The Amazon Leadership Principle “Deliver Results” is at the heart of successful Big Bets. In high-stakes initiatives, it’s not enough to simply set bold goals—leaders must consistently focus on key inputs and deliver results with precision and urgency. This principle aligns directly with the Big Bet Leadership habits of creating clarity and maintaining velocity. To succeed, leaders must understand the critical drivers of success, execute with discipline, and remain resilient when faced with setbacks. Delivering results requires leaders to maintain focus, even when the path forward is challenging or unclear.
For Big Bets, the ability to deliver results on time and at the right level of quality can be the difference between transformative success and a costly failure. Leaders who embody the “Deliver Results” principle don’t get sidetracked by obstacles or distractions; they stay committed to the mission and ensure their teams are aligned on the most important inputs. In *Big Bet Leadership*, we emphasize that most initiatives fail not due to a lack of vision but because of poor execution. Focusing on delivering results ensures that teams stay on course and adapt as necessary, while keeping an eye on the ultimate objective.
Moreover, delivering results is not just about hitting short-term targets—it’s about rising to the occasion and refusing to settle for less than what is possible. In the world of Big Bets, where the stakes are high and the challenges immense, leaders who deliver results inspire their teams to push beyond what they think is achievable. This relentless focus on execution ensures that even in the face of setbacks, leaders and teams continue to drive toward success with resilience and determination.
Amazon Leadership Principle — Deliver Results
At the end of the day, delivering results matters at Amazon. This simple fact, however, belies a wildly complex reality. These delivered results are neither arbitrary nor do they overemphasize revenue. Carefully crafted and thoroughly debated, this set of “controllable inputs” clearly ties the individual’s goals to those of the team, the business unit, the executive team, and the organization as a whole. Here are four subtle-but-critical lessons to help build a culture of accountability and pioneering based on Amazon’s mission to consistently “deliver results.”
- Focus on the Inputs
Ever struggled to achieve goals or felt that your goals were overly ambitious? After I left Amazon, I was a partner at a global consulting firm. As a partner, the goal was simple—develop and deliver new business every year with a specific revenue target directly tied to our compensation. Quality, mentoring, IP development, and assisting others were all important, but 90 percent of the goals and focus were on revenue. This simple approach possessed a certain elegance, yet most partners felt detached from the outcome because they did not have direct control. Instead, we controlled a wide variety of proven inputs, including client relationships, business development meetings, white papers, and how we developed and marketed our expertise inside and outside the firm, which would ultimately lead to the output: consulting projects and revenue. I focused on the inputs and advised other partners to do the same. If applied consistently, they should lead to the correct output.
Amazon has a deep belief in setting goals that stretch teams and individuals but defining them in a way that puts the team in control of hitting these lofty goals. This empowers teams and stretches them to great achievements. Of course, many of the goals have a direct customer experience component and rarely are they revenue-oriented. “Senior leaders that are new to Amazon are often surprised by how little time we spend discussing actual financial results or debating projected financial outputs,” wrote Bezos. “To be clear, we take these financial outputs seriously, but we believe that focusing our energy on the controllable inputs to our business is the most effective way to maximize financial outputs over time.”[1]
Amazon’s annual goal-setting and initiative review process hasn’t changed in many years. It begins in the fall and concludes early in the new year following the peak holiday quarter. These “lengthy, spirited, and detail-oriented” goal-setting sessions are designed to raise the bar on customer experience, operations and initiatives it will proceed on. In 2010, for example, the sessions produced 452 detailed goals, each with its own set of owners, deliverables, and targeted completion dates. These aren’t the only goals the teams set for themselves, but they are the ones that are most important to monitor. None of these goals are “low-hanging fruit.” Many can’t be achieved without assistance. What’s more, senior leadership reviews the status of each goal several times during the year, adding, removing, and modifying them as necessary. “Taken as a whole, the set of goals is indicative of our fundamental approach,” explains Bezos. “Start with customers and work backwards. Listen to customers, but don’t just listen to customers—also invent on their behalf. We can’t assure you that we’ll meet all of this year’s goals. We haven’t in past years. However, we can assure you that we’ll continue to obsess over customers. We have strong conviction that that approach—in the long term—is every bit as good for owners as it is for customers.”[2]
Intensely Debate and Coordinate
In 2020, I interviewed a fifteen-year Amazon leader for this book about the goal-setting process. Each annual goal required four multi-hour reviews before they could be submitted. The debate is a combination of clearly understanding what they are trying to achieve, understanding the “controllable input” to achieve that goal, and then setting a stretch but achievable target. These goals never have an “earning per share” and often don’t have other output financial metrics attached to them. Leaders who think like owners are crucial to this process because you don’t want people who prioritize short-term results at the expense of long-term enterprise value. When organizations prioritize output financial goals, they often sacrifice the big picture. As a result, it’s important to debate and coordinate annual goals more intensely than ever before.
Good Teams are Gritty
At Amazon, a stretch objective is called a “BHAG,” or “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.” Amazon empowers its teams with BHAGS. By removing all excuses as a fallback position, Amazon allows high-performing teams to overachieve and underperforming teams to fail, inevitably improving their performance. When the goals are clear, achievable, and within your control, good teams double-down, recommit, and overcome—regardless of challenges and obstacles. They have grit.
The Closed-Loop Management Process
Once you focus on controllable inputs, create SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), and set stretch initiatives for individuals and goals, you must commit to a closed-loop performance management approach. Amazon has had several different approaches to the performance review, including a system providing employees daily feedback from their peers. However, Amazon’s performance management philosophy is rooted in three principles:
1) A BIG difference exists between “A” and “B” performers. As a result, “A” performers receive a majority of the company’s compensation rewards, primarily in the form of stock.
2) Promotions are heavily scrutinized. They require multi-page written documents with hard evidence rationalizing the promotion. They must be debated and read all the way up the chain of command to the CEO. These promotion documents can also be audited to ensure claims are not inflated. Finally, every year, Amazon terminates five to eight percent of the organization for not reaching the required standards of excellence.
3) Live the leadership principles. Annual reviews factor in how well an employee “has lived up to the leadership principles.” This review metric requires employees to account for “how” they reached their goals while perpetuating and reinforcing the leadership principles as the company’s North Star. If you violate the leadership principles by failing to obsess over the customer, communicating vaguely, or failing to hire or develop a first-rate team or if you allow low standards, ignore details, or fail to “think big,” you won’t deliver the right results.
There is tremendous pressure to deliver results at Amazon. Being a pioneer doesn’t come easy. I think it’s the fourteenth principle to put the “end point” on it. Leaders have to get results the right way, but results matter—a lot.
Time to Deliver
The Amazon Leadership Principle “Deliver Results” is essential for ensuring Big Bets succeed. By focusing on key inputs, maintaining high standards, and overcoming setbacks with resilience, leaders drive the execution that transforms vision into reality. In the face of challenges, the ability to deliver results is what separates great leaders from the rest, ensuring that Big Bets not only get off the ground but achieve their full potential. Leaders who consistently deliver results inspire their teams to aim higher and achieve more.
John Rossman is a writer, strategy advisor, and keynote speaker. Have him inspire and teach your team.
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[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312510082914/dex991.htm
