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Do these leadership or company principles ever truly have any effect on employees or products? I've seen them thrown around at my company on a few occasions, bu

by TheGRS 10y ago

Do these leadership or company principles ever truly have any effect on employees or products? I've seen them thrown around at my company on a few occasions, but they never feel like they drive much beyond trying to be one of those gaudy motivational posters.

somethingsimple 10y ago
At Amazon they are like a religion. I don't know if every group is like that, but someone very close to me works there and they tell me those leadership principles are a part of daily work and are explicitly mentioned in day-to-day activities. Amazon's leadership principles are also used during performance reviews, and to evaluate candidates in interviews.
- StreamBright 10y ago
  That applies to Google more. Amazon folks tend to understand that it is just a job and do not spend most of their life on campus. There is definitely pride attached to working for Amazon but there are very few people sticking to working there over 5 years (not unheard of though).
ktRolster 10y ago
It depends on how they're implemented. At my previous company, there was a small list of principles posted on the wall, such as, "make each other better," "show integrity." I was astonished one day when I realized that I had seen several people at different levels of the company actually try to make each other better. It inspired me, personally, and made me glad to work at that company. Famously, IBM used to have their priorities: 1) Customers first 2) Employees second 3) Stock holders third That's something that the CEO needs to take the lead on. When IBM has followed that, they have done really well (and you can see evidence of it in the dedication of Mythical Man Month) All that said, this particular list of principles looks like so much pablum. It's too long and unfocused to be really useful, and I can't see it having much affect. My guess is that Amazon is having trouble finding people to hire lately, and that's why they keep coming up with experiments like this (another example is their foray into 4-day work weeks)
- Zombieball 10y ago
  Just to clarify, as others have pointed out, the leadership principles at Amazon are in no way a new experiment. I don't know their origins but I wouldn't be surprised to learn they are nearly as old as the company itself (probably a few years younger). They are deeply engrained in Amazon culture. They are brought up frequently. They are used as the basis for both hiring and promotion decisions. Regardless of whether or not you (or employees) agree with them. I think what's interesting is that you call them out as too long to be useful. But my guess is +90% of salaried employees at Amazon could recite all of them and give examples of what they intend to convey. I suppose this is a testament to Amazon HR?
  - ckozlowski 10y ago
    We can. =) I credit HR to sharing them and making sure people hear about them on the way in, but I think a lot of their success has to do with the fact that they're easy to relate to and understand. They're not meaningless platitudes. Lots of companies have "values" like "integrity" and "commitment". But what does that mean? In what context? It's vague. Customer Obsession is pretty obvious. Earn Trust. These are simple. And while the descriptions of them can get pretty wordy, everyone can tell you what they mean because they're easy to identify with. I also thing that what they do is give people a lot of empowerment to make decisions, and that makes them attractive. 14 principles that are easy to understand and appeal to people's good will. If you're acting with the principles in mind, you cannot go wrong. (Disclaimer: I work for AWS.)
aanm1988 10y ago
OH absolutely. They are contradictory enough that you can get dinged on one for following another at review time. Frugality means putting up with lousy hardware and cramming people into working environments to the point where people start bringing up OHSA w.r.t. number of toilets. Customer obsession means getting an email about a feature used by a couple percent of users and having to spend a week scrambling because the strategic decision you made (to drop the feature in a major release because you need to get it out) has now been declared wrong. Sev-S was a popular term (S-team being Jeff and his directs). Bias for action means break extremely important OS features that support multiple products because of pure incompetence. Note that this should really conflict with customer obsession and are right a lot, but oh well. One thing I found odd was that are right a lot/disagree and commit don't seem to matter if the opposing argument is your manager wanting to do other stuff. My less snarky response would be that they do spread this stuff around. It has some positive impacts around things like customer obsession, which Amazon is great at. Bias for action can be a good motivator for the right type of person, see something wrong and you go fix it. That said it's not problem free. Frugality is made fun of a lot, because it often goes from sensibly frugal to just cheap.
- mabbo 10y ago
  On almost all your points, I do agree with you. But for one: > are right a lot/disagree and commit don't seem to matter if the opposing argument is your manager wanting to do other stuff "Disagree and commit" means that when you don't agree with the decision being made, you make that clear, you state why, but then you commit to the decision that was made and work with your team to achieve the goals. It means you don't whine throughout the project that it wasn't done the right way, and you don't bullshit with "I told you so" later if you turn out to be correct. If your manager makes the call that it's going to be done in way X, you disagree with him politely, then you commit to doing it way X. What I find far more interesting about the leadership principles is that they recently dropped one: "Vocally self-critical". Oh, that's really just part of 'Earn Trust', apparently, but I'll bet in two more years that phrase isn't even part of the Earn Trust description anymore.
  - Raphael 10y ago
Twirrim 10y ago
They get discussed in almost every circumstance, every meeting. Especially the customer focus one. It really does seem to work, from my perspective. I now work for a relatively new division at another company, one staffed with a lot of ex-AWS staff. One of the earliest things they did there is work with employees from a few different previous companies to figure out our own values, and we've proceeded to apply them to the business in similar fashion. First and foremost among them being one focusing on the customer. Happy customers come back, and are also likely to talk about it to their friends. You might take a hit to your bottom line now, but you'll make it back in the long run with repeat business from the customer. The only one I ever had an issue with there was frugality. I get why it's there, and the intention, but it leads to something we'd internally refer to as "Frupidity". Frupidity is where in the interests of frugality, the company would do something really stupid, or that would ultimately end up costing them more money. It also became the last recourse of the bad manager. "we're not going to do this, because frugality" and you then won't be able to get them to budge an inch regardless of what data you bring. It especially will end up being a local to their team only frugality.

by TheGRS 10y ago

somethingsimple 10y ago

At Amazon they are like a religion. I don't know if every group is like that, but someone very close to me works there and they tell me those leadership principles are a part of daily work and are explicitly mentioned in day-to-day activities. Amazon's leadership principles are also used during performance reviews, and to evaluate candidates in interviews.

StreamBright 10y ago
That applies to Google more. Amazon folks tend to understand that it is just a job and do not spend most of their life on campus. There is definitely pride attached to working for Amazon but there are very few people sticking to working there over 5 years (not unheard of though).

ktRolster 10y ago

It depends on how they're implemented. At my previous company, there was a small list of principles posted on the wall, such as, "make each other better," "show integrity." I was astonished one day when I realized that I had seen several people at different levels of the company actually try to make each other better. It inspired me, personally, and made me glad to work at that company. Famously, IBM used to have their priorities: 1) Customers first 2) Employees second 3) Stock holders third That's something that the CEO needs to take the lead on. When IBM has followed that, they have done really well (and you can see evidence of it in the dedication of Mythical Man Month) All that said, this particular list of principles looks like so much pablum. It's too long and unfocused to be really useful, and I can't see it having much affect. My guess is that Amazon is having trouble finding people to hire lately, and that's why they keep coming up with experiments like this (another example is their foray into 4-day work weeks)

Zombieball 10y ago
Just to clarify, as others have pointed out, the leadership principles at Amazon are in no way a new experiment. I don't know their origins but I wouldn't be surprised to learn they are nearly as old as the company itself (probably a few years younger). They are deeply engrained in Amazon culture. They are brought up frequently. They are used as the basis for both hiring and promotion decisions. Regardless of whether or not you (or employees) agree with them. I think what's interesting is that you call them out as too long to be useful. But my guess is +90% of salaried employees at Amazon could recite all of them and give examples of what they intend to convey. I suppose this is a testament to Amazon HR?
- ckozlowski 10y ago
  We can. =) I credit HR to sharing them and making sure people hear about them on the way in, but I think a lot of their success has to do with the fact that they're easy to relate to and understand. They're not meaningless platitudes. Lots of companies have "values" like "integrity" and "commitment". But what does that mean? In what context? It's vague. Customer Obsession is pretty obvious. Earn Trust. These are simple. And while the descriptions of them can get pretty wordy, everyone can tell you what they mean because they're easy to identify with. I also thing that what they do is give people a lot of empowerment to make decisions, and that makes them attractive. 14 principles that are easy to understand and appeal to people's good will. If you're acting with the principles in mind, you cannot go wrong. (Disclaimer: I work for AWS.)

aanm1988 10y ago

OH absolutely. They are contradictory enough that you can get dinged on one for following another at review time. Frugality means putting up with lousy hardware and cramming people into working environments to the point where people start bringing up OHSA w.r.t. number of toilets. Customer obsession means getting an email about a feature used by a couple percent of users and having to spend a week scrambling because the strategic decision you made (to drop the feature in a major release because you need to get it out) has now been declared wrong. Sev-S was a popular term (S-team being Jeff and his directs). Bias for action means break extremely important OS features that support multiple products because of pure incompetence. Note that this should really conflict with customer obsession and are right a lot, but oh well. One thing I found odd was that are right a lot/disagree and commit don't seem to matter if the opposing argument is your manager wanting to do other stuff. My less snarky response would be that they do spread this stuff around. It has some positive impacts around things like customer obsession, which Amazon is great at. Bias for action can be a good motivator for the right type of person, see something wrong and you go fix it. That said it's not problem free. Frugality is made fun of a lot, because it often goes from sensibly frugal to just cheap.

mabbo 10y ago
On almost all your points, I do agree with you. But for one: > are right a lot/disagree and commit don't seem to matter if the opposing argument is your manager wanting to do other stuff "Disagree and commit" means that when you don't agree with the decision being made, you make that clear, you state why, but then you commit to the decision that was made and work with your team to achieve the goals. It means you don't whine throughout the project that it wasn't done the right way, and you don't bullshit with "I told you so" later if you turn out to be correct. If your manager makes the call that it's going to be done in way X, you disagree with him politely, then you commit to doing it way X. What I find far more interesting about the leadership principles is that they recently dropped one: "Vocally self-critical". Oh, that's really just part of 'Earn Trust', apparently, but I'll bet in two more years that phrase isn't even part of the Earn Trust description anymore.
- Raphael 10y ago

Twirrim 10y ago

They get discussed in almost every circumstance, every meeting. Especially the customer focus one. It really does seem to work, from my perspective. I now work for a relatively new division at another company, one staffed with a lot of ex-AWS staff. One of the earliest things they did there is work with employees from a few different previous companies to figure out our own values, and we've proceeded to apply them to the business in similar fashion. First and foremost among them being one focusing on the customer. Happy customers come back, and are also likely to talk about it to their friends. You might take a hit to your bottom line now, but you'll make it back in the long run with repeat business from the customer. The only one I ever had an issue with there was frugality. I get why it's there, and the intention, but it leads to something we'd internally refer to as "Frupidity". Frupidity is where in the interests of frugality, the company would do something really stupid, or that would ultimately end up costing them more money. It also became the last recourse of the bad manager. "we're not going to do this, because frugality" and you then won't be able to get them to budge an inch regardless of what data you bring. It especially will end up being a local to their team only frugality.