Thread by @ckindel

@jasoncrawford Let's talk "Mechanisms". As an ex-Amazonian you are well aware of this concept, but our mutual customers (followers) may not be.

Everyone has good intentions...

@jasoncrawford 2/ Everyone WANTS to do the right thing (e.g. read the doc sent out by email the night before).

But good intentions are never enough.

@jasoncrawford 3/ Sh*t doesn't get done based solely on good intentions. Change can't happen based only on good intentions.

What you need is a way to mechanize people's good intentions.

@jasoncrawford 4/ "Mechanisms" are the way.

A Mechanism is _complete processes_ that ensure things get done. A complete process is a 'virtuous cycle' that reinforces and improves itself as it operates.

@jasoncrawford 5/ Within a complete process is a _tool_. The tool is the structure that a leader (see Leadership Principles) creates in order to ensure sh*t gets done or change happens. The tool is what transforms a set of inputs into a set of desired outputs.

@jasoncrawford 6/ Next you need _Adoption_. Leaders cannot "do" anything without getting others to broadly adopt and implement mechanisms. So great leaders actively encourage and reinforce adoption of mechanisms.

@jasoncrawford 7/ But nothing's perfect. No mechanism is perfect. So leaders need to be able to see if a mechanism is being adopted and to understand if the use of the mechanism is leading towards the desired outputs. _Inspection_ requires leaders to *audit* the output and course correct.

@jasoncrawford 8/ Leaders use _audit_ mechanisms (yes, this gets recursive) to effectively dive deep into how the other mechanisms are working (or not) and drive improvements.

@jasoncrawford 9/ The best non-internal Amazon resource on Mechanisms I've found: …s-de-media.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/images/AWS_Sum…

@jasoncrawford 10/ Pithy recap:

Don't rely on good intentions. Instead invent complete processes based around a tool and drive adoption. Inspect and audit to improve over time.

@jasoncrawford 11/ What does this have to do with Jason's tweetstorm? The narrative review meeting is a mechanism. w/in Amazon it has been revised over time such that it ensures everyone is LITERALLY ON THE SAME PAGE w.r.t. a written document by ensuring everyone reads it carefully...

@jasoncrawford 12/ ... DURING THE MEETING.

This is why you should not send the document out the night before. Read it in the room. Because otherwise, you are relying on peoples good intentions (which are never enough).

#end