My grandfather was a fascinating man with amazing judgment. I had a special relationship with him because I spent all of my summers —from age 4 to 16—with him on his ranch. He would take me every summer because my mom had me when she was only 17 years old. She needed a break from me. My grandparents were an extra set of parents for me. [3:18]
One of the primary criticisms of the Strategic Defense Initiative at the time was that it was too technically ambitious. That is couldn’t be done. My grandfather would have just said, “Well then we better get started.” [6:48]
There are a lot of things at Amazon and Blue Origin that are grafted from my Grandfather and his points of view. [7:10]
The way you earn trust, the way you develop a reputation, is you do hard things well— over and over and over. [8:45]
My view is if Big Tech is going to turn their backs on the Department of Defense, this country is in trouble. That can’t happen. [12:46]
I know it is complicated but do you want a strong national defense or don’t you? I think you do. So we have to support that. [13:33]
How do you recruit great talent? At Amazon, we haven’t created a country club culture where you get free massages and all the perks of the moment. I have always had a bit of skepticism about those kinds of perks because I always worried people would stay at your company for the wrong reasons. You want people to stay at your company for the mission. You don’t want mercenaries at your company, you want missionaries. Missionaries care about the mission. [15:10]
You can drive great people away [from your organization] by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would a great person stay in an organization where they can’t get things done? [16:25]
There are two types of decisions:
1) One-way doors. Decisions that are irreversible and highly consequential. They need to be made slowly and carefully. Most decisions are not like that.
2) Two-way doors. You can make the decision and if it turns out it was the wrong decision you back up. You can do it again. Most decisions are two-way doors [17:54]
In large organizations, all decisions end up using the heavyweight process that is really intended to be used only for irreversible, highly consequential decisions. [They are confusing one-way and two-way doors] And that is a disaster. [18:50]
If it is a one-way door let’s analyze it in five different ways. Let’s be careful because that is where slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. You do not want to make one-way door decisions quickly. [19:29]
Controversial decisions must be escalated quickly. You can’t let two junior people argue for a year and exhaust themselves. You have to teach your junior people to escalate and escalate fast. [20:57]
I disagree and commit all the time. I will debate something for an hour, a day, a week. Then I will say, “You know what, I really disagree with this but you have more ground truth than I do. We are going to do it your way. I promise I will never tell you I told you so.” This works great. It is very calming. [21:37]
The speed of movement is so important. [23:02]
The most important thing for doing well against competition is being both robust and nimble. Scale is an advantage because it gives you robustness. You can take a punch. But it is also good to dodge a punch—that is nimbleness. As you get bigger your robustness gets better but your nimbleness gets worse. [24:43]
Decision making speed is the most important piece of nimbleness. [25:30]
Full talk here: Conversation with Jeff Bezos Founder, Amazon, & Blue Origin.
Learn from founders who came before you. Every week I read a biography of a founder and tell you what I learned on Founders podcast.
