Docs: https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles

1. Customer obsession (do not code until know the real customer demands)

• We won’t write lines of code until we do the working backwards documents

=> Customer First, anything later.

2. Ownership (think the product and company as your own money)

• They act on behalf of the entire company beyond just their own team

=> They think about the issues from an entire company perspective and they think about it long term

• Great owners are always asking themselves, what would I do if this were my personal money?

=> If they see an issue and they don’t know if it has an owner to resolve it, they find that owner. They don’t just assume that Sarah or John has it.

3. Invent and Simplify (alwayls innovation)

• Invent and Simplify. Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere and are not limited by “not invented here.”

=> As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

=> Always invent for a good ideas.

4. Are Right, A Lot (collect multiple perspectives and make deicision)

Notes: Listen other perspectives and sorted in by ourselves.

• Are right, a lot. Leaders are right, a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives

=> So we always deal in areas that have lots of ambiguity, lots of noise around it. And we have to be great at this company at sifting through all the different noise and finding the signal and what really matters for customers.

=> And the reality is what we’re all trying to do is we’re trying to get to the best possible answer for customers, whoever’s idea it is.

=> We want everybody’s input, we want, you know, and a lot of times in those meetings, what a lot of the leaders are doing is they’re thinking about what they going in opinion was, and they’re seeking to try and find a different way.

=> And so the key is to get the right people involved in giving feedback, listen to the different perspectives and then think about what is the best possible answer for customers or for the business

5. Learn and Be Curious (learn and know what to learn)

• Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them => Instead of that feeling threatening and scary, you have to think about that as being part of the fun of what you do.

=> You have to both have a plan on how you’re going to change and then make that change.

6. Hire and develop the best (leaders most important is to make team members better)

• Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others.

1. It’s people who are smart and people who are right a lot

2. It’s people who are inventive and people who are strategic and think big.

3. People who are able to get into the details and who are able to move quickly and have high ownership

4. People that are able to be obsessed about what matters for customers.

=> And those are the people we’re trying to find and those are the people that deliver the best results for customers.

Notes: You could be a really good individual contributor, but it doesn’t mean that you should be a manager => how to develop the people on your team and coaching them.

7. Insist on the Highest Standards (model for others)

• Insist on the highest standards. Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high.

=> Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes.

Notes: And that means if you’re able to, in the meetings you’re in, set the expectations, set the standards high.

=> Because it means that in the meetings that you can’t be in, all the people who see you model it in the other meetings you’re in can take that to those meetings and can spread it to the rest of the organization.

Notes: Become the model to set high standards to influence people.

8. Think Big (innovation)

• Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

=> If you want to build a company that lasts over 100 years and that outlasts all of us. You cannot run the same playbook for decades at a time.

=> If you think about inventing the next generation infrastructure technology capability with cloud computing and AWS

=> Or if you think about looking at the 400 to 500 million households in this world that do not have broadband capabilities and giving them that connectivity.

=> Or if you think about building the world’s most helpful personal assistant

Notes: These are bold initiatives that are not simple to do and these types of initiatives require thinking big and it’s what you do if you want to serve customers better

9. Bias for Action (Failed 2 times and reverse, rather than waiting for 1)

• Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study

=> We have security concerns, we have compliance concerns. We’ve gotten really big. We have a culture that’s slow.

=> One-way door decisions, as I said, are going to be a very small number of those and those you should take time to think through carefully, but most are two-way door decisions.

Notes: Do if failed try again, most of time can be reserve, let’s try => Don’t take weeks to get done what could be done in days or hours.

=> Let’s action and failed you can reverse in most time.

10. Frugality (tiết kiệm), need great people, do not need more

• Accomplish more with less, great people less but can do more.

=> Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention.

I remember when I had to ask for 50 people or a million dollars => Well, I don’t know, it’s only $100 million => You know, I only need 65-70 people.

Notes: Our very best people, our very best teams, our very best businesses do more with less.

11. Earn Trust (Hay, do what you say)

• Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully => They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best

• Earn trust is being honest, authentic, straightforward, listening intently, but challenging respectfully if you disagree, and then delivering what you said you would.

=> If you want to earn trust, if you say you’ve got something, deliver it.

=> If you own something and it’s not going well, own it. Say it’s not going well, be self-critical, and fix it.

=> If you think we’re not as good as we’re saying we are benchmark it, use data and show us that we’re not as good.

=> I’ve seen teams waste time by beating themselves up when they’re actually better than they think. Use the data and show us

12. Dive Deep (Big picture + details)

• Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ.

=> You could argue that there is a bit of tension between the strategic part of think big and the detail orientation of dive deep, we want both.

Notes: There are so many people who can fill up loads of whiteboards around office rooms with great ideas, but who don’t know how to get the details of those ideas right. And the reality is that the details of any idea are what matters most.

Why need to details ?

• But at our scale, even a 1% impact or a half a percent impact, is millions of people.

13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit (Raise issue if have reason)

• Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting.

• Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

=> We’re not trying to compromise with one another to make each other feel better or to get along. We are trying to get to truth for what matters to customers.

=> Finding what is true for customers.

But sometimes in certain points, businesses have to make decisions. Otherwise they can’t move, they will be stagnant.

14. Deliver Results (Define your output of the business)

• Leaders focus on the key inputs for their businesses and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion.

Notes: You can have everything, but the reality is if you fail on delivering, none of it matters.

• Outputs: public company is your stock price, free cash flow or your revenue or your operating margin => The output is really hard to defined, but if you don’t have the right outputs for the business, then you don’t really have a business.

=> Output of Amazon is: change the customer experience in the business.

Too much thing to delivery the business:

• You have to define a product, you have a working backwards document, you make several versions of that working backwards document. You have to hire a team.

• There are all sorts of changes along the way as you get into actually building the product and implementing it. That when you get to delivery and you get to launch, people take this deep breath and they kind of feel like they’re done.

=> That’s how you get, you get 7, 8, 9 launches, where you’re iterating quickly, and all of a sudden you wake up and you realize I have something really meaningful that matters to customers. That’s what delivery looks like.

15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer (do it excellent)

• Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun.

• Leaders ask themselves: Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.

• So, I thought I would tell you to make customers’ lives easier and better every day is very inspiring. Not just saying it, but doing it.

=> Make it excellent for all aspects: work, colleagues, customers, employees,…

16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility

• Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.