culture can be difficult, particularly within young organizations and that these scenarios often call for identifying one-way and two-way door decisions. Since leaving Amazon last year, Alejandro has stepped into the role of CEO at The Bouqs, and he shares how he has applied a single-threaded leadership structure in goal setting and organizational architecture at his new company. Listen to the full conversation to hear more about the advantages and tradeoffs of single-threaded leadership and what ups and downs you might expect when implementing this approach in your team.  Mentioned in the podcast: The Lab Consulting: https://www.thelabconsult.com/The Bouqs: bouqs.comAlejando Bethlen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethlen/ More from the episode: 2:45 – Why pushing decision rights down through the organization becomes increasingly important as a company grows6:30 – How Amazon’s single-threaded ownership helps category teams make quick, dynamic decisions8:30 – The importance of establishing trust in creating a single-threaded leadership culture11:06 – When following separable, single-threaded decision ownership can be more difficult14:05 – Pitfalls to avoid when setting up a single-threaded ownership structure15:49 – 1-way and 2-way door decisions20:40 – Why focus is critical to a single-threaded leadership model22:37 – Implementing a single-threaded-leader structure outside of Amazon 25:40 – How to align single-threaded structure with strategic growth objectives 

Justin Maner spent 10 years at Amazon where he was involved in quickly scaling several category teams before leading the turnaround of Amazon’s Baby Registry and managing innovation-centered teams as a director for Amazon Devices. In this interview, Justin dives into the Think Big principle and illustrates how he applied it to accelerate building for the Tools marketplace, develop a novel approach to quickly scale vendor sign-ups in the Pets category, and innovate on behalf of customers as he built up the Baby Registry program.Over the last couple years, Justin has been applying his innovative leadership to several startups and applying many of the key questions and practices that helped him Think Big at Amazon. There is something for every business leader to take away from Justin’s various examples, resources, and applications throughout the conversation. Find Justin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmaner/More from the episode:4:13 – The 3 life stages that companies and teams evolve through5:24 – How a high-autonomy structure can fuel big thinking for the right personalities7:30 – “Think Big” defined7:58 – How challenging standard thinking resulted in a 5X improvement in tradeshow vendor signups11:54 – How asking about the extremes to challenge a team to think creatively14:47 – Two book recommendations to help anyone learn to be more innovative15:36 – The 3-option approach to empower teams to think bigger17:15 – Three company cultures of innovation and the tradeoffs of each22:03 – Placing multiple bets and assessing each for traction potential as a way to innovate as an entrepreneur23:31 – How “thinking small” can be the key to then think big26:41 – How connecting internal stakeholders with customer problems expedited improvements for Amazon’s baby registry program28:55 – “Go Bigger” and “go faster” questions anyone can use to help their team innovate32:15 – What to do when you need to align stakeholders faced with multiple negative options

Eugene Choi spent 7 years at Amazon as Finance Director for Retail Softlines and AWS Infrastructure prior to joining the executive teams of Oberto Snacks and Viacom CBS. In this episode, Eugene breaks down how he learned Amazon's input-focused process to uncover business opportunities and deliver results. Eugene shares how leaders can help both free up their teams and better serve customers by having the discipline to not follow competitors but instead focus on the key input drivers of a product or service. Eugene takes us through examples of how he worked backwards to identify the right inputs and later applied this same approach at Oberto Snacks and ViacomCBS and shares how others can adopt this same approach. More from the episode:5:45 - Deliver results by focusing on the inputs, not outputs7:00 - How Amazon senior leaders review weekly performance8:27 - How AWS focuses on spare-parts expenses as an input to prevent negative customer experiences10:40 - Why an output focus inadvertently limits customer choice16:03 - Adopting input-focused diagnosis to challenges outside Amazon20:40 - The need for discipline and investigation to adopt an input-focused approach24:07 - How managing by inputs fits into Amazon's "working backwards" approach

Welcome to the podcast where you'll get special access to learn from Amazon executives as they share how to apply Amazon's best principles and processes to grow your own business.Listen as Amazon's strategies, frameworks, and mechanisms are broken down through the personal experiences of senior Amazon leaders so that they can be replicated and applied in your work as manager, leader, entrepreneur, or digital innovator. In this introduction, host, Tyler Wallis, a former Amazon leaders himself shares why this podcast came to be and what you can expect to learn. In this episode, we dig into...- Why you should care about trying to think like Amazon?- The host, and what makes his Amazon experience unique- Bar Raisers at Amazon- What YOU should get out of this show- The 3 best sources of Amazon management knowledge- Sneak peak into the backgrounds of our first few guests