This is part three of an ongoing series covering each Amazon Leadership Principle. Each Amazon Leadership Principle is a power lever for building a high-performance team. Combine the Amazon Leadership Principles together with well intentioned use and mechanisms to make them real, and they can be the basis for a consistent championship organization and advantaged business model. Do you want some of that in your business?
I would not suggest literally adopting an Amazon Leadership Principle without careful consideration. I suggest using them as a baseline, an input to developing your leadership principles. Amazon’s leadership principles hold almost universal applicability, and it is difficult to argue with almost any of them or with their entirety. The combination and tension created by using the right Amazon leadership principles at the right time and in the right way helps create high-performance teams and organizations poised to perform and deliver today and for the longterm.
I’ve been asked to prioritize the Amazon leadership principles. Which leadership principles do i think are most critical? On one hand, the answer is “it depends” on circumstances and the job to be done for a team. But I force myself to prioritize the Amazon leadership principles and state my position. Amazon leadership principle #3 — Invent and Simplify, would always be in my top three to five regardless of the situation. Let’s discuss the Amazon Leadership Principle Invent and Simplify and why this is leadership principle is so impactful.
Amazon Leadership Principle Invent and Simplify
Amazon Leadership Principle: Invent and Simplify
Studying the description of the leadership principle is always key. For the Amazon Leadership Principle “Invent and Simplify”, the description reads:
Read it again slowly, parsing and digesting every work of Invent and Simplify.
“Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify.” Interestingly, the words “managers” or “employees” are not used. The word “leaders” is used, signifying that you can do so at any level if you want to be a leader at Amazon.
“Expect and require” — a softer version of this might have been “prioritize” or even “find opportunities” to invent and simplify. No! Every team, every function, and on a continuous basis, leaders require invention and simplification. Whether you work in technology, customer service, finance, legal, or janitorial services, every leader has to operate this way.
“Externally aware and look for new ideas everywhere” — this is humility and requires leaders to study, benchmark, and learn from others. The key is driving impact, and fast, and not where the idea comes from.
“We accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.” — Invent and Simplify is notntest; a popularity co it is not for show or to get on the cover of Fast Company. We invent and simplify to get results, and don’t care what others think. We study others, but we don’t care what they think of our approach. We are independent thinkers.
The Hard Part of this Amazon Leadership Principle
For the Invent and Simplify Amazon leadership principle, what’s the hardest and most important aspect?
Most people would leap at “invention”! Inventing sounds hard, valuable and fun. And it is. But “inventing” is neither the hardest of most value part of this Amazon leadership principle in most cases.
Simplify is actually the hardest and most important part of this Amazon Leadership Principle. Simply the user experience. Simplify the operator and agent experience. Simplify the work, the job, the data flows, the requirements. As Elon Musk says, “delete, delete, delete”! This is the hardest work I do with enterprise clients in doing the zero-based design work of critical processes so they are fast, efficient, and scalable. This is the heart and soul of “Invent and Simplify”
Read my substack article about Elon Musk’s approach to Invent and Simplify HERE
Elon Musk Delete, Delete, Delete
Onward!
John
John Rossman is a keynote speaker, innovation coach, and strategy advisor. He writes a free substack newsletter titled “The Digital Leader Newsletter“. It is a weekly coaching session focused on customer-centricity, innovation, and strategy. We deliver practical theory, examples, tools, and techniques to help you build better strategies, plans, and solutions—but most of all, to think and communicate better.
