Because the numbers provide crystal-clear, incontrovertible proof of which leaders are right a lot, Amazon.com operates to as close to a true meritocracy as possible. I cannot overstate how important this is for minimizing bureaucracy in the organization.

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

So how do you successfully balance a bias for action with the ability to be right a lot? By developing and monitoring the metrics.

Even if you are not the bar raiser, your role in the hiring process is vital. Jeff would frequently tell us all that a hiring decision was probably the most important decision we could make as a member of the organization.

The scrutiny is very, very intense.

clarity—clarity in the setting of goals, the communication of those goals throughout the organization, the establishment of metrics, and the use of those metrics in gauging the success or failure of any initiative.

Alan Murray points out that a corollary of that physical principle is this: it’s usually easier to stop things from happening than it is to make them happen.

So useful is this technique that an Amazon product launch almost always begins with what we used to call a future press release—an announcement of the product written before its development even began, used for internal purposes only.

Amazon.com eventually built the type of volume that convinced the vendors and big-name manufacturers that people would buy complicated technology online. Jeff had wagered that his customers were intelligent enough to figure out electronics on their own—and he had won.