Top 10 Leadership Lessons
This story appears in the April 23, 2012 issue of FORBES magazine, accompanying the cover story, 我听见Inside Amazon’s Idea Machine.交通安全教育总结
With the passing of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos is now tech’s leading philosopher-CEO. His advice ranges from what to read (give the Declaration of Independence a shot) to how to deal with stress (“Laugh a lot”). Mostly, though, Bezos sticks to business.
1. “Ba your strategy on things that won’t change.”
Selling lipstick, tractor ats, e-book readers and data storage is all part of one big plan with three big constants: offer wider lection, lower prices and fast, reliable delivery.
2.“Obss over customers.”
Early on Bezos brought an empty chair into meetings so lieutenants would be forced to think about the crucial participant who wasn’t in the room: the customer. Now that surrogate’s role is played by specially trained employees, dubbed “Customer Experience B
老年人保健品ar Rairs.” When they frown, vice presidents tremble.
3. “We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”
Many of Amazon’s expansions look like money-losing distractions at first. That sometimes nds the company’s stock price skidding and evokes analysts’ scorn. Bezos shrugs. If the new initiatives make strategic n to him, a five-to-ven-year financial payoff is okay.
林姓名人4. “There are two kinds of companies: tho that try to charge more and tho that work to charge less. We will be the cond.”
Lots of retailers talk about holding down costs and passing the savings to the consumer. Few do so as intently as Amazon, where “frugality” is one of eight official company values. The reward for putting up with cheap office furniture: a $90 billion stock market valuation and 35% revenue growth.
5. “Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.”
Specs for Amazon’s big new projects such as its Kindle tablets and e-book readers have been defined by customers’ desires rather than engineers’ tastes. If customers don’t want something it’s gone, even if that means breaking apart a once powerful department.
6. “Our culture is friendly and inten, but if push comes to shove we’ll ttle for inten.”
Data reigns supreme at Amazon, particularly head-to-head tests of customers’ reactions to different features or site designs. Bezos calls it “a culture of metrics.” With dozens of the gladiator-style showdowns under way each week, there isn’t much time for soothing words or elaborate rituals of social cohesion.
7. “If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.”七上英语课本
Early on the company hired a lot of editors to write book and music reviews—and then decided to u customers’ critiques instead. A foray into auctions flopped. Bezos regards such stumbles as a part of life, as long as Amazon can learn something uful.
8. “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great rvice and 7
0% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.”
Amazon’s ad budgets are surprisingly small for a retailer of its size. Bezos believes old-fashioned word-of-mouth has become even more important in the digital age—so he prefers low-key process improvements that are meant to get happy customers buzzing. One favorite: Amazon’s war on clamshell packaging, so toys and other shipments will be easier to open.
9. “Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.”
旺旺图标Complaints can be devastating in the age of viral tweets and blogs. Bezos asks thousands of Amazon managers, including himlf, to attend two days of call-center training each year. The payoff: humility and empathy for the customer.
10. “This is Day 1 for the Internet. We still have so much to learn.”
新生儿肚脐贴Bezos first made that obrvation in 1997, in his initial letter to Amazon’s shareholders. He hasn’t budged from it. At Amazon’s new headquarters two of the largest buildings are Day 1 North and Day 1 South. In interviews Bezos still talks about the Internet as an uncharted world, imperfectly understood and yielding new surpris all the time.
