Created in 1995 by Jeff Bezos, Amazon started as just another online retail store. What set them apart? They focused on online customer experience before it was even a thing. More than 20 years later, they are the largest online retailer in the world.
Impressive, don’t you think?
One thing hasn’t changed though, they remain customer centric. In fact, customer obsession is the first of the 14 Amazon Leadership Principles, a gospel that they preach every single time they hire a new employee.
Having employees who are leaders, able to make precise decisions, take ownership, inspire others and engage with their co-workers will help your company thrive. So, using Amazon’s guidelines for success might be a great way to find new ways for your unit to grow.
Do you want to know more? Check out the valuable lessons we’ve learned from Amazon leadership principles.
Decentralize using the Amazon Leadership principles
One of the main pillars of Amazon culture is to decentralize. Each sector of the company has autonomy to develop their own working processes. Instead of creating a system that should be used in every area, they understand people have different dynamics and encourage each team to develop systems that work for them.
For example, the software engineer team can create a set of practices, which they see as the best way to improve performance. While the sales team can have a totally different perspective and use another approach to deliver results.
Cultivate an environment that lets specialist teams develop processes that help them succeed. It’ll how vital the employees are to the company’s growth while building the fundamentals of a company culture that people can believe in.
People with leadership skills have better results
Leadership skills can make or break a company.
Employees who act as leaders have better performances because they take a personal stake in what happens. They attitudes are synonymous with many Amazon values like “learn and be curious” “Insist on the highest standards”, “think big” and “earn trust”, which are essential qualities to make a great leader.
When hiring, search for people who are good decision makers, aren’t afraid of taking on responsibilities, are always seeking for knowledge and are able to recognize their mistakes. You can only decentralize if you develop a team that values leadership and an entrepreneurial spirit.
Let’s put this idea into practice. Imagine there was a bug in the company system and a junior software engineer has an idea onabout how to fix it. In a workplace where the employee has no voice, they might feel too intimidated to talk or just believes it’s not his or her problem.
If you encourage every manager to welcome new ideas, to make everyone feel comfortable, you can avoid that kind of problem.
Make sure they understand accepting someone’s suggestion is not a weakness, on the contrary, it shows you are doing a good job by motivating your personnel to give their best and giving them a voice, and therefore, a stake in their units success.
Seek out Employees who take Ownership
Ownership is the second Amazon leadership principle. When you’re an owner you feel responsible for the success or failure of your business, right? You want your business to succeed, so you will do everything in your power to achieve that.
Imagine if you could have that attitude from all of your employees? You can. On a psychological level, employees want to matter.
By including them and helping them feel like they are stakeholders in your company’s future, you’re message is:
I trust you and your skills, and your involvement is important. Who wouldn’t thrive in that kind of environment?
Value people who are able to look from diverse perspectives
Amazon is known for being innovative, succeeding in a constantly evolving market and growing branching out in intelligent ways. Imagine succeeding on that level if everyone had the same ideas, strategies and experiences? You can’t.
New technologies are developed every day; the market can change drastically from one moment to the next. So you need different perspectives and the strategies they can put forth to have a larger scope and more easily identify opportunities.
For example, you are about to release a new mobile app. The IOS version works perfectly, but the android version is slow. What if you only had people who knew IOS? The possibilities of exploring a whole new model properly die until you can fix that problem.
Keep your world as large as possible with a team that can advance any new opportunity.Do you want to apply the Amazon leadership principles at your company and have great leaders on your team?
You can help them improve their leadership skills with our method. Book a free first session and start your path to success. Remember great leaders create other leaders.
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂