Book Review #26
When I’m eighty and reflecting back, I want to have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life. Most of our regrets are acts of omission—the things we didn’t try, the paths untraveled. Those are the things that will haunt us.
This is Jeff Bezos "Regret minimization" framework. In the book "Invent & Wander": a collection of Jeff Bezos's writings and speeches there are several more and here are a few that made a strong impact on me
Customer Obsession: In contrast to focusing on our competition, the advantage of being customer focused is that customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and a constant desire to delight customers drives us to constantly invent on their behalf — even before we have to
Day one thinking: Operate with the mindset that it is still Day 1. Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. Essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making
Three lessons on Decision making:
i) Senior executives are paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Warren Buffet says he’s good if he makes three good decisions a year
ii) Disagree and commit - In business and life, there will times when we have to say "Look, I know we disagree on this, but will you gamble with me on it?" or alternatively "I disagree with this, but we’re going to do it your way. And I promise I will never tell you I told you so.”
iii) When decisions need to be made in companies, you need check if it is Type 1 (reversible/two-way door) or Type 2 (irreversible/one-way door). Decision-making for type 1 can be left to the lowest level permissible but for type 2, be careful, because that is where slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Invent & Wander: Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency. Outsized discoveries —the “nonlinear” ones— require wandering. While Customer obsession is critical, the big needle movers will be things that customers don’t know to ask for. We must invent those.
High Standards culture: People are drawn to high standards—More subtle: a culture of high standards is protective of all the “invisible” but crucial work that goes on - the work that no one sees, the work that gets done when no one is watching
Trust: The way you earn trust, and develop a reputation is by doing hard things well over and over. It is both simple and complicated. It’s integrity, and also competence.
Space missions: If this generation builds the road to space, the infrastructure, thousands of future entrepreneurs will build the real space industry and that's the vision of Blue Origin.
Overall, a fantastic peek into the mind of a great modern entrepreneur.
#strategy #vision #amazon #bookreview
