Message from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Strengthening our culture and teams (Category Management)
Interesting. note Amazon CEO on strengthening the culture of the company and teams. In a nutshell, the note seems interesting to large organizations that have recruited a lot of people and adopted a hybrid approach to work during the pandemic. Amazon Announces Performance and Makes Decisions
- Reducing levels in the organizational structure by reducing the percentage of managers in relation to the individual contributor
- Moving to a five-day work week at the office instead of three days at the office and two days remotely
If you look at the notes in more detail, Andy notes that some of the established areas are developing effectively Stores, AWS, Prime Video, as well as some new ones: GenAI, Kuiper, Healthcare. In this development, the culture of the company plays an important role and the maintenance and development of culture is a top priority for top managers. Andy says, "We want to operate like the world's largest startup." -- Constantly inventing for customers -- Strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it’s a race!) -- High ownership -- Fast decision-making -- Scrappiness and frugality -- Deeply-connected collaboration -- Shared commitment to each other
The top team had two questions they've been thinking about lately.
- Do we have the right org structure to drive the level of ownership and speed we desire?
- Are we set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other (and our culture) to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business that we can?
Both questions led to ideas on how to improve organizational structure and collaboration.
1) Organizational structure With regards to the organization, Andy says that over the years of continuous growth and hiring of smart and skilled people, many managers were hired to organize work processes, which led to side effects of the kind.
- Pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings
- A longer line of managers feeling like they need to review a topic before it moves forward
- Owners of initiatives feeling less like they should make recommendations because the decision will be made elsewhere
- ...
But these team structure decisions were usually two-way doors. (reversible)So now it is decided to change the structure in the direction of flatter. The target looks something like this. So, we’re asking each s-team organization to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.
This reorganization, done correctly, should lead to the following results: n
- Increase our teammates’ ability to move fast
- Clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership
- Drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business)
- Decrease bureaucracy
- Strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day. Andy even started a special Bureaucracy Mailbox, where you can send examples of bureaucracy and unnecessary processes.
2) Effective collaboration Regarding the effectiveness of collaboration, Andy says that By early January, all Amazon employees will have to return to their usual five-day office hours. (If there are no mitigating conditions: a child is sick, an emergency at home, you are on the way to partners or customers, or you are not in a safe place.). This is because working together in offices is more effective.
We continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant ... We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another
#Management #Leadership #Processes #Bigtech #Software