“We have an unshakeable conviction that the long-term interests of shareowners are perfectly aligned with the interests of customers.”2 In other words, while it’s true that shareholder value stems from growth in profit, Amazon believes that long-term growth is best produced by putting the customer first.

Properly evaluating your business and striving to improve each week requires a willingness to openly discuss failures, learn from them, and always look for inventions that will delight customers even more.

When Amazon teams come across a surprise or a perplexing problem with the data, they are relentless until they discover the root cause. Perhaps the most widely used technique at Amazon for these situations is the Correction of Errors (COE) process, based upon the “Five Whys” method developed at Toyota and used by many companies worldwide.

Edward Tufte sums up the benefits of narratives over PP with his own blunt clarity: “PowerPoint becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of PowerPoint makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

The right input metrics get the entire organization focused on the things that matter most. Finding exactly the right one is an iterative process that needs to happen with every input metric.

When we have invented, our long-term, patient approach—driven by customer need—has been fundamentally different from the more conventional “skills-forward” approach to invention, in which a company looks for new business opportunities that neatly fit with its existing skills and competencies. While this approach can be rewarding, there is a fundame

Over time, we refined and normalized the specifications for the PR/FAQ. The press release (PR) portion is a few paragraphs, always less than one page. The frequently asked questions (FAQ) should be five pages or less. There are no awards for extra pages or more words. The goal isn’t to explain all the excellent work you have done but rather to shar

A well-instrumented two-pizza team had another powerful benefit. They were better at course correcting—detecting and fixing mistakes as they arose.

Here’s another example of where a single-threaded leader and team helps. I was accountable for the financial performance and overall health of the affiliates business. Our team had virtually all the resources required to launch this feature: we had software engineers and product managers to build the feature; and we had our own customer service rep