Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

From founding Amazon nearly 30 years ago to turning it into a tech giant with a market capitalization of $1.5 trillion, Jeff Bezos learned a lot about leadership and human nature in the process, Dec. 18.

Bezos gradually realized that man "is not an animal that really seeks the truth." On the contrary, "We are social animals". He believes that this basic view has an impact on the structure of the company and any organization.

Bezos made the comments in a recent interview with Lex Fridman, a research scientist and podcast host at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He pointed out that throughout human history, telling the truth tends to get people into trouble.

"Let you go back to 10,000 years ago, you lived in a small village."if you can get along well with other people, you can survive and reproduce. But if you are a truthful person in the village, you may be bludgeoned to death in the middle of the night."

The reason, he added, is that "the truth is usually uncomfortable, embarrassing, and upsetting."... they can also make people wary, even if they are not intentional. "

However, "telling the truth" may also be the biggest difference between the success of a company and Bezos believes that "any high-performance organization must have the mechanism and culture to support telling the truth." This includes Blue Origin, a space tourism company owned by Bezos, where he applies valuable lessons from Amazon. Bezos resigned as CEO of Amazon a few years ago.

One strategy he suggests is appropriate for meetings: let the most senior speak last and the junior speak first, so that decision makers listen to everyone in an unfiltered way.

"I know from experience,"if I speak first, even very strong-willed, very smart, very judgmental attendees will think, 'well, if Bezos thinks so, I came to the meeting thinking of something else, but maybe I was wrong.'"

He also believes that leaders should openly discuss with the team the difficulty of telling the truth. "you have to remind people that this is uncomfortable and not in line with our nature as human beings, and we survive mainly by becoming social animals and friendly cooperation," he said. "

He pointed out that even in the scientific field of "telling the truth" and "there is a very formal mechanism", there are senior and junior scientists, so "human beings have a hierarchy, and to some extent, seniority is very important."

He recalls a moment in Amazon's history when customers complained about the long waiting time after calling the company's service number, but the indicators displayed at the meeting showed that the waiting time was less than 60 seconds. At a meeting, Bezos made a direct call in the presence of the customer service director. The waiting time for this call is more than 10 minutes.

"it fully shows that there is something wrong with data collection and that we are not measuring the right things," Bezos explained. "you know, it triggered a series of events, and we started to measure it correctly."

He also warned that two things would prevent us from finding the truth: compromise and stubbornness. In the former case, the dissenting parties may simply have very different views on what is the right decision. "there are a lot of mechanisms to resolve these disputes within our society and within our companies," he said. I think many of them are really bad. A very bad way to reach an agreement is to compromise. "

As for stubbornness, Bezos said: "they are just engaged in a war of attrition, and whoever is exhausted first will surrender to the other side."

Bezos believes that avoiding these traps requires initiative. "even if you feel uncomfortable, you have to seek the truth," he said. You have to get people's attention so that they have to accept your ideas, and they have to work hard to really solve the problem. "

At Amazon, Bezos is known for its emphasis on speed, agility and effective decision-making, and his former vice president and chief of staff, Colin Bryar, has previously revealed that Bezos never holds separate meetings with direct reports. Instead, he encourages direct subordinates to get together four hours a week to make decisions so that they can learn to work together and efficiently, especially in times of crisis.

Bezos' philosophy at Amazon is that "every day is the first day of starting a business," which means running the company with the speed of a startup, a risk-taking mindset and an entrepreneur's mindset.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.