Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
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Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
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Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#2Bezos spoke at Startup School last year, and I think a lot of people were struck by how aware he was about very technical details at Amazon (Web Services, specifically). What impressed me most, however, was that when one of his employees gave a waffly non-answer to a question from the audience, he called him on it (subtly and politely), and made the guy commit to a real answer to the question...and made him personally responsible for it (with a comment along the lines of, "You can email him for that information and he'll get it to you.").
It was interesting to see, and it struck me as one of the things about Bezos that can explain how he has been so successful with a "bookstore on the web" when so many other "X on the web" concepts failed. You can't control every customer interaction in a company that size, but in that moment he established a precedent for that particular group of employees (probably folks who don't deal with customers a lot, since they were tech folks from AWS).
What I'm saying is that Bezos has certainly drunk some kind of obsessively customer-focused Kool-Aid, and I think I would take any opportunity I could to learn from him.
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#3Kind of off-topic, but does Yahoo (or is it the publisher?) really think that interjecting ads in the middle of a narrative actually makes people want to click on the link? Do they really not know the least about human psychology? Most people who get to that point in the article have an inertial interest in finishing, and also a bias towards skimming over any contextual discontinuity.
There are contrast effects that pull you towards them, and those that are obstacles people are happy to ignore. This is the second kind.
And, I should add, what works on television (ads in the middle) doesn't work in the same way for text. There is a natural ebb and flow of attention in a TV narrative,
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#4[deleted]
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#5Great talk by Bezos on how the internet is more like electricity than the gold rush:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_we...
This is similar to his Startup School talk (http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/jeff-bezos), but perhaps offers a bit more perspective.
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#6Bezos spoke at Startup School last year, and I think a lot of people were struck by how aware he was about very technical details at Amazon (Web Services, specifically). What impressed me most, however, was that when one of his employees gave a waffly non-answer to a question from the audience, he called him on it (subtly and politely), and made the guy commit to a real answer to the question...and made him personall…
There are many parallels between Bezos and Jobs. Like you mentioned, Bezos is great at both macro- and micro-perspectives of his business.
Amazon didn't win because they were one of the first out of the gate, it's because Bezos has been obsessive (like Jobs) about the quality of his product.
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#7Has everyone forgotten this? http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sect...
Seems like Jeff could do with getting down to the distribution floor again!
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#8Bezos spoke at Startup School last year, and I think a lot of people were struck by how aware he was about very technical details at Amazon (Web Services, specifically). What impressed me most, however, was that when one of his employees gave a waffly non-answer to a question from the audience, he called him on it (subtly and politely), and made the guy commit to a real answer to the question...and made him personall…
That's interesting. The thing that stuck with me from that talk was when he was asked about Google App Engine. His answer was that Amazon has had a policy for years of not talking about competitors, not because they want to be evasive but because they don't want to take their focus off customers. Attention paid to what competitors are doing is attention not paid to what customers need next. I was deeply impressed by that.
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#9Has everyone forgotten this? http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sect... Seems like Jeff could do with getting down to the distribution floor again!
I hadn't seen that. Amazon is a puzzle to me. They do so many things right, yet I keep hearing that it is not a good place to work.
Re: Jeff Bezos and Root Cause Analysis
#10That's only four why's, and it doesn't address why the employee suddenly needed a table.
Which means it may not be the "root cause", either, and the offered "more tables" solution may not help.