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.com

Kim 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 business

9:12 – Amazon’s internal practices to keep focus on the customer

16:08 – How Amazon leaders view sellers as customers

22:00 – What the difference looks like between just wanting to help customers and really obsessing over customers

27:20 – What sugar-free gummy bears can illustrate about Amazon’s customer obsession and order volume

28:40 – How Kim has applied Customer Obsession in her subsequent work at Microsoft

32:40 – Tips for building a stronger customer-centered culture in any business

Skyler spent 8 years at Amazon in retail and data engineering leadership roles, including forming a team within Amazon Hardlines to identify and drive process improvements at scale to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings. Key to succeeding in these nascent and disruptive projects were the lessons Skyler learned that helped his team follow the Vocally Self-critical leadership principle.

Whether you’re embarking on a new project, trying to earn trust with stakeholders, or continue to find your team running into roadblocks, you are likely to find valuable takeaways from Skyler’s examples and insights in this episode.

Mentioned in the podcast: 

Skyler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skylerramirez/

More from the episode:

4:37 – The history of the Vocally Self Critical leadership principle

6:30 – How being self critical can produce faster problem solving

12:00 – How to measure success on nascent projects

18:15 – Why being vocally self-critical is always better than ignoring an issue

22:53 – How to help your team become vocally self-critical

27:45 – The growing value of self-critical leaders across top tech companies

Maju spent 8 years as Vice President for Amazon’s global logistics and fulfillment technology organizations. During his Amazon career, the scope of Maju’s role grew to oversee thousands of engineering, operations, and business employees across the globe. Earlier this year, Maju made the transition from Amazon to become CTO at Bolt, a startup that offers online one-click checkout technology to retailers.  

Listen in to hear Maju describe how he leads innovation across large global organizations. From pivoting fulfillment systems amid the global pandemic to creating mechanisms for encouraging innovation from all levels of the company, this episode is full of stories, ideas, and practical tips that can help any manager think about institutionalizing innovation in their business. 

Mentioned in the podcast: 

The Day One Syndicate: https://angel.co/day-one/syndicate

Bolt Careers: https://www.bolt.com/careers/

Maju on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/majukuruvilla/

More from the episode:

5:47 – Innovating fast to pivot Amazon’s air cargo operations during the global pandemic

8:22 – How to know when to pivot quickly versus preserve existing automation when working under pressure 

11:12 – Developing a future-focused mindset to prioritize innovation

14:19 – How to encourage innovation at scale across a large organization

15:50 – The blind spots to be aware of when working at scale, and how to address them

18:42 – Why patience is often required to drive strategic innovation

22:00 – The top two priorities you must have as a leader to create impact, and the key to scaling that impact 

23:21 – One of Maju’s top mechanisms for increasing organizational focus on innovation and problem solving

30:00 – Examples of Invent & Simplify alive at Bolt

32:17 – Find innovative employees by incorporating this one question with candidates

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/syndicate

Amazon 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 performers

8:45 – How to attract top performers to your business

11:00 – Why you should develop fungible, general athletes and move them around the organization

16:41 – The Bar Raiser role at Amazon

19:26 – How to help a team make the right hiring decision by focusing on the atomic data points

21:20 – When Amazon will decide to “recycle” a strong candidate

23:00 – How Amazon centers hiring decision on data

25:23 – What pre-requisites an organization should consider to successfully implement a Bar Raiser program

28:53 – The role of the Bar Raiser in training and developing interviewers

32:23 – 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 Action

8:50 – [Amazon Fresh example] When it’s hard to experiment with an existing customer base

11:12 – [Amazon Pricing example] How decisions can be both calculated and fast

15:55 – [Amazon Grocery example] Acting quickly to unwind a decision

19:27 – How Bias for Action can look different within a services business

22:58 – The opportunity for manufacturers to have bias for action in understanding their competitive set

25:25 – 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 complexity

9:32 – What to consider when creating tenets

11:30 – Why hiring good, diverse people is fundamental to teams that “are right, a lot”

13:57 – The Costanza method to practice being right a lot

15:29 – How to help your team make better decisions

17.22 – Ideas to help small teams access diverse perspectives

19:00 – Establishing must-have points to help improve decision making

21:05 – 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 Amazon

9:00 - What your primary goal should be when writing a business document 

10:05 - How to use "intro-clusions" to prime your reader

12:05 - Using specificity to drive efficient decisions

13:57 - Balancing how much data to use in writing, and how to avoid over writing your document

15:53 - Why you should look out for adverbs in your doc writing

17:36 - Two ways to make sure you are considering diverse functional perspectives in document writing

20:38 - Why you need an FAQ section in your document, and how to approach it

23:11 - Four steps to test a document-review process in your work

27:08 - Three examples of businesses that have found value in adopting a writing culture

29:05 - 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.com

Alejando 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 grows

6:30 – How Amazon’s single-threaded ownership helps category teams make quick, dynamic decisions

8:30 – The importance of establishing trust in creating a single-threaded leadership culture

11:06 – When following separable, single-threaded decision ownership can be more difficult

14:05 – Pitfalls to avoid when setting up a single-threaded ownership structure

15:49 – 1-way and 2-way door decisions

20:40 – Why focus is critical to a single-threaded leadership model

22:37 – 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 through

5:24 – How a high-autonomy structure can fuel big thinking for the right personalities

7:30 – “Think Big” defined

7:58 – How challenging standard thinking resulted in a 5X improvement in tradeshow vendor signups

11:54 – How asking about the extremes to challenge a team to think creatively

14:47 – Two book recommendations to help anyone learn to be more innovative

15:36 – The 3-option approach to empower teams to think bigger

17:15 – Three company cultures of innovation and the tradeoffs of each

22:03 – Placing multiple bets and assessing each for traction potential as a way to innovate as an entrepreneur

23:31 – How “thinking small” can be the key to then think big

26:41 – How connecting internal stakeholders with customer problems expedited improvements for Amazon’s baby registry program

28:55 – “Go Bigger” and “go faster” questions anyone can use to help their team innovate

32:15 – 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 outputs

7:00 - How Amazon senior leaders review weekly performance

8:27 - How AWS focuses on spare-parts expenses as an input to prevent negative customer experiences

10:40 - Why an output focus inadvertently limits customer choice

16:03 - Adopting input-focused diagnosis to challenges outside Amazon

20:40 - The need for discipline and investigation to adopt an input-focused approach

24:07 - How managing by inputs fits into Amazon's "working backwards" approach