Quotes About Leadership

Conscious Capitalism,

Whenever Jeff Bezos roamed a fulfillment center or his own Seattle headquarters, he looked for defects—flaws in the company's systems or even its corporate culture.

Bezos announced that employees could no longer use such corporate crutches and would have to write their presentations in prose, in what he called narratives.

Miller knew nothing about toy retailing, but in a pattern that would recur over and over, Bezos didn't care. He was looking for versatile managers—he called them "athletes"—who could move fast and get big things done. Miller was given

If you're not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you're good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground.

At least one anointed bar raiser would participate in every interview process and would have the power to veto a candidate who did not meet the goal of raising the company's overall hiring bar.

For the first time, Amazon was spoken in the same breath as Google and Apple—not as an afterthought, but as an equal. It had blasted off into high orbit.

You've built this lovely castle, and now all the barbarians are going to come riding on horses to attack the castle," Bezos said, according to a former AWS exec who reports hearing the comment. "You need a moat; what is the moat around the castle?" (Amazon denied that Bezos said this.)

Bezos proclaimed at the time, according to numerous employees: "Developers are alchemists and our job is to do everything we can to get them to do their alchemy.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit 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.

For example, he suggested that every leader should be required to take a course called "As Life Happens," to learn how to sensitively manage an employee whose personal life might be interfering with their work obligations. Niekerk recalled that colleagues who read his paper said that it was among the best analyses they had seen of the cultural challenges that were so obviously plaguing the company at its twentieth anniversary.

It's one thing to have a good idea, but it'a another to have confidence in a person to execute it.

Para mim, a Amazon é a história de um fundador brilhante que promoveu pessoalmente a concretização de sua visão", diz Eric Schmidt, presidente executivo do Google,

from his company. After the stock market crash in 2000, Amazon went through two rounds of layoffs. But Bezos didn't want to stop recruiting altogether; he just wanted to be more efficient. So he framed the kind

Later Bezos recalled speaking at an all-hands meeting called to address the assault by Barnes & Noble. "Look, you should wake up worried, terrified every morning," he told his employees. "But don't be worried about our competitors because they`re never going to send us any money anyway. Let's be worried about our customers and stay heads-down focused."15

He was a ravenous reader, leading senior executives in discussion of books like Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, and he had an utter aversion to doing anything conventionally. Employees were instructed to model his fourteen leadership principles, such as customer obsession, high bar for talent, and frugality, and they were trained to consider them daily when making decisions about things like new hires, promotions, and even trivial changes to products.

He was looking for versatile managers—he called them "athletes"—who could move fast and get big things done.

It's one thing to have a good idea, but it's another to have confidence in a person to execute it,

Autonomous working units are good. Things to manage working units are bad.

An interviewer once asked Bezos why he was motivated to accomplish so much, considering that he had already amassed an exceedingly large fortune. "I have realized about myself that I'm very motivated by people counting on me," he answered. "I like to be counted on.

It's an easy prediction to make—that Jeff Bezos will do what he has always done. He will attempt to move faster, work his employees harder, make bolder bets, and pursue both big inventions and small ones, all to achieve his grand vision for Amazon—that it be not just an everything store, but ultimately an everything company.

Sam Walton: Made in America,

Think Big Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Bezos felt that hiring only the best and brightest was key to Amazon's success.