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10 tweets,
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Today's unproductive tweetstorm is about my least favorite Amazonian leadership principle.
For context, Amazon has 14 leadership principles that drive decision making: amazon.jobs/en/principles (1/10)
For context, Amazon has 14 leadership principles that drive decision making: amazon.jobs/en/principles (1/10)
Every Amazon employee is expected to embody these; their interviews are built around them.
(Whether this model or these specific principles make sense or not is out of scope for this thread. Don't @ me, blame them.) (2/10)
(Whether this model or these specific principles make sense or not is out of scope for this thread. Don't @ me, blame them.) (2/10)
Now, my least favorite LP. No, it's not Frugality. If you want to ship people around the world on a 15 hour flight in cargo class, go for it. I'd laugh and not go, but that's me. (3/10)
No, my least favorite is "Leaders are right. A lot." (4/10)
My problem with it is that it would manifest as "Leaders *tell* people they're right. A lot." (5/10)
The reason this one rubs against me so strongly is that most times I've "been right," I started off convinced that I was missing something key. (6/10)
If I was being graded (or felt I was being graded, which is a difference without distinction) on "being right" I'd have kept my mouth shut at some of the most pivotal moments of my career. (7/10)
But it goes well beyond me. Assume you're someone who isn't a cis-het white dude with two decades of experience and the boundless wellspring of undeserved self-confidence that imbues. What then? (8/10)
You're encouraging people to pipe down precisely when they should be speaking up. And that has a compounding effect that leads nowhere good. (9/10)
I do not nor have I ever worked at Amazon; it's entirely possible I'm misreading how that LP is applied. But out of all fourteen that's the one that invariably makes me recoil.
(10/10)
(10/10)
