The Amazon Way: Amazon's 14 Leadership Principles

By: John Rossman, Tom Alberg - foreword

Narrated by: Jeff Cummings

Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

The 3rd edition of The Amazon Way is one of the rare business leadership books giving actionable insights for innovation and business growth to be the basis for your digital transformation gameplan. The Amazon Way translates Amazon's unique culture and management practices into insights and opportunities, as only an Amazon executive and expert advisor could do for the Amazon Leadership Principles giving listeners one of the essential business leadership books for the digital era.

Peppered with humorous and enlightening firsthand anecdotes with Jeff Bezos from the author’s career at Amazon, this revealing business guide is also filled with the valuable lessons that have served Jeff Bezos’ “everything store” so well - providing expert advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors alike.

The author was responsible for launching the Amazon Marketplace business and had accountability for the enterprises services business. Since leaving Amazon, Rossman has worked across every industry sector and with companies of all sizes to create business and product strategies, approaches to scale leadership, culture and innovation. It’s this combination of Amazon insider experience coupled with a vast portfolio of helping other businesses compete which make The Amazon Way a guide for anyone looking to compete in the digital era.

The 3rd edition has many new and updated sections. This includes a new foreword from Tom Alberg, managing partner at Madrona Venture Group. Tom was on the board of directors at Amazon for 23 years. A new preface is included suggesting a vital strategy for Amazon and the leadership teams for all companies.

The Amazon Way is on a short list of essential business leadership books and should be a key addition to business leadership programs to develop a culture of growth and innovation. If you are interviewing at Amazon or for current Amazon employees, The Amazon Way will be an invaluable asset for your success.

The Amazon Way doesn't just explain the Amazon Leadership Principles, but gives tools, mechanisms and atomic habits to create change in a team or business. The leadership principles and examples include customer obsession, long-term thinking, think big, working backwards and the future press release, bias for action, earn trust and free cash flow.

Praise for The Amazon Way

"In this new edition, John Rossman provides an updated, in-depth and invaluable view of the principles that are fueling Amazon's extraordinary business success. John's suggestion to add a new principle focused on the Golden Rule is a great one for every company, as, more than ever, we need business to serve the common good!" (Hubert Joly, former chairman and CEO of Best Buy, author The Heart of Business - Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism)

"In The Amazon Way, John Rossman brilliantly illuminates Amazon's secretive corporate culture, using HIS rare insider's perspective to show how Jeff Bezos has created unique systems that facilitate good decision making at all levels of his company" (Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound)

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 by John Rossman. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

A must read

This is one of the most insightful and detailed books written on Amazon’s leadership principles that can benefit you personally as a leader and professionally for your whole organization.

Principles to live by

Spent a lot of time on the first 8 principles which made the last 6 principles seemed rushed.

The Amazon Way

Great to hear about the practical application and the examples behind these principles. I’m relieved to know I’ve not been way off base in aspiring for a consistently high standard. Lots of lessons learned and ideas to put into practice. Great insights on the accountability framework and metrics, and ensuring you hire people who align with your company’s way of working

the breathing of the narrator is disturbing a

the books is okay. not too long. not too short but the annoying part is the fact that I could hear the narrator's breathing before he talks. It's so disturbing. It sounded like he is drowning and grasping for air.

As expected, a quick primer on Amazon’s culture

This book was delivered as I expected. I enjoyed hearing about how Bezos set down his rules and guiding practices for success. A good peek into Amazon’s culture, particularly the high (maybe rigid at times) expectations he set for group leaders.

The frugality factor was quite interesting to me. As in everyday life, Bezos is right to point out that his leaders’ frugality leads to self sufficiency and innovation.

In sum, good set of basic business principles for this grade A company! And made even better by the narrator, who read with clarity and good expression. While I knew going in this was a short listen, I would welcome a second book going into more “behind the scene” details and examples of how the business principles worked, and how actual problems were solved. This is my first audiobook about Amazon, I will also read others.

Fascinating, essential business reading.

This is direct, to the point, no b.s. Rather than bore you with rote memorization of principles, there are anecdotes from the author and former Amazon employees (this is the third edition, so it’s fairly to date). Unlike other books which are quite dull on this topic, the examples provided are vibrant and simple to understand. Highly recommended for anyone in business, at whatever age or stage.

Updated insights into Amazon

Well articulated insight from an Amazon executive who developed their third-party seller business. Provides history, context and examples to bring the Amazon Leadership Principles into clear focus.

No real insights here

As an Amazon employee, I bought this book to get a deeper understanding of the LPs from the point of view of someone very high up in the organization. How the LPs came to be, and how the "OGs" (Bezos, Jassy et al) implemented them in the early days. The good: there are some decent anecdotes here to illustrate each LP, and if you're the type that seeks inspiration, it might do the trick. The bad: many of these stories are already part of internal training, so I didn't really get much extra out of the book. It's as if the author took a bunch of company lore and packaged it for an external audience. I couldn't finish more than 3 chapters before getting bored and stopping.