image credit: Reuters In 2004, Jeff Bezos and his technical adviser Colin Bryar traveled to Tacoma, Washington, about an hour south of Seattle. Amazon was a multibillion-dollar corporation at the time. They were, however, on their way to Amazon’s customer service center, where they would work as customer support representatives for two days. Bryar claims that “Jeff was actually taking the calls personally.” He recalls receiving numerous complaints about one product in particular. “Jeff’s eyes widened,” he recalls. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, was irritated. Although there was definitely a problem with the product, it had not been escalated. Later that day, he sent an email to his whole company, requesting more effective techniques of identifying bad products. image courtesy of Getty Images On Monday, Bezos will stand down as CEO of Amazon, the company he started 27 years ago. During that period, he has created a set of unique leadership ideas that some claim are the foundation of his success. Others say they are representative of all that is wrong with Big Tech. You won’t have to wait long to hear the phrase “customer obsession” from anyone who has ever worked at Amazon. Amazon’s unstoppable development as a global digital behemoth Why does Amazon have so much information about you? Profit was a long-term goal for Jeff Bezos. A company’s prosperity hinged on its ability to keep customers satisfied at all costs. In 2004, Nadia Shouraboura began working for Amazon. She was then invited to join Amazon’s elite “S-team” of executives, the senior management board. When she first started, though, she expected to be dismissed right away. “During our Christmas high, I committed the biggest mistake of my life,” she says. Shouraboura had placed important products on very high warehouse shelves. Getting the appropriate products off the shelves would cost time and money. I devised a creative scheme to ensure that we lose as little money as possible while also solving the problem. When I told Jeff about it, however, he looked at me and said, “You’re thinking about this all wrong.” “You’re pondering how to make the most of your money.” Come back to me in a few weeks and tell me how much it will cost to fix the problem for the clients.” Many people have criticized Bezos. Last month, ProPublica published a bombshell report claiming to have seen Bezos’ tax records, alleging that he paid no taxes in 2007 and 2011. It was a shocking allegation about the richest man on the planet. Other unfavorable reports about Amazon, such as its ruthlessness and monopolistic charges, haven’t helped Bezos’ image. Many of his coworkers, on the other hand, are unaware of the stereotype that he is uncaring or selfish. For them, he is a business visionary, a man who has built a renowned work philosophy and a firm worth about $1.8 trillion (£1.3 trillion). Bezos like small groups. To keep meetings fruitful, he has a rule: make sure you can feed the entire group with two pizzas. He despises PowerPoint presentations and prefers to communicate with executives via printed memos. To avoid dominating personalities wielding too much power, he’ll go around a room asking each person how they feel about a question. People who know him believe he admires those who challenge authority. “We would yell at each other and argue,” Shouraboura says. “Everything is out in the open and on the table, and the debates become intense and impassioned.” But it’s always about the subject, never about the individual,” she explains. A set of 14 “leadership principles” has been developed by Amazon. One of them mentions having “the courage to disagree.” And it appears that Bezos sincerely wants to advance that culture. The idea states that leaders should “not compromise for the sake of societal cohesiveness.” However, there are doubts regarding whether Amazon’s ideology is always correctly applied down the chain. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and the world of superyachts A space race is being fueled by billionaires. Former employees claimed in a 2015 piece in the New York Times that the workplace culture was “bruising.” Bezos enjoys engineering, inventions, and machinery. He’s preoccupied with numbers, which isn’t a terrible thing in logistics. However, opponents claim that Amazon’s preoccupation has a human cost, particularly in its multiple warehouses. During Amazon workers’ failed attempt to join a union in Bessemer, Alabama, I spoke with many workers who described themselves as “cogs in a machine.” Others might characterize the sensation as “constantly scrutinized.” image credit: Reuters However, Bezos’ managerial approach looks to be different at higher levels. He values autonomy in his teams because he believes it generates innovation. On the surface, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the phenomenally successful cloud computing service, has little to do with Amazon’s core business: e-commerce. Bezos, on the other hand, welcomed the notion, giving Andy Jassy, a valued employee, the flexibility and capital to start a company within a corporation. Bezos’ point of view Jassy’s ability to think like an entrepreneur rather than just a manager is one of the reasons he will succeed Bezos. “When you’re a startup, it’s simple to be courageous,” Shouraboura says. “It gets harder and harder to be bold as you get older, because you’re putting yourself in more danger.” He was always courageous.” Bezos, according to those who know him, prefers to tackle problems “backwards.” “At Amazon, it’s a pretty specialized approach,” Bryar explains. Teams will use a reverse timetable in the planning stage, starting with what a launch might look like and working backwards. “The team’s first task is to produce a press release, which is typically the last thing a company writes.” This aligns with Bezos’ perspective on time. It’s something he considers frequently. In a hollowed-out mountain in Texas, he installed a $42 million (£30 million) 10,000-year clock. It’s meant to symbolize the power of “long-term thinking.” To be fair, Bezos has always approached business with an eye on the long term. Customers’ focus with short-term gains is often described as “methodical” by those close to him. image credit: Reuters Always captivated by space travel, he plans to journey into space later this month with his business Blue Origin’s first crewed voyage. Nearly 150,000 people have signed a petition opposing his return to Earth. Whether you like him or not, Bezos has shown to be a brilliant and capable leader who has altered the way businesses around the world work. James Clayton is a technology reporter for the BBC in North America, based in San Francisco. @jamesclayton5.Billionaires is his Twitter handle. United StatesAmazonJeff Bezos/n
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