What I learned from ‘The Everything Store’ book written by Brad Stone.
It is about Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
When a person’s life story is told, it is the series of choices they made which shows what they were.
Need to:
●care about the business more than anyone
●understand every detail of the businesses
●view the competitive landscape like a chess master.
●be obsessive about pleasing customers and providing services like free shipping. Be customer focused.
●want to push the boundaries of what is possible
● react harshly to efforts that do not meet rigorous standards
People want:
1st, Price
2nd, Convenience, such as how quickly and easily they get the product or service.
3rd, To feel close to who they are buying from, as the company can affect the purchaser.
Speak simply and positively in all customer communications, this normally means crossing out loads of words that have been written for them.
Watch for every small cost, for example even employee parking and snacks. Need to be frugal, as these savings can be passed on to make things cheaper for the customer.
Need to be able to focus on things.
An entrepreneur does not make the future. They make things that work in what the future is and so are successful.
Avoid luxuries like lifts, doing the work yourself, like taking the stairs instead, makes you stronger.
A leader must devote full attention to people when chatting to them and never give the impression they are hurried or distracted. However also are careful not to be let things get led away from the
Be genuinely:
● customer centric
●long term orientated
●like to invent
Very few companies have all 3 elements.
Most companies are not those things, are focused on competition, rather than the customer. They also want things that will pay dividends on 2 or 3 years and if they don’t, they nove on to something else. They prefer to be close followers, than inventors because it is safer.
Jeff Bezos is hyper intelligent.
Coming up with a business idea is often a messy process with no single ‘aha’ moment. The reality often does not have as much clarity.
Must be keen on thinking about things and be very determined.
Focus on the task, not what other people are thinking of you.
Try and learn lessons from everyone you meet.
Quickly abandon old notions, when better ones present themselves.
Recruitment needs to pro actively advertise jobs to the best people out there, in an unapologetically elitist manner. Then invite them to an interview, where they are asked to solve really difficult problems.
Try competitors products as a customer, to find their weaknesses that you can improve upon with your service.
People start their own business as want to be a true owner of the business, with the equity and massive financial rewards.
People want to be employed as lucrative and comfortable. They are scarred of loosing that.
Before start a business, do revenue projections in Excel, even if they later prove to be radically inaccurate.
A person may think that other people will not want to buy the product, even they will be converted when they see other people buy it.
Amazon 2
Amazon does not make money when they sell things, they make money when they help customers make purchase decisions. This means reviews saying which products are rubbish.
The original idea for Amazon was that someone would be allowed to make a profit as an intermediary. The key question is: Who will get to be that middleman?’
Need employees to be high IQ brainiacs.
Hiring only the brightest and best, is the key to a company’s success. A company lives or dies on that one.
Every time hire someone, that person should raise the bar for the next hire, so that the overall talent pool is always improving.
A sales person has to be articulate, convinced themselves and talk with conviction about what product will do.
It is one thing to have a good idea, it is another thing for a person to be able to execute it. Track record of a person is the best indicator.
At interview ask problem solving questions that test the quality of a candidate’s thinking e.g. ‘How many gas stations in the United States?’
A site must have writers and editors to create editorial content, that makes it the most trustworthy and authoritative source of information on the subject, that people come back to for, in it’s own right.
Editorial content creates the shopping experience, comfort and trust in the site.
People like and want to be involved with people who are fun, exude energy and do things.
Staff get excited and enthusiastic about growing a company to be big.
To do things a better way, must have low regard for the usual way of doing things.
Caution and respect are the best way to meet with a business rival.
With retail, cash flow is helped by customers paying before, or when get the goods, but retailer pays suppliers much later. Use this cash to fund expansion.
Focus on and be concerned about customers, not competitors, as customers send the money, not competitors.
Be able to laugh at your disasters and mistakes.
Find people who have worked at the best competitors, so they can create that stuff for you. If at first they refuse to join you, try and try again.
To entice people to join you, find what they are interested in that their current employer does not do eg. ecommerce, then if you will give it importance, they will want to join you so they are doing that thing.
Put huge efforts into courting top people to join your company.
When a business grows, the people who were in top positions, may not be the best to be top anymore. They are not able to manage a bigger operation, the company can now attract better people etc. So they have to go to side positions. They normally then get frustrated and leave, as is like watching their child move, to be with another family.
Great engineers may not be able to manage a team, so useless when the company grows.
Barnes and Noble failed with online business compared to Amazon because:
●Not willing to lose money in what they saw as a small part of their business.
●Did not put their most resourceful employees on it, as believed it would take sales away from their stores.
●Distribution geared towards large shipments of books to physical stores and not small amounts to customers. This also led to long, painful and full of errors customer service.
People have different traits. Jeff Bezos said ‘Physically, I’m a chicken. Mentally, I’m bold’.
He believes in being bold. Bold and not timid, doing investments where decent probability of getting a leadership advantage.
Some investments will pay off, others will not, they learn valuable lessons in either case.
Decisions based on long term prospects of boosting free cash flow and growing market share, rather than short term profitability.
Metrics:
1st, metrics that indicate market leadership: customer and revenue growth, degree that customers continue to purchase on a repeat basis, strength of the brand.
Invest to expand and leverage customer base, brand and infrastructure to create an enduring franchise.
Focus on your own business, not investing in and working on lots of other companies.
Be strictly frugal on all daily operations, executives fly coach class etc.
Pay for things with cash, be frugal in giving away equity.
Hire the best in each field, continually court them to work for you, until they eventually say yes.
Jeff Bezos decides and approves things and not have to go to anyone else for approval.
Get staff from another related company that is best in it’s field. Then try and get those staff to use their connections in social events etc. to stealthily recruit more staff from that company.
Sam Walton, the Wal Mart founder ‘It’s all a matter of attitude and the capacity to constantly study and question the management of the business.’
Make sure company does not become inactive and slow moving like an institution.
As a toy retailer, have to predict a year in advance what will sell and in what quantities, then order it from manufacturers. Any stock left after Christmas, is sold off for almost nothing. So need specialist buyers who really can predict the toy market.
In every negotiation and discussion with staff, suppliers etc. make it like the end customer, has a seat at the table. This is so bring up and put focus on their side and how things willing effect them.
Negotiations are long, involved and excruciating, but it leads to the bits where the profit margin is.
If a company always stays focused on the customer, it will always be fine, even during tough times. Must be focused on the experience that the customer has using your service.
Get a big well known and wanted zeitgeist item, sell it at a loss, to gain pr and customers who will be so happy they hopefully stay loyal and buy other things in the future. This needs courage, bravery and might un nerve senior executives as costs so much, but is needed to stay ahead of competitors.
Executives told must think like an owner of the business. To make it work in practice, asked after they make decisions, ‘Is that what an owner of the business would choose?’
For customer services they track:
1, time an employee spends on phone with a customer
2, phone calls and emails sent by customers per order
And aims to reduce both.
Aim is that self help tools means customers never need to call or email at all.
Executives have to prove their performance and statements with figures and statistics.
An executive should do mystery shopper tests with all parts of the business eg. make a mystery customer service call. Make sure quality matches the performance figures given by executives.
Add rankings wherever can as people want to be top, make these rankings transparent. Eg show customers and sellers sales volume ranking for all products, each stock pickers speeds in warehouse. People will be addicted to the game.
A new business that fails is not a mistake, it is an experiment, which will probably go into other experiments that each evolve into other ideas later on.
Need to try out ideas that are outlandish, even if employees think they are ‘fever dreams’.
Customers want to get things immediately and this is a big challenge and new ideas on how to do things.
Staff will always see reasons, why should not try something new.
An interesting clever and capable person you know, probably knows other such people. Use that connection to find out and meet other people they know, that could be useful.
Need to be:
•shrewd
•self aware
•know how far can push something
When looking for managers, if they are very versatile, intelligent, move quickly and get big things done. It is more important than if they have experience in the industry the company works in.
A boss must have truly high standards that staff have to meet, expressing they are needed, or will be beaten by competitors and not settle for less.
For a company to be frugal, the boss must also do it himself with his own company expenses.
Amazon values:
•customer obsession
•frugality
•bias for action (even if does not work, had taken a risk and been resourceful?))
•ownership
•high bar for talent
Every company as it grows begins to compromise their standards in recruitment to get the people it needs. A senior person good at hiring, must do the final interview each time to ensure that does not happen.
Has to be a fast pace of hard work and bug work loads. Some will resist and leave as not what they want. The company accepts that ‘if cannot excel and put everything into it, this might not the place for you’.
They do the warehousing so they master everything that touches the customer experience.
Do everything you can for a problem not to let down a customer.
If a person is an astute listener, they can get people to confront their own shortcomings. This can also enable them as an adjudicater, to resolve tensions between people.
A company where bosses are focused on saleries and perks, not the business, will not do well.
When loads of money in a business, or from investors, easy to have a fever of reckless binges, spending on investments that will not pay back.
During hard economic climates, conviction, improvisation, discipline, efficiency and eliminating waste helps a company survive.
Hard economic times help companies get creative in improving efficiency, as they have to.
Suppliers will demand shorter payment times, if they think the company might go bust, so not be able to pay them. Suppliers may need a presentation of your finances to be reassured.
Money is made by:
•building a lasting company
•learning from mistakes
•A company not being based on the industry it is in, but with the abstract concept of starting with the customer and working backwards.
People may not like something as it changes their own identity, so want it to fail so that will not happen.
As a toy retailer, have to predict a year in advance what will sell and in what quantities, then order it from manufacturers. Any stock left after Christmas, is sold off for almost nothing. So need specialist buyers who really can predict the toy market.
In every negotiation and discussion with staff, suppliers etc. make it like the end customer, has a seat at the table. This is so bring up and put focus on their side and how things willing effect them.
Negotiations are long, involved and excruciating, but it leads to the bits where the profit margin is.
If a company always stays focused on the customer, it will always be fine, even during tough times. Must be focused on the experience that the customer has using your service.
Get a big well known and wanted zeitgeist item, sell it at a loss, to gain pr and customers who will be so happy they hopefully stay loyal and buy other things in the future. This needs courage, bravery and might un nerve senior executives as costs so much, but is needed to stay ahead of competitors.
Executives told must think like an owner of the business. To make it work in practice, asked after they make decisions, ‘Is that what an owner of the business would choose?’
For customer services they track:
1, time an employee spends on phone with a customer
2, phone calls and emails sent by customers per order
And aims to reduce both.
Aim is that self help tools means customers never need to call or email at all.
Executives have to prove their performance and statements with figures and statistics.
An executive should do mystery shopper tests with all parts of the business eg. make a mystery customer service call. Make sure quality matches the performance figures given by executives.
Each person in charge of a different section eg. Children’s books.
Should have one page for each product so is an authoritive product catalogue that is useful in it’s own right as a catalogue. It explains product once in one listing that goes to one page, then choices of sellers in that page. Not lots of listings, each seperate listing from each seller, goes to seperate page from each different seller.
If someone else on Amazon marketplace sells the same product for cheaper than Amazon, let them do it and then Amazon figure out how they are able to do it.
Staff, suppliers etc will always say is unfair if something else comes out that is cheaper or better than them. They will try to find reasons to try and stop this new rival thing, even if they are not true. Even if upsets other staff in the business,, still have to do it.
At Wal Mart the world’s biggest retailer, to be frugal even top executives stay at cheap hotel chains.
Walmart sees advertising and pricing as two ends of the same thing. They spend a small percentage of their turnover on advertising, because they spend that money on reducing prices. The marketing strategy is their pricing strategy, of everyday low pricing.
During rapid expansion, very easy to over staff things.
Costco business model:
•value trumps everything
▪is about customer loyalty
•value is why customers will go to their strange store locations
•mark up everything 14%, even if could get more. Wall Street always want them to raise prices on higher margin categories, but they will not.
•yearly membership fee makes all of their gross profit and is one time pain for customers, but re inforces concept of prices cannot find elsewhere such as tv $200 cheaper than anywhere else.
•has no need to advertise due to their low prices
•huge numbers of suppliers will not supply them as they sell so cheap, but sales volumes, they pay their bills on time and keep their promises, so eventually they will.
Make sure none of your products have higher prices than elsewhere.
Some retailers work out how to charge more, others work out how to charge less. Amazon are the second.
A company has to decide what it is great at.
Self reinforcing loop, like a flywheel that gets quicker and quicker:
1,low prices
2, more customer visits
3,more sales volumes
4, more commission paying sellers attracted to the site
5, Get more from fixed costs like fulfillment centres and web servers.
6, Can lower costs further
7, Back to point 1
To test an advertising medium, advert itself etc. Need to stop it running in an area, to see how well the ad actually works and compare where ad does and does not run.
Savings in advertising, goes into improved customer experience, which leads to more customers from word of mouth. This accelerates the flywheel.
Seperate customers:
•time sensitive pay for free shipping
•non time sensitive get free delivery.
Airlines seperate consumer from business customers by who is staying at their destination on a Saturday night. They charge each one differently.
Discounts for ordering more, such as free shipping for orders over a certain amount, encourages customers to buy more.
Working for a boss with high standards is hard, but people in hindsight will be amazed on what they had achieved.
Staff who are not good are rejected, good staff are asked to do all they can.
Exit interviews with staff are important and dine privately with the Jeff Bezos. Make it a nice chat with people who leave. However must fully enforce non compete clauses, if executives go to rival businesses.
Focus in business goals that will be long term like unlimited selection, not short term cash generation things, however lucrative.
The editorial dept gives a human touch to the pages on the site. Uses clever and entertaining writing, plus intuition in what to promote.
The site’s software recommends other things customer might like based on their previous purchases and what they have looked it.
However the software out performed the editorial and writing dept, so it was closed down.
Then came software that did automatically generated recommendations and a standard layout, so no people needed.
Adopted children can have a very high need to prove themselves and be successful.
Need a tireless work ethic, which he got from his parents.
Need to be totally and incredibly focused and determined on what are doing.
Need to value self-reliance, resourcefulness and hate inefficiency. Try everything, nothing cannot do, although must not push it too far.
It is harder to be kind than clever.
Need to be able to be tough, but also sweet and loyal.
To achieve things, need to be self disciplined.
Once decide what want, work hard for it.
Need to be very creative.
Parents need to nurture a child’s creativity.
When teenager knew needed to be wealthy to create his personal goals, such as saving humanity with orbiting space station human colonies, with earth as a nature reserve.’
Technology, patience and long term thinking pays off.
Amazon’s guiding philosophy ‘Step by step, steady progress towards seemingly impossible goals will win the day. Setbacks are temporary. Naysayers are best ignored.’
When just selling books on the site and raising more money from investors, he did not tell anyone including investors, his secret plans which were to eventually sell everything on the site. This is probably because people would have thought it too was much to achieve and not believable. He does not tell people his bigger next stage goals.
Company gets bigger it outgrows it’s internal structures and so:
•more complicated
•harder to keep everyone co ordinated and moving quickly
•interdependent divisions waste time co ordinating with each other
Themes like ‘Get Big Fast’, or ‘Get Our House in Order’ etc. help get people in company to go in right direction.
To sort out their distribution sytems:
•brought in scientists and engineers, not retail distribution veterans
•hired all of the 10 smartest peoole they knew
•used maths and algorithms to work out where and when to stock products, how most efficiently put combine customers’ orders into a single box etc.
•computer works out each fulfilment centre’s demand, excess capacity and backlogs, then passes the order to the correct one.
•carefully track metrics like, shipments each fulfilment centre received, how many orders shipped out, how many not shipped, how big is backlog and why, per unit cost of packing and shipping each item, number and contents of trucks waiting to drop off and deliver things etc. Conference each day, where managers reports these figures and must have them ready before the meetings.
•gave mistakes serious names so taken seriously
•each year must reduce defects and increase productivity
Toyota lean manufacturing philosophy: •Company rationalise every expense in terms of value it creates for customers.
•Workers pull red cord and stop all production on the floor if they find a defect.
If a company needs more communication to avoid chaos, means things not working in a close organic way. Need to work out how teams can communicate and co ordinate less, so not use up time to do this.
Adding manpower to complex projects delays progress, as needs more time and money spent on communication. So teams no bigger than 10 for each problem.
Need to question the orthodoxies in every industry and process. Be critical and throw around crazy ideas of how can do things better.
To solve problems and work out solutions, a CEO has to be able to properly work on shop floor with workers and managers.
Software designed for similar business models, may have serious shortcomings when used for yours.
Amazon goes with staff ideas when they are based on principles, maths, patience and tenacity.
The CEO needs to roam the business looking for defects, flaws in the company’s systems and culture.
Reward employees who identify activities that are beaurocratic and wasteful. Also award that helps company do things to lower price to customers. These help re inforce the values within the company.
People in business need to know that running a business is hard, is not a place to go to retire.
A company cannot make a good decision about a feature or product, without knowing precisely how it would be communicated to the world and what the hallowed customer would make of it.
Steve Jobs was known for the clarity of his insights about what the customer wanted.
Need to be able to be charming and have great humour in public, but in private also able to do very firm discipline with staff.
Things that cause disciplinary action:
•not have right answer
•trying to bluff right answer
•take credit for someone else’s work
•exhibited a whiff of internal politics
•any uncertainty or frailty in the heat of battle
Any bullshit, or making stuff up is the end of someone’s employment.
Stress to people if their work:
•should be A team, not the B team. Spending time with team staff, are a waste of the CEO’s time.
•if there is nothing interest in their plans for the business
•how if not brilliant are letting the CEO down
•if something is stupid
•if the CEO does not like something
A CEO has to be good at allocating capital, manpower and make hyper rational business decisions. Also needs to be focused on improving customer service and the company’s performance. There must be no tolerance of stupidity, even accidental stupidity. As a result people have to be expendable.
Need to care and be passionate about it, so will be angry if goes wrong, or is not brilliant.
Must have plans in place for emergency scenarios, if things fail with service delivery.
Make sure when negotiating with a supplier, have some business with a second supplier. So when negotiating with the first supplier, really can immediately stop using them and are not bluffing.
Business is Darwinian survival!
Start an online marketplace, bring retailers in, watch what they do and what they sell, understand it, then get into selling that thing yourself.
Do not be bound by the old rules of an industry.
Even small things, like being able to say delivery date, helps with marketing strategy.
Amazon Prime yearly subscription for free 2 day delivery, $79 small enough people will try it, large enough that people will not shop elsewhere which was it’s purpose.
Amazon Prime launched on guts and experience of knowing would change behaviour to bigger orders and in new categories, even though financial analysis said would be too expensive to provide the free two day shipping.
It fed the self propelling flywheel of customers spend more, volumes increase, can negotiate lower shipping prices which would fund Prime and lead to lower prices for customers and so more customers.
Amazon
•Customers addicted to ordering and getting free 2 day delivery
▪Made most of it so ordered more
▪Only profitable once Amazon could ship entire order in one package
Unpopular with staff for first few years,
•worried would force them to do his other pet projects
•it’s estimated losses
•took a few years to show it was a success
Staff kept on dropping promotions for it and Jeff had to closely track it to ensure they promoted it.
Putting fulfilment centre’s where few other food jobs, let Amazon get away with exploiting staff. However theft was high.
Employee delinquency controlled by point system for late arrival etc.6 points and were let go and staff told system before they started and no second chances.
To prevent unionisation:
•Amazon listened to staff complaints to combat possible unionisation.
•Made it clear that unionisation would not be tolerated.
•High staff turnover made it hard to organise unionisation of workers.
•When 4 day German strike, Amazon would not negotiate with the union.
•Biggest is Amazon will fire people, eg. closed down call centre and say for another reason, but staff know is because they wanted to unionise. Will even fire people if technically not legal and then staff member has to fight to get job back.
•Customers addicted to ordering and getting free 2 day delivery
▪Made most of it so ordered more
▪Only profitable once Amazon could ship entire order in one package
Unpopular with staff for first few years,
•worried would force them to do his other pet projects
•it’s estimated losses
•took a few years to show it was a success
Staff kept on dropping promotions for it and Jeff had to closely track it to ensure they promoted it.
Putting fulfilment centre’s where few other food jobs, let Amazon get away with exploiting staff. However theft was high.
Employee delinquency controlled by point system for late arrival etc.6 points and were let go and staff told system before they started and no second chances.
To prevent unionisation:
•Amazon listened to staff complaints to combat possible unionisation and
•Made it clear that unionisation would not be tolerated.
•High staff turnover made it hard to organise unionisation of workers.
•When 4 day German strike, Amazon would not negotiate with the union.
•Biggest is Anazon will fire people, eg. closed down call centre and say for another reason, but staff know is because they wanted to unionise. Will even fire people if technically not legal and then staff member has to fight to get job back.
Institutions normally always say no to unorthodox moves by saying no to things. However an entrepreneur needs to be able to do a series of improbable, expensive and riskey bets. Needs to be able invent ways of making money
Jeff Bezos can quickly understand complex new computer algorithms. Also how people work in warehouses etc.
To help develop its search algorithm, the Amazon website collected a vast trove of customer data, from the moment it opened for business.
Need to open development centres where the best pools of technical talent are. Here small teams work on isolated projects, so have energy and agility of a startup, while minimising the need for communication with the larger company.
They are world class for customers, employees not so much and suppliers not at all. In the end they believe it is customers that matter. However if go too far, the company will be very damaged by loosing best staff to rival companies.
They do all they can to make sellers compete on the site.
Amazon is a business with data at ut’s heart and it’s systems are built around that.
Automated tools so buyers order merchandise based on dozens of variables like:
•seasonal trends
•past purchasing behaviors
•how many customers searching for particular product at certain times
•etc.
Bots scan rival sites and lower Amazon’s prices if they are ever more expensive. Ensured Amazon always matched the lowest prices elsewhere, offline or online.
System held buyers accountable for:
•Products being in stock
•Prices competitive
System showed if a person was not doing this and Amazon disciplined the buyer.
The person in charge must pay attention to and not allow dramas and political disputes within a company to fester. One example is if someone else is jealous of another staff member.
Do you can to hire the brightest minds in each field.
Look for bottlenecks in processes, so can remove them.
Even if faster than every other company, still try and go faster.
So third party developers can be as productive as possible with the API, they give them as many of Amazon’s things as possible through it. Amazon could never imagine what people will create, so the bits are broken down into the smallest possible tiny pieces so developers can create new combinations and things. Eg. Payments, messaging, bandwidth etc.
They are world class for customers, employees not so much and suppliers not at all. In the end they believe it is customers that matter. However if go too far, the company will be very damaged by loosing best staff to rival companies.
They do all they can to make sellers compete on the site.
Amazon is a business with data at ut’s heart and it’s systems are built around that.
Automated tools so buyers order merchandise based on dozens of variables like:
•seasonal trends
•past purchasing behaviors
•how many customers searching for particular product at certain times
•etc.
Bots scan rival sites and lower Amazon’s prices if they are ever more expensive. Ensured Amazon always matched the lowest prices elsewhere, offline or online.
System held buyers accountable for:
•Products being in stock
•Prices competitive
System showed if a person was not doing this and Amazon disciplined the buyer.
The person in charge must pay attention to and not allow dramas and political disputes within a company to fester. One example is if someone else is jealous of another staff member.
Do you can to hire the brightest minds in each field.
Look for bottlenecks in processes, so can remove them.
Even if faster than every other company, still try and go faster.
So third party developers can be as creative as possible with the API, they give them as many of Amazon’s things as possible through it. Amazon could never imagine what people will create, so the bits are broken down into the smallest possible pieces so developers can create new combinations and things . Eg. Payments, messaging, bandwidth etc. The smaller, more simpler and primative the bits, the more that can be rearranged.
Even set up in a different country if that is where the tech talent is, if a talented staff member wants to move to the home country, get them to set up a development have there to build a project.
The leader must have a very clear vision of where the project will eventually go to and be. Also how to do it must be figured out in advance, not as the project goes a long.
The leader who is selected for a project, must be someone that the staff in that project think is competent to lead them.
A company needs to try doing daring things, in order to be great. However institutions tend to say no, when decisions like this come along.
Important to be a good, persistent and tenacious negotiator, even for things that are a small amount of your net worth. Keep going with a negotation and never give up, it can take months.
If there is a decision that staff are not happy with, if the CEO says that he or she will take responsibility for it and the outcome of doing it that way, the staff will be happy to proceed.
Create a company with the advantage of a low cost structure, so can survive in a low margin business.
Amazon expects staff to do impossible missions, to impossibly high standards, on a shoestring budget.
Software needs to be designed so that unsophisticated people can use it, such as grandmothers etc. Eg. needs to be pre set up to fully use, automatically connect to other devices etc.
If a new technology or product that the market will move to, is less profitable and will destroy and overtake your old very profitable business. Better that you bring it out, than someone else does. To do this need to set up new autonomous organisations, charged with building new and independent businesses around the disruptive technology. Those new seperate organisations, will be happy to do things that kill the old business. Those businesses have to make it sound alluring, to attract the brightest and best talent. Each business must do 1 thing with total focus and aspire to be the best.
A new product idea may have flaws and set backs when first bring it out, but if it is where you believe the market is going in the long term, do not be deterred, persevere with changes and improvements until it works.
In all business ideas and decisions, start with the customer, and work backwards.
A good staff member will be excited by the challenge of building new things, even moving from the established big thing they are already in charge of.
A staff member needs to just have one business unit, or will not go after each one with tenacity.
Read lots and lots of books of other people’s ideas. Be in touch with other people who are creating things and ideas that you can work with and learn from.
Go into a market not being done well by anyone else.
To create a great music solution and be the biggest in the market, Apple made the Ipod portable music player, Itunes computer based music buying software etc. all a seemless one thing.
Have massive goals for building great products and services that provide to the customer, not matter if staff think you are insane as so hard to do.
If staff believe strongly that something should be done, but the CEO does not agree. The CEO must do what he/she believes should be done.
The entrepreneur works out the business model, product designers and engineers may not understand, or agree with it. So the entrepreneur must ensure the designers create what he/she believes it should be.
Need to put pressure on suppliers, if need something that they do not want to supply.
Need to use size and growth, to get bigger and bigger discounts from suppliers. A monopolistic position in the marketplace helps to do this. Need to be diplomatic to suppliers, so they do not group together and rebel.
Supply chain must:
•automatically buy from cheapest source
•rules for suppliers to follow
•suppliers can pay promotional fees, to be in more prominent position on site, like store retailers do.
•listen to, be sensitive to and address supplier’s needs
•use things retailer does, like lower returns of unsold stock to get refunds, to get better prices from suppliers.
•Negotiate in all areas, eg. Credit terms etc.
•if supplier not comply, not put in personalisation and recommendation system, so product available, but not promoted and their sales go down up to 40%. After a month of this, they approach Amazon agreeing to the terms.
• sell pushy demands to suppliers, by saying the benefits passed on to customers. Constant and continuous negotiation with suppliers for this purpose.
• suppliers with lower sales and profit margins for Amazon, must improve the deals for Amazon, or get decreased promotion.
• retailer tells supplier how much it will pay for products and demands concessions if it believes supplier’s profit margin is too high
They negotiate much harder with smaller publishers, that they really depend on them.
To keep future negotiations civilised, both parties must feel like they gain something valuable out of the current transaction.
Instant gratification, of instantly getting the product or service 24/7, is a huge selling point.
To keep a new product secret, only way is to not show it to people, as even with non disclosure agreements, some people will say.
First negotiate with suppliers using inducements, then if not work use threats like not putting them in prominent places on site and recommendations.
Must not tolerate delays from suppliers.
Sometimes need to choose what to price a product, using gut feel and not research. Also can use experience from other industries or sectors.
Can loose money on selling a new device as then customers will come to you for future purchases. So is an investment in getting customers.
Keep secret things that may mean people, or other parties, want to stop, or not be involved with a project as not in their interests. Not lie, just not mention that factor. If asked about it, say not yet been decided.
To create gadget that succeeds, focus on making it do what people want, before making it look sexy.
Be careful not to over order stocks of an entirely new product, better to order more if it sells well.
To sell a new product, need to educate and promote new ideas of the product to customers.
To build a new product franchise, need to be able to withstand short term losses from the costs of advertising it.
When supply something, make sure think about and have all the caveats of how the customer can use it in writing. Eg. What it cannot be sold for less than a certain price.
Technological advances that reduce cost of supply, will lead to losses and pain for prople in some parts of the supply processes.
Distribution systems focused on efficency and selection.
After a customer joins Amazon Prime, they double their spending. This is because each time come to the site, they end up buying far more and from different categories, as well as what they intended to buy when arriving at the site. This meant that more suppliers wanted to stock and ship from Amazon’s fulfillment centres, so their products benefitted from Amazon’s free 2 day shipping.
Make sure when doing new businesses, company still invests in, fixes and improves existing primary business, or it will wither and rivals will overtake it.
An online marketplace must stop sellers who overcharge, or charge more than other sites, for things like postage and packing.
Trust between colleagues helps remove acrimony between them. This trust is built up from having worked with each other for a long time.
Even if are a key staff member, if they are not brilliant, must have no concerns or worries about them leaving.
Must be deeply gracious and appreciative to staff that perform heroically, with unexpected thoughtful presents to express appreciation.
A great CEO:
1, Embraces truth and engage their decision making around the best truth at the time.
2, Not be tethered by conventional thinking, can change everything, everything is open for discussion.
Use bruises from the comoany’s past mistakes, to try and build the right culture.
Get as much feedback as possible and take it seriously.
People will work at a company for less money, if it has a great internal culture.
Zappos online shoe sales firm offers no charge rerurns on items for up to a year after purchase. So customers can order 4 pairs if shoes, return 3 and keep one if them.
Look at book ‘Delivering happiness: A path to Profits, Passion and Purpose’ by Tony Hseih.
To compete with Amazon and not squander the opportunity a company needs, more great engineers, great software, talented people, more sophisticated fulfillment capabilities and to move quickly.
Amazon has loads of ways to out compete rivals.
When given the choice of obsessing over competitors, or obsessing over customers, should obsess over customers. Pay attention to what competitors do, but not where should put your energy.
Customers would rather have as much self service as possible in the business and so pay lower prices.
A company will die if it looses touch with what customers want, the changing tastes of consumers and the ‘truths of the time’.
If company does what stock market wants, it will not focus on the customer correctly and do what is right for the very long term.
Need to be careful of costs that cannot be quickly cut in a recession, like long term leases. Especially for less good parts of the business, that could bring the whole company down.
Need staff to have very high standards and know what they are doing.
Amazon will stop selling a supplier’s products if it does not get what it wants, but customers can still buy through third party sellers on the site.
Premium brands would not sell to Amazon as did not want their brands tarnished with bargain basement prices.
To act in the interests of customers, may have to do things that go against the interests of suppliers. Need to do those things to dominate the market, even if the suppliers try and stop you from doing it. Most suppliers will try and stop you, but still supply you, as they need to sell through your dominant sales channel.
Can use dominance in one industry, to transition into other similar ones.
To stop a fight between companies, mention the collateral damage, such as how customers, authors and all other people affected by it.
Whereas Amazon might be forced to accept deal terms from big monopolistic suppliers, Amazon makes medium and smaller sized suppliers adhere to the terms Amazon wants and those terms are totally different. It will stop selling the items of smaller suppliers, until they submit.
The stock market may not like a new business at the start of it going on the stock market, but after a while, once they understand what it can do, the stock price can go massively up.
Amazon goes to massive lengths to do structures and methods that lowers their taxes and uses them to pass the savings on to customers. It is a big part of their competitive advantage. The 80 person tax department uses internal company rulebooks, flowcharts and maps to do this. Affects all staff instructions documents for what can do, say, go, when, where, how can do things, company in group working for etc. Staff told why it is critical to do these things. It is co ordinated and organised by company’s lawyers, who issue questionnaires to staff to:
•ensure staff are doing things correctly
•collect information to enable the lawyers to organise and label things using the right wording.
Missionaries end up making more money than mercenaries. Amazon is a missionary.
Missionaries have righteous goals and are trying to make the world a better place.
Mercenaries are out for power and money and will run over anyone who gets in the way.
If a politician threatens state taxes, they normally back down once Amazon threatens to close down a fulfilment centre in the state and so hundreds of job losses. Will also use carrot of promising to build fulfilment centres in a state. It fights in all kinds of ways.
Be a far sighted chess player, once lost one advantage, cultivate other ones.
Secretly buy large volumes from competitors, to create data that measures quality and speed of their services. This data goes to the top of the company.
Amazon has strict non disclosure agreements and strong possible legal consequences for speaking publically about things.
By selling lots of categories, can massively drop prices in one category and cope with losses. They do this to force a rival that just does one category, out of business; or to sell their business to Amazon because they are scarred that Amazon could even sell the things in the category for free.
Customers offered monthly subscription for diaper deliveries, to get big savings, free for first year Amazon Prime membership, etc.
If a big rival company wants to acquire a company which has techniques that could put them ahead of you, or bring them up to the same level. Make sure you acquire them, not the rival.
High end manufacturers ensure retaillers sell their items for a high price to:
●protect the brand
●ensure as many retailers as possible will and can sell the items, as not cheaper elsewhere.
●stop retailers demanding lower wholesale prices
Amazon does all kinds of tricks, to get around this.
If a manufacturer cuts off supply, Amazon believes they will eventually supply them again. As Amazon has great information on products and reviews about a vast selection of products. So it is where customers go when they are ready to buy.
Amazon may get the manufacturer back by promising not to lower prices again, but soon they break their promise. They do this by justifying that selllers on their Marketplace and elsewhere on the web, are selling for cheaper and Amazon has to match the lowest price. Manufacturer will say that these lower prices are not from authorised retailers.
For those manufacturers that have removed direct supply to Amazon, the products are still available through the Amazon Marketplace.
A store can explain a high end product’s advantages in a way that a website cannot, so worth a manufacturer protecting the store’s margins, so they can sell the items by ensuring online retailers do not sell it for less.
Amazon’s mission is to drive inefficiencies out of the supply chain, to lower prices to customers.
When Amazon sees a product selling briskly on the marketplace, it starts selling the item directly itself.
The cheapest seller of a product gets the default ‘buy box’, causes sellers to race to it being sold for £0. So sellers need to learn to source hot new products, gain exclusives and build a lean organisation. Many that leave, return due to 200 million active users and brisk sales. For sellers it is like heroin, as first they get brisk sales, but then Amazon undercuts them on price. The sellers complain, but in doing so, they just cut themselves off.
If suppliers do not supply Amazon, they are told:
•Amazon will get supplies through the grey market
•every time a customer searches for their product, they will be taken to adverts for their direct rivals’ products
Even if manufacturer stops supplying:
1,
Amazon will not give contact details of Marketplace sellers on their site, so manufacturers cannot see how they are getting their supplies, or who they are.
2,
Other authorised dealers also sell the manufacturers products through ‘Fulfilled by Amazon’, so the customer benefits from Amazon Prime free delivery.
Amazon sells refurbished, slightly damaged new stock and used products itself on the marketplace using it’s warehousedeals.com brand to get around the manufacturer’s set retail prices. Amazon wants to become biggest liquidator on the planet and uses to get around a manufacturer’s set prices.
Track which firms could become future rivals.
Have packaging materials, branding etc. that means it is easily recognisable to consumers. Make sure it forms a good bond with consumers.
More boards of directors, shareholders and other stakeholders, means more conflicting opinions.
Amazon’s first priority is selling customers products and services, at the lowest possible price. Their second priority is giving customers the choice of being able to buy anything.
If even a big retailer’s supply for a market comes from a small number of large companies, then the retailer has to do what those supplying companies insist on.
If supply comes from lots of small suppliers and there is a very large retailer, then the suppliers have to do what the retailer insists on.
Need to always focus on how your products can be better than other rivals, especially if can be sold for a cheaper price.
Amazon self service website meant loads of books could be put on there, market determines economic rewards. Not publishing editors who subjectivity decide what market will like and slow innovation. Even improbable ideas get tried and many of those end up working. So Amazon wanted to cut out the need for publishers.
Even if a new business idea has massive problems in the short term, like existing players trying to stop it, gauge the success of it in the long term.
Price comparison app so users could take pictures or scan items in shops, see if Amazon cheaper. Amazon gave discount up to $15 if customer then bought on Amazon. Also enabled Amazon to find out prices of retail rivals.
Lesson: give customers way to see that your are cheaper and use it to find out rival’s prices.
If customers are not satisfied with it’s products, customers will not come out and defend it’s critics.
Jeff Bezos wrote the following for a company to conduct itself and be perceived, so be liked by their customers, loved, perceived of as cool. Not be feared and hated.
Then ranked companies other by how well they did each:
Not cool:
Rudeness,
Defeating tiny guys
Close-following
Obsessing over competitors
Capturing all the value for the company
Pandering to the crowd
Hypocrisy
Mercenaries
Cool:
Young,
Risk taking
Winning
Polite
Defeating bigger unsympathetic guys
Inventing
Explorers
Empowering others
Leadership
Conviction
Straightforwardness
Authenticity
Thinking big
The unexpected
Missionaries
He also said being reliable helps gets a company to be loved.
To be loved:
•Being polite, reliable and customer obsessed is not enough.
•Need other things such as a pioneering spirit that can come across and be perceivable by the customer base.
Amazon is about gaining customer loyalty for their purchases.
Official internal emergency system:
Sev-5: minor and engineer can fix during course of a normal workday.
Sev-1: urgent problem that sets off a cavalcade of pagers, requires immediate response and situation will be reviewed by member of the senior management team.
Bezos has email address for customers to escalate things to->Jeff Bezos forwards with just a question mark->staff member drop everything so in a few hours can solve problem and say about how happened ->response reviewed by succession of managers->goes to Jeff Bezos.
Amazon’s direct marketing tool decentralised, so product managers can direct emails to customers who look at a product, but have not made a purchase.
Truth springs forth when people debate their different ideas and perspectives. Can get quite confrontational.
No amount of revenue is ever worth jeopardizing customer trust and the company’s bond with customers. Even if such a choice will reduce the long-term revenue that comes from that part of the business.
Anecdotes and feedback from customers are researched carefully, because they say something about the company’s metrics and processes. They are a precious source of information.
Need to put filtering tools in software, so staff cannot do certain things that may not be good for the business.
Metrics rather than editorial judgement makes every important decision including what features to introduce. However feedback from just one customers can also change a policy, if it reflects a larger problem.
Jeff Bezos will put a lot of attention on a single area if there is a problem there.
High standards means, although stressful for staff, staff often regard it as the most productive time of their lives. With smart colleagues, challenging work, frequent lateral moves between departments giving constant opportunities for learning. Fierce competitiveness in everything staff do and pace of innovation is thrillling. Staff know how hard it is and have chosen to be there.
Attracts people who like to pioneer and invent, with the infrastructure and pace of a startup.
Jeff Bezos does not want social cohesion caused by desire to reach a consensus. Need to debate backed by numbers and passion. (I would rather backed by numbers, passion and desire to do the right choice)
The leadership principles are important to them, they are on their website:
1, Our Leadership Principles
Our Leadership Principles aren’t just an inspirational wall hanging. These Principles work hard, just like we do. Amazonians use them every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates. It’s just one of the things that make Amazon peculiar.
2, Customer Obsession
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
3, Ownership
Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”
4, Invent and Simplify
Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here”. Because we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
5, Are Right, A Lot
Leaders are right a lot. They have strong business judgment and good instincts.
6, Hire and Develop The Best
Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognise exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organisation. Leaders develop leaders and are serious about their role in coaching others.
7, Insist on the Highest Standards
Leaders have relentlessly high standards – many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
8, Think Big
Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.
9, Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.
10, Frugality
We try not to spend money on things that don’t matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.
11, Vocally Self Critical
Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odour smells of perfume. Leaders come forward with problems or information, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.
12, Earn Trust of Others
Leaders are sincerely open-minded, genuinely listen, and are willing to examine their strongest convictions with humility.
13, Dive Deep
Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, and audit frequently. No task is beneath them.
14, Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.
15, Deliver Results
Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never compromise.
Benefits and Stock
There are many things to consider when deciding on your next employer. At Amazon, we offer employees the chance to work with great people on…
People who can cope with confrontation love it, those who cannot leave and go elsewhere.
It is a mix of being a corporation and startup.
Company sends threatening letter if employee takes a similar job at a competitor.
Constantly loads of staff leaving, but is an accomplished recruiter of new talent, helped by appeal of a steadily increasing stock price.
Amazon gives industry average base salary, a signing bonus spread over 2 years and a grant of restricted stock units over 4 years. Unlike other technology companies such as Google and Microsoft which spread the stock grants evenly, Amazon backloads the grants towards the end of the four year period o try and make staff stay, keep working hard and not coast.
End of year one they get 5% of their shares, 15% end of second year; 20% every 6 months over final 2 years.
Managers in apartments for 50 people or more are required to grade there subordinates akong a curve and must dismiss the least effective performers.
There are no perks, eg. staff have to pay for meals at the cost price. Company constantly searching for ways to reduce costs and pass the savings onto customers.
Jeff Bezos personally chairs operating reviews done every 6 months, each teams write down plan for next 12 months. Documents from each team are 6 pages, with a few rules called tenets at the top of each, which show principles for each group, that guide hard decisions and enable them to move fast without constant supervision.
The startup areas get more attention from Jeff Bezos, they are harder and more stressful for staff to work in.
At weekly meetings each department meets with their managers, the numbers from long spreadsheets show them what is working, what is broken, how customers are behaving and how well company is performing.
The executive team force employees to look at the numbers and answer every single question about why specific things happened. For employees this is scary and impressive. As Amazon has so much volume, this means can make quick decisions, not have subjective debates and the data does not lie.
These meetings culminate with weekly business review. 60 managers of the retail business gather in one room to:
•review their departments,
•share data about defects
•inventory turns
•forecasts
•complex interactions among different parts of the company.
Jeff Bezos is not at these meetings.
Jeff Bezos gets very involved and thinks about whatever area he believes there is a crisis in, or is not good enough.
Good email newsletters are short, well written, informative and entertaining (not boring). Simple design, stripped down and not complicated. Punchy headlines are important. Writers accountable for getting revenue from their articles.
People held accountable for caring about things.
Their service allowing advertisers to reach customers on all Amazon websites and devices, is highly profitable, helps subsidise free shipping, low prices and funds some of the company’s expensive long term projects.
Amazon is excited to be able to offer customers lower prices.
If a company can lower prices as is more efficient, other companies will try and stop it through legal means, dodgy arguments etc.
If think long term, can achieve things normally would not accomplish. Time horizons matter a lot. Amazon was a multi decade project.
Must be willing to fail and be misunderstood.
Defects invisible to the knowledgeable, may be obvious to newcomers.
Complicated and contradictory goals makes it hard for people to help you. Be clear and simple goals about your goals and articlate them in a way that makes it easy for others, because they are consistent.
Amazon 3
Need to have the skill of efficiently dispersing time across many responsibilities and multiple projects.
Jeff Bezos invests in things where technology can disrupt existing models.
Be strict details, where costs are going, alongside understand the importance of design.
Jeff Bezos has an empty chair in meetings to represent the customer.
Jeff Bezos aim to take the inconvenience out of online shopping and deliver products and services to customers in the most efficient manner possible.
When loads of customers in an area, more efficient to use your own delivery trucks than outsource to courier companies.
Look at ways to eliminate cost from the supply chain.
Jeff Bezos tries to:
• Move faster
•Work his employees harder
•Make bolder bets
•Persue big inventions and small ones
Jeff Bezos ‘ We don’t have a single big advantage, so have to weave a rope of many small advantages’
Jeff Bezos is relentless.
To accomplish things that are big and unconventional. Intensity and drive of focus is essential and incompatible with all the nice management thought about consensus and gentle demeanour. Then can be quick and not need to slow down too much or modify ideas to make others feel comfortable.
Need clarity, vision, potential and values.
Need the ability to prioritise things.
Need to ensure top team get CEO’S way of working, so can act accordingly.
A big company has to leap forward, not just protect existing ground.
Need people who are bright, high growth potential, fluid minded people with the right values as people. People who prioritise customer trust and delight, at all times are long term focused and driven to be bold and innovative.
Jeff Bezos never really thought about personal wealth. Not thinking about ‘exits’ which affects the smallest choice. Just do something good, not just what gets them acquired, or funded.
Clear goals and values made even the small choices easy for staff to make. Also affected recruitment at all levels, so people who focused on their titles, traditional status metrics, security, or their own wealth, stood out and we’re not hired.
Some might say Jeff Bezos only accepting of high standards makes him hard to work with, but it means he attracts terrific people who want that and they stay for ages. People who want to pour their heart and soul into a mission.
Believe in what building and their very best was needed to have a hope of accomplishing the enormous potential ahead of them.
Jeff Bezos always purely focused on best outcomes for Amazon and customers, never a self interest or political dimension.
Need boldness, getting things done immediately, strict prioritisation and risk to achieve things.
Also need to run free with your own insights and directions, without compromising them to accommodate others.
A new idea always disrupts or disturbs somebody.
People can complain, but complaining is not a strategy.
One of Amazon’s call centres has 500 workers in off peak months and a thousand or more when call volumes spike before and after the holidays. They get $11 per plus small grants of stock that vest over a four year period. Is intense and exhausting work.
Only 3% of customers inclined to call it, those with a serious problem or just want a friendly voice at end of a phone.
Staff controlled by cold, data, which are internally called ‘metrics’.
Most weight put on customer satisfaction, based on emails sent to each customer after a call. It says ‘Did I solve your problem?’ and it has a Yes or No choice. Staff have targets for ratios of yes and nos, they are also ranked based on them.
They also look at calls per hour and average length of each call.
If staff member in lowest 15% of the rankings, they are placed on a ‘PIP’, Performance Improvement Plan and can be fired if not improve their numbers.
Is stressful as Amazon’s standards are so so high.
Amazon knows has hundreds of willing applicants so prefers to fire troubled employees.
Alleged infractions like hanging up on a customer, are all investigated.
They want staff to say if they disagree with something, but commit to doing it once company says must do it.
Such as help button on device showing live video of customer service person chatting with. They re invent normal, creating inventions that customers love and resetting expectations for what normal should be.
For pr say fun stories of things that have happened in the business.
Focus on innovation and customer orientation, refine and distill these values in persuit of:
•was the customer happy
•will they return again
•did I solve your problem, yes or no
Amazon shopping needs to be ease and simplicity
It is a low margin, low price approach.
Small teams are more effective than large ones, at handling complex software projects. So Amazon has lots of small teams.
Need a core ideology, those who embrace it flourish, those who reject it are expunged from the company like a virus.
Companies must confront brutal facts of their businesses, find out what uniquely good at and master their flywheel so each part of the business reinforces and accelerates the other parts.
Some companies reluctant to embrace disruptive technologies because might alienate customers and undermine core business, but ignoring potential disruption is even costlier.
When Amazon negotiated so hard on books that made it hard for customers to get hold of books from many publishers. Amazon said was negotiating on behalf of many customers, even though onlookers and authors criticised this.
In mandatory meetings with managers, Amazon puts intense pressure on staff not join a union, saying direct connection is most effective way to understand and respond to the wants and needs.lf their staff.
Suppliers and staff may not like Amazon as they find it to be a bully, are free to leave. However with other companies either retreating, disappearing, or having to copy Amazon to compete, increasingly there may not be different opportunities elsewhere.
Jeff Bezos says more from reading novels than non fiction.
Walmart is about selling things at a discount, this needs values of frugality, a bias for action and a willingness to try things out and make mistakes.
A busineds needs values of modesty and frugality in the organisation.
Small groups of engineers are more effective than large ones, at handling complex software projects.
Successful companies have a core ideology that guides them, only staff who embrace the central mission flourish, others are expunged like a virus from the company.
Company must confront brutal facts of it’s business, find out what uniquely good at, master their flywheel, in which each part of the business reinforces and accelerates the other parts.
Some companies are reluctant to embrace disruptive new technology, because it might alienate customers and undermined their core business. However ignoring potential disruption is even costlier as competitors with it, out compete and so destroy the business.
Identify the biggest constraints in company’s operations, then structure organisation to get the most out of those constraints.
Banish waste and create wealth by focusing on activities that create value for the customer and systematically eradicate everything else.
Use data metrics to measure everything from customer satisfaction to effetiveness of marketing. All assertions must be supported with data, if data has a weakness staff member must point it out or their colleagues will do it for them.
Lifetime Wisdom 