The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company

psychologist and author Angela Duckworth has done some remarkable research on the importance of what she calls “grit.”

The real test of someone’s ability to rise to the top rests more in perseverance—the tenacity they display when confronted by obstacles or conflict.

At the end of the day, it’s all about outcomes at Amazon. com. If you violate all of the other principles—if you fail to obsess over the customer, communicate vaguely, hire second-rate people, ignore details, and so on—but consistently deliver outstanding business results, then all will be forgiven. After

Provide a Stateless Workflow for Real-Time Customer Feedback.

Experience creating self-service architecture in multiple environments has revealed ten best practices essential to an end result that truly serves customer objectives. Some are strategic in nature, while others are more technical and operational. They have been divided accordingly.

Jeff understands that a lack of trust perpetuates fear. If you fail to earn the trust of your team members, fear eventually becomes their primary driver. They will fear your opinions. They will fear your decisions and evaluations. They will fear failure. They will fear you. Once fear becomes dominant, the organization can barely operate, let alone

The backbone necessary to disagree with some of the smartest business minds in the world and commit to your own vision requires an immense amount of mental toughness.

The enterprise bias for avoiding PowerPoint presentations in favor of written narratives (typically six pages long; sometimes as short as two pages) is a great example of a forcing function to create an organization that dives deep. As Bezos noted in a 2012 interview with Charlie Rose, “When you have to write your ideas out in complete sentences an

“Are we up to date on collections or not?” should be easy to answer. But at many companies, the information to answer