I worked at Amazon in Distribution operations management in the very early days(1997-2001). Culture in the distribution centers(now called fulfillment centres) was definitely one of no excuses performance. I take responsibility for my role in how the culture evolved. In the early days, we were hiring like crazy, trying to “average up” with every single early hire, while trying to keep the customer happy with orders b…
The real problem is that the variation of human performance is so large. Variation of performance between individuals can be addressed by firing the weak. But an individual’s performance from day-to-day and over the long term also varies greatly.
The incentives to raise performance standards to unsustainable levels is enormous. How could Amazon’s robots (and managers) resist the temptation?