When you interview with Amazon they look at two things: your technical ability and your leadership fit as defined in their Leadership Principles. There are 14 Leadership Principles. In this post I will discuss what I have learned from Amazonians I know who practice these, some I have done myself and some I have applied to my business JimmySoft LLC.
In short the principles are the following.
- Customer Obsession
- Ownership
- Invent and Simplify
- Are Right, A Lot
- Learn and Be Curious
- Hire and Develop the Best
- Insist on the Highest Standards
- Think Big
- Bias for Action
- Frugality
- Earn Trust
- Dive Deep
- Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
- Deliver Results
Let’s dive in.
Customer Obsession
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
So this one seems somewhat obvious, make you customers happy and they will make your business happy.
What I have found with my product EmbroideryWare is that you have to be engaged with your customers.
The way I engaged was to start a facebook users group. It has been a gold mine of information. By actively engaging with your customers on social media you get to know them, have the opportunity to teach them and understand their needs.
My customers really get excited when I incorporate a new feature that was discussed online. Not many companies have a direct line to the developer of the product.
How do I keep track of all this information? I put it in my agile planning app myAglieStory.com of course :).
Ownership
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”
When I was in the biotech industry I was always snooping around looking for ways to make things easier for my colleagues. At one point we had technicians that were doing a lot of manual testing on dripping pipette tips.
It was an awful test. They basically had to watch for drips on thousands of tips.
This test was the production groups responsibility, but I was in R & D. I decided to own the problem and wrote a program to automate it. It took a couple a days to write, wasn’t the prettiest code but it got the job done. Later when I needed help on something of my own they returned the favor. This was the essence of teamwork and it felt good.
Invent and Simplify
Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
When you write code your are often tempted to reuse a code base. You have something that works why reinvent the wheel. Just use the old code. I always thought that was lazy. Every time you have a new project you have an opportunity to invent a better way to do it and hopefully make it simpler. For example during my software studies I discovered reacts useReducer and useContext hooks. They are so much simpler to use than redux. So I leapfrogged redux and used the new stuff instead.
I have had a similar experience in my mechanical work. The robots we designed had many linear mechanisms. These were engineered with many tracks and bearings. When linear bearings became cost effective we used them instead reducing many parts to just one.
You really need to keep an eye out for new ways to do things. They can really make your life simpler.
Are Right, A Lot
Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.
When I was managing projects I would have the engineers present their design ideas in a meeting and we would have a discussion.
Sometimes it was obvious that there was a right solution. I found that instead of forcing the right solution on them it was better to frame it this way “have you considered Option X”?
This way they could take ownership of the options and often picked “Option X”, the right solution. It was important that they had the chance to evaluate the options on their own and come to the same conclusion. Now everyone was on board.
“Option X” didn’t always get the nod and sometimes a hybrid of options was better. I learned from these too.
Learn and Be Curious
Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.
So back in the fall I had to opportunity to go to two Amazon events they call their engineering learning series. One was on dynamoDB and the other was on serverless.
I was really excited to go to these events for two reasons. First I wanted to learn how to use this technology and apply it to my own products and second I wanted to meet some Amazonians!
I was curious to see how I could apply what I learned. So I provisioned a website myDynamoDB.com to demonstrate the use of both technologies. It is an gitHub social media app that uses react, dynamoDB and serverless technologies.
After doing the app I used it to find gitHub users working with compelling technologies. One of those technologies was TypeScript so I added it to my studies.
Hire and Develop the Best
Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.
Back in the fall I went to the DevFestDC conference were an Amazonian was presenting Amazon’s AppSync service.
I later contacted him and told him about my software journey and career pivot. He was interested in my story and met me for lunch.
The lunch was very technical and he asked many questions. This resulted in a road map, which I have been following.
I asked a friend of mine who just got hired at Amazon why he did this and he said he is following the leadership principles. Basically he saw potential in me and created a road map I could follow.
Since then I have reached out to other Amazonians and they have shared their own personal road maps with me.
Both of these Amazonians are embracing the “Hire and Develop the Best” leadership principle.
Insist on the Highest Standards
Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
Good enough is not really good enough because there is always opportunity to improve. To strive to be the best is a worthy goal.
I have applied this principle to my business. I am always thinking of ways I can improve EmbroideryWare. Since its inception in 2016 I have released 57 versions.
The desire to continuously improve the product has reaped rewards with more customers and a higher product price. It is a much better product now than when I started. That is something I am very proud of.
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.
When I started myAgileStory.com I was thinking it would solve a small problem I had when planning projects.
Then I started thinking. Can it become something that can rival Jira? This is bold thinking, probably impossible but lets try anyway.
When I started EmbroideryWare three years ago it was a small program but after 57 versions it is so feature rich that my users are comparing it to big programs costing 10 times the price. One of these big players even copied some of the features I added. Pretty funny for little bitty EmbroideryWare.
Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.
I don’t spend much time hemming and hawing over what features to add to my products. When I think of something I add it to the backlog. When I find a bug I add it to the backlog.
Then when I plan a new release I just look at the list a pick the ones that resonate with me and code it out. There is not much more planning then that.
I want to get these new features in the customers hands as soon as possible so I can see if they like them or not. Some features were total bombs and needed to be removed. Oops!
No amount of market research is going to be as good as just implementing a new feature and seeing how it goes.
Frugality
Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.
I run a very tight ship with my software startup. I use a shared hosting account for embroiderywaresoftware.com. I costs a whopping $16 a month. Even mySoftwareJourney.com is on the same host.
I use AWS for all the rest of my services and its very cheap.
I spend very little on adwords. I find adwords to be pretty expensive and I keep my campaign costs low. This might be counter intuitive since increases in ad budgets could increase sales. In my experience though there has not be a great return on adwords. My product is too niche.
The only real big expense is paypal. Payment providers are a necessary expense and well worth the 4% fee.
Earn Trust
Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
At one point in my career I managed a Verification and Validation team in addition to my project manager duties. It was a small company so we wore many hats.
We had a software release that got into the customer hands and failed because their use case was not included in our regression plan. We could have pointed fingers at the missing details in the spec but didn’t.
Instead we took ownership and said we did not do the due diligence required to make our regression plan correct. From that point forward we engaged the customer in all our regression planning.
This built trust with both the customer and the company at large.
Dive Deep
Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.
As we progress in our career we get less detail oriented but it is always a good idea to still be connected to the details through your teammates.
When you start digging you give both parties a chance understand how the system works and you learn from each other. You should not have any silos of knowledge in your organization.
Ideally we should understand how each others code works and what it does.
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.
As engineers we have many different ideas on how to solve a problem and can strongly disagree.
Sometimes it is a good exercise to code up the options and compare them to see which one has greater merit.
Other times there is no clear choice and you just pick one and get on with the project.
Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.
When you release something is the customer pleased? You might not think the product is perfect but does it meet the customer need?
Don’t over polish your product. Value its functionality over how fancy it looks.
I had one customer who never purchased the product leave this comment “Update of the GUI to a modern look & feel like Windows 10 apps. Use Higher Def icons on the buttons (Full HD / 4K screen)”.
This comment was all fluff and had nothing to do with what the program did or did not do. Its an embroidery CAD program! Sure these fancy buttons would look nice but the program is about drawing lines, curves and embroidery objects. Very mechanical things.
Deliver results not fluff.