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Thoughts on (Amazonian) leadership

(www.daemonology.net)
155 points stock_toaster | 1 comments | 01 Sep 25 18:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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losvedir ◴[01 Sep 25 20:43 UTC] No.45096451[source]▶
My favorite one is leaders "Are Right, a Lot". The others are all generally "meta" about deciding what to do and how to do it, but that one actually calls out the concrete results of actions. It feels pretty meaty, and actually is a way to grade leaders. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, as a team lead, who recently very much was not right about something. But fortunately it's "a lot" and not "always".
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dh2022 ◴[01 Sep 25 21:01 UTC] No.45096565[source]▶
When I was working at Amazon I did not like this principle. In my experience it led to people arguing: because whoever did not “win” the argument would not be a leader.
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1. diskzero ◴[01 Sep 25 23:11 UTC] No.45097429[source]▶
There was a lot of "arguing" at Amazon, or you could call is strenuous discussions. Another principle was Disagree and Commit. I found this principle lacking at other companies. People would disgres and then sabatoge. The Amazon way was to agree to disagree and commit to sincerely work in the direction of the decision. Winning the initial argument did not make you the leader. You became the leader once your solution shipped, gained signifcant market share and some other succcess metric. This was not always the case!