Читать книгу The Amazon Management System - Ram Charan - Страница 37

To conceive a business model is one thing; to make it work, to get it up and running, continuously evolving and upgrading is another. Countless intriguing business plans, impressive blue-prints and brilliant game-changing ideas never hit the road, or fail to deliver. Why was the Amazon leadership team able to pull this off?

Many business leaders and entrepreneurs are super strong and devoted in business, but have neither the will nor the skill in organizational management. Once business outgrows personal and organizational capabilities, growth momentum will slow down, and in some cases, the companies may even collapse.

Bezos is the opposite. As founder and CEO of Amazon, he has the rare combination of a visionary leader and a down-to-earth builder obsessed with the organization and how it should be run. He is the mastermind behind the design of Amazon’s digital management system, and also the field marshal who forcefully and personally drives the enforcement.

Why so much effort personally? Because Bezos knows too well that a business model without the right management system won’t fly.

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To realize his dream, Bezos needs to build a continuous invention machine, a consistent and effective mechanism of high-quality and high-velocity decision-making, and an AI-powered data and metrics system to track, measure, analyze real-time data and automate routine decisions for ultimate speed and quality, while at the same time vigilantly guard against bureaucracy and complacency. Otherwise his company will creep onto the treacherous slippery slope called “Day 2,” thus burying his aspirations of a forever-Day-1 organization.

This is an endeavor way beyond any single person’s capacity. It requires the combined force of a team or an army of the right people to create a “phenomenon of nature.”

So who are the right people by the Amazon standards, and how to find them, motivate them and retain them? In the next chapter, let’s explore how Amazon builds its continuous bar-raising talent pool.