Leadership principles are kool aid and PR. Culture is intentional and inherent. Which does Amazon care about more from an observation of their system in motion?
Do you not think leadership principles are inputs (even weak ones) into culture...?
Seems to me that'd be one of the first things that'd attract or deter a potential employee with optionality, which then of course does contribute to culture.
Actions are inputs, talk is cheap. Watch what people do, not what they say. Revealed intent. More reasonable to say "Our corporate culture is this, and we can demonstrate it in these ways." Edict vs observations.
In my humble opinion, Amazon has jumped the shark and is a worker juicer pretending it is Zappos. It'll keep throwing off cash, because there are customers and aggregate demand for retail and cloud service, and a never ending supply of workers waiting to be juiced, but that doesn't mean those leadership principles are the reason for the outcomes. Lots of people buying from Temu too, are their leadership principles why?
IIRC Amazon has sixteen leadership principles, and people are meant to know them. They even have their "bar raisers" who participate in recruitment and such to evangelize this.
I'd challenge most Amazonians to close their eyes, and see just how many of the sixteen principles they can recall.
If you can't recall them all, how can you live them all?
Not to mention, Amazon has a fairly smug, superior attitude to them. Some quotes from "bar raisers" talking about life at Amazon:
> "We don't expect that you use leadership principles at your current job"
> "more than any company I’ve worked with or heard about, we use those principles daily"
> at other companies, employees don't "focus on the customer as their customer", instead "their customer is their boss ... and they're focused on doing what they're told".
My favorite:
> "I know I’ve certainly referenced a leadership principle or two while talking about parenting techniques."
Wow.
Not to mention you could question how much Amazon as a whole follows them.
> "strive to be earth's best employer"
May want to listen to complaints from your warehouse and delivery employees more, at the least.
> "The thing we’re looking for is that you consider and care about the customer. We’ve regularly made decisions at Amazon which lowered profit/sales because it was the right thing to do for customers."
I'd love to hear an example or two of these.
> "Earn Trust"
Sure, you can trust this WANGXIJGYA power adapter or this GHURBLSEYHI toaster oven, and no-one ever got counterfeit goods from Amazon as a result of us co-mingling products. (Separating out suppliers could be done, but it would reduce profits/efficiency... but I thought Amazon was okay with that if it was "for the customer...").
> IIRC Amazon has sixteen leadership principles, and people are meant to know them. They even have their "bar raisers" who participate in recruitment and such to evangelize this.
Not true. Everyone at Amazon is expected to know the leadership principles in the sense that everyone at Amazon is expected to act without guidance and make decisions in line with the company's best interests.
Everyone at Amazon, including those who participates in recruitment, is expected to operate using leadership principles. Each recruiter is tasked with evaluating all candidates based on leadership principles. Bar raisers are experienced amazonians who facilitate the evaluation and decision-making process by driving discussions on the candidates. As the name implies, the role of bar-raiser is to raise the bar.
> If you can't recall them all, how can you live them all?
This is nonsense. It's like complaining that no one can drive because don't recall all road rules. Absurd, specially in light of one of those leadership principles being "strive to be the Earth's best employer". As if low-level grunts have a say.
The LPs are pretty laughable. From the outside it's completely obvious that at least some are not followed in any way that a reasonable person would interpret them. You mentioned a few, such as their supposed "customer obsession." How does building a global panopticon align with that? Well, obviously: It doesn't mean care about the customer as a person, it means be obsessed with driving as many purchases as possible, because a purchase is what defines a customer. Irrefutable and noble customer obsession.
