{"id":6190,"date":"2022-04-15T04:01:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T16:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.local\/?p=6190"},"modified":"2022-04-15T04:01:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T16:01:42","slug":"andy-jassys-first-letter-as-ceo-of-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.local\/andy-jassys-first-letter-as-ceo-of-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Jassy’s first letter as CEO of Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is a tremendous read<\/a>. Very Bezos. Very Buffett too. Here’s a few highlights, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On innovation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the lesser known facts about innovative companies like Amazon is that they are relentlessly debating, re-defining, tinkering, iterating, and experimenting to take the seed of a big idea and make it into something that resonates with customers and meaningfully changes their customer experience over a long period of time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On building products:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1\/ Hire the Right Builders<\/strong>: We disproportionately index in hiring builders. We think of builders as people who like to invent, who look at customer experiences, dissect what doesn\u2019t work well about them, and seek to reinvent them. We want people who keep asking why can\u2019t it be done? We want people who like to experiment and tinker, and who realize launch is the starting line, not the finish line.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2\/ Organize Builders into Teams That Are as Separable and Autonomous as Possible<\/strong>: It\u2019s hard for teams to be deep in what customers care about in multiple areas. It\u2019s also hard to spend enough time on the new initiatives when there\u2019s resource contention with the more mature businesses; the surer bets usually win out. Single-threaded teams will know their customers\u2019 needs better, spend all their waking work hours inventing for them, and develop context and tempo to keep iterating quickly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3\/ Give Teams the Right Tools and Permission to Move Fast<\/strong>: Speed is not pre-ordained. It\u2019s a leadership choice. It has trade-offs, but you can\u2019t wake up one day and start moving fast. It requires having the right tools to experiment and build fast (a major part of why we started AWS), allowing teams to make two-way door decisions themselves, and setting an expectation that speed matters. And, it does. Speed is disproportionally important to every business at every stage of its evolution. Those that move slower than their competitive peers fall away over time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4\/ You Need Blind Faith, But No False Hope<\/strong>: This is a lyric from one of my favorite Foo Fighters songs (\u201cCongregation\u201d). When you invent, you come up with new ideas that people will reject because they haven\u2019t been done before (that\u2019s where the blind faith comes in), but it\u2019s also important to step back and make sure you have a viable plan that\u2019ll resonate with customers (avoid false hope). We\u2019re lucky that we have builders who challenge each other, feedback loops that give us access to customer feedback, and a product<\/em> development process of working backwards from the customer where having to write a Press Release (to flesh out the customer benefits) and a Frequently Asked Questions document (to detail how we\u2019d build it) helps us have blind faith without false hope (at least usually).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

5\/ Define a Minimum Loveable Product (MLP), and Be Willing to Iterate Fast<\/strong>: Figuring out where to draw the line for launch is one of the most difficult decisions teams must make. Often, teams wait too long, and insist on too many bells and whistles, before launching. And, they miss the first mover advantage or opportunity to build mindshare in fast-moving market segments before well-executing peers get too far ahead. The launch product must be good enough that you believe it\u2019ll be loved from the get-go (why we call it a \u201cMinimum Loveable Product\u201d vs. a \u201cMinimum Viable Product\u201d), but in newer market segments, teams are often better off getting this MLP to customers and iterating quickly thereafter.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

6\/ Adopt a Long-term Orientation<\/strong>: We\u2019re sometimes criticized at Amazon for not shutting much down. It\u2019s true that we have a longer tolerance for our investments than most companies. But, we know that transformational invention takes multiple years, and if you\u2019re making big bets that you believe could substantially change customer experience (and your company), you have to be in it for the long-haul or you\u2019ll give up too quickly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

7\/ Brace Yourself for Failure<\/strong>: If you invent a lot, you will fail more often than you wish. Nobody likes this part, but it comes with the territory. When it\u2019s clear that we\u2019ve launched something that won\u2019t work, we make sure we\u2019ve learned from what didn\u2019t go well, and secure great landing places for team members who delivered well\u2014or your best people will hesitate to work on new initiatives.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a tremendous read. Very Bezos. Very Buffett too. Here’s a few highlights, On innovation: One of the lesser known facts about innovative companies like Amazon is that they are relentlessly debating, re-defining, tinkering, iterating, and experimenting to take the seed of a big idea and make it into something that resonates with customers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6193,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6190\/revisions\/6193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}