“Who’s the most senior single-threaded leader for this new initiative?”
Jeff Bezos asked this question whenever he detected that organizational structure was the root cause of a schedule delay for a new product, project, or process.
Amazon was organized by function before implementing Single Threaded Teams (STTs). Functional teams (in particular product, design, and engineering) faced the problem of managing resource planning and allocation processes covering each business unit and geography.
Jeff and the S-team were required to continuously review and weigh in on every significant resource contention issue. Worst of all, business unit leaders felt frustrated that they had no control over the resources and inputs needed to grow their businesses.
Jeff coined the phrase “learned helplessness” to describe the resulting mindset and emphasize how corrosive this could be. The STT model answered our challenges with our org chart and planning processes.
By the early 2000s, Amazon had become a complex, multi-product, international operation. Conventional business wisdom dictates that the answer to this scale and complexity is the increase the level of communication, collaboration and coordination across the organization. We too adopted this approach, implementing a multi-step annual operating planning process called NPI, standing for New Product Initiative.
One year later, after having spent too much time making spreadsheets, documents and sitting through meetings and not enough time building for our customers, we abandoned the NPI process.
Jeff decided that we needed to move in the opposite direction. Instead of increasing coordination and communication, we needed to figure out how to de-couple, remove dependencies, reduce time spent coordinating, and increase time spent inventing on behalf of our customers.
Once Amazon switched to the Single Threaded Leaders and Teams model in the mid-2000s, we were able to
1. Reduce time spent debating resource allocation
2. Increase time spent building
3. Empower leaders with resources and autonomy to achieve the best outcomes for their business unit or function
4. Establish clear owners for P&Ls, programs, and products.
Learn more about Single Threaded Leadership and Teams in chapter three of our book Working Backwards or see this summary on our website: https://lnkd.in/gqwMeNQx
