How honest reviews maintain a high-performance culture
As a manager, the easy thing to do is to give everyone a great performance review. This avoids conflict, but it is short-sighted. At Amazon, we believed that a high-performance culture required honesty even when it was uncomfortable. The company put systems in place to make sure that happened. One example was the promotion process. […]
by Bill Carr
Why working at high-growth companies accelerates careers
You are better off being in the 60th percentile at a high-growth company than in the 99th percentile in a low-growth environment. When a company is growing fast, opportunity comes to you. When it’s not, you spend time trying to force it. Early in my career, I worked for Procter & Gamble. It was a […]
by Bill Carr
How Amazon links performance with leadership principles
At Amazon, performance ratings had two equal components: what you accomplished (results) and how you did it (leadership). They were weighted 50/50. This ensured that people were measured both on their performance and their leadership. The first part of the rating was straightforward. It looked at your goals and whether or not you reached them. […]
by Bill Carr
How Jeff Bezos’s slowing down drives better decisions
One of Jeff Bezos’s most surprising and effective habits was his willingness to slow things down. He often referred to himself as the “Chief Slow-Down Officer” in meetings where he thought we were rushing an important, “one -way door” decision. This approach was seemingly at odds with our fast-paced environment. There were several instances where […]
by Bill Carr
Why leaders must focus on big decisions over small ones
Early in my Amazon career, I made a common management mistake—I spent too much time on small decisions and very little time on big ones. Small decisions are much easier to make than big decisions. They give leaders the illusion of productivity because it feels better to make more decisions per unit of time. But […]
by Bill Carr
The tradeoff between work-life balance and career success
When I joined Amazon in 1999, my peers had more exceptional university pedigrees and intellect. In spite of this, I outperformed them. I was promoted 3 times in 5 years (from Product Manager to Vice President). Luck was a factor for sure—I was lucky to land at Amazon so early, I was lucky to land […]
by Bill Carr
How total addressable market drives Amazon product success
At Amazon, we worked on Prime Video and Amazon Music for 8 years before they were successful. We kept going because the total addressable market (TAM) is enormous— nearly every household on Earth listens to music and watches video. When deciding between several good new product or business ideas, pick the one with the highest […]
by Bill Carr
How single threaded leadership launched fulfillment by Amazon
Fulfillment by Amazon is a huge part of Amazon’s business now, but in the early 2000s it was stuck on the drawing board. The way it finally launched ended up changing Amazon completely. Amazon had long believed in the potential of what was then called “Self-Service Order Fulfillment (SSOF)”—an initiative that would allow third-party sellers […]
by Bill Carr
Why Amazon leaders own strategy and execution
In his youth, Jeff Bezos spent summers on his grandfather’s ranch in Texas. As he put it, “If you’re in the middle of nowhere, you don’t pick up the phone and call somebody when something breaks. You fix it yourself.” He brought this thinking with him to Amazon. He was always pushing leaders like me to […]
by Bill Carr
How Jeff Bezos structured effective executive meetings
In my work with CEOs, one of the most common concerns is how to run effective weekly meetings with their executive team. When I tell them how Jeff Bezos managed this process, they are very surprised. Jeff would meet with his Exec team (the S-Team) each week on Thursday mornings for four hours. My co-author, […]
by Bill Carr