Use Amazon’s Playbook to Accelerate Your Company’s Rise with Jon Rossman

John Rossman, author of Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader

John Rossman and Bill Ringle discuss Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader for small business leaders. 

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth.

Top 3 Takeaways from this Interview

Create customer obsession—and grant your customers superpowers. Use metrics to create a culture of accountability and innovation.Master the magic of small autonomous teams.

Interview Insights

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

Q: When you are growing up, who is someone who influenced you or inspired you?

[1:55] A: How John attained confidence that he can tackle a rigorous academic domain like engineering. 

Q: What does it mean to compete differently?

[2:49] A: "Not only do we need to be as an organization and as a leader great in our operational domains, but you have to actually become great at creating change, envisioning change and making it happen, and delivering business value to it." 

Q: What's been your experience with some of the consultant clients that you worked with that they used the book to learn about creating change and developing things, and some of the skills they lacked when they first started in their work?

 [4:18] A: "First of all, it starts with being honest, we need to...we can't rest on our laurels. And we need to invest more and innovate more in our future. And so idea number three, called Move forward to get back to Day 1, change the status quo culture" is sometimes the starting point for that."

[5:22] "We have to think as leaders, we have changed our habit...You need to ask yourself, what are you willing to do differently." 

Q: Am sure you would agree to the fact that some leaders are embracing the tools and have gotten some results with them first before they roll them out or expect others to do; they come about it from a much more credible place. Isn't that your experience?

[6:58] A: "You must set the tone from the top. You have to not just go along with it but be the biggest advocate, the biggest adopt the idea that in order to make true, lasting full-blown change." 

Q: When you are in Amazon, what did they do with the culture to break into the DNA so that this idea of being a digital leader was part of everyone's thinking?

[8:25] A: "We are hammering out these concepts of what being a platform company is about. We were hammering out our leadership principles." 

[8:54] "We took the time to not only like "okay, what's the problem and how do we resolve it, "how we think about this situation?" 

 [9:05] "We would always be testing ourselves, "why are we approaching that way," "how would that technique for that leadership principle work in other circumstances and taking the time to think about why you're thinking about something...that was the habit that we put into place." 

[9:47] "Probably my number one customer base for "Think like Amazon" is current Amazon employees who use this as a manual for how they go about their business. 

[12:35] "You have to know when to slow down and write out ideas...always write out my thoughts...to help me think things through better." 

Q: And again, that's so clear how that comes back to truly understanding your customer's experience because none of those things are probably measured before, nor the people think to track it, and once you have metrics to track, then you have the process that you can refine, improve and optimize...

[22:46] A: "The truth is in the numbers typically." 

[22:53] My Quest for the Best Lightning Round begins

Expert Bio 

John is the author of Think Like Amazon: 50 ½ Ideas to Become a Digital Leader.

He was an executive at Amazon, where he launched and scaled the Marketplace business, which now accounts for more than 50 percent of all units sold at Amazon.com.