Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

What Jeff is basically saying here in this letter is that the pedal is to the metal, forever: We can't have process as the foundation because it ossifies the organization! Be nimble to the rules of the game.

When translated however, that means you are either empowering your organization to change and make new processes at scale and speed, or you have whatever the default process of solving problems from scratch each time. It's the anarchist's dilemma. That is a tough organization to live under if you aren't built for that, and one that only a certain type of people can thrive in.

I mean the majority of people, leaders even, when they get to some level of success will put the brakes on and coast, doing exactly the things Jeff describes: building processes to take the cognitive load off of decision making and making life just slightly easier. They build processes for "efficiency", so that they don't have to go back and do all the hard work of understanding the problem from scratch each time. The problem though, as Jeff points out is that "The process" becomes an 80% solution to 80% of the problems it's applied to (leading to 36% failure rate).

So just think about how you could - for 23 straight years - recruit, retain and develop a cadre of managers, engineers, interns, staffers etc... that in the majority of cases fall into the mindset of constantly sprinting - basically an Olympic marathoner running a 5 min mile marathon. As a leader I admire that ability.

I responded that perhaps as a customer they shouldn't make me waste more of my time and instead forward the information that I had provided to their abuse department. Of course, they never responded after that. I'll never bother to report a security incident to them again. All because of "process". :-/

>Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This sounds really powerful but also like it might be open to abuse (for example degenerating into passive agressiveness/half commitment). Does anyone use something similar in their own workplace? Does it work?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14103818

Your manager will tell you the customer is the top priority, you will be told that the only person more important is you: the direct contact with the valuable customers.

Then he will publicly berate you for 15 minutes if your average handle time deviates from the last hour.

Your type of call is a golden goose. I get to "resolve" it and end it in 25 seconds which means I can take a 4 minute bathroom break instead of a 3 minute one.