Amazon really tries to embody its leadership principles. It can feel a bit cult-like. That is by design as a way to preserve company culture while experiencing some of the most extreme scaling ever seen.
One leadership principal stands out:
Are right, a lot
The point is not to “be” right. Reading past the first line, the real gem here is:
They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs
That should be the first line. It’s about counterbalancing our biases and checking our egos.
My former manager gave me this feedback as parting advice just before he transferred to a different team. He explained that it’s one of the hardest leadership principles to get right and most people miss the point. He also left me with two book recommendations that have helped me check my own biases:
From my experience, meetings or group forums like messaging and emails are usually the wrong places to seek feedback on a new topic or problem. One-on-one conversations are much more productive. Then after meeting individually, incorporating the feedback into writing, and refining my thinking, it is a better time to meet as a group to align on next steps.
Boiling the ocean
It’s really hard at first to define the scope of a new problem space. And sometimes it’s tempting to go big and fix related problems at once. Gathering feedback helps to refine the problem and narrow down the scope. Breaking a big problem down into smaller, digestable pieces is a better approach. The “don’t do” list is equally important as the “to do” list.