Amazon updates its leadership principles
Amazon just announced a change to its leadership principles, on July 1, 2021, days before Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO. The company added two new principles to the existing 14, bringing the total to 16.
Readers of my blog know that the leadership principles function as a cheat sheet for the employees on the company values and are used in interviews as a way to gauge how a candidate will fit in at Amazon.
Both new principles relate to ideas Bezos wrote about in his final shareholder letter as Amazon CEO, that the original leadership principles insist on obsessing about the customer, but now the company needs to focus more on the welfare of its employees.
“Despite what we’ve accomplished, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for our employees’ success,” Bezos wrote. “We have always wanted to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company. We won’t change that. It’s what got us here. But I am committing us to an addition. We are going to be Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”
What are the two new leadership principles?
Fifteenth Amazon leadership principle: Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.
This new principle is related to principle #6, Hire and Develop the Best, but takes the ideas in #6 a few steps further. “Hire and Develop the Best” says that a leader will “recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others.”
The new principle expands the duties of a leader. According to the “Hire and Develop” principle, a leader was already supposed to care about an employee’s success and be working with high performers to grow their careers.
The new principle introduces the word “safe” which is a concept most relevant to the Level 1-3 employees, warehouse workers, drivers, and so on. These are the workers that complained during the pandemic that the company didn’t care about their health, and the workers most at risk for accidents at work.
The principle also introduces the word “diverse.” Many people had been calling for Amazon and other companies to hire more diverse employees. Instead of creating a new principle for diversity, they have added the idea into this principle.
The principle also introduces the word “just,” which the dictionary defines as “based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.” Morality, the difference between right and wrong, is now important for leaders at Amazon.
Sixteenth Amazon leadership principle: Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
We started in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.
This new principle also seems like a response to the immense criticism the company has gotten in recent years, and especially during the pandemic, that it’s bad for the communities where its employees live and bad for the environment.
This principle attempts to meet that narrative head on by, first and foremost, acknowledging the impact that Amazon has had and will continue to have on society at large. This impact is huge due to the company’s size and influence.
With this principle, Amazon is demanding from its leaders a recognition of the societal impact and insisting they build that consideration into their decision-making frameworks.
Accounting for these new principles in your interview prep
Familiarize yourself with these principles and expect to be asked about them in some way. For tips on the actual questions you might be asked for these principles, see my individual posts on each.