“Do you want to be a $200 million company with a twenty percent margin or a $10 billion company with a five percent

It forced sellers to compete on price, selection, and convenience, while markedly improving the customer experience.

The mentality of “managing your dependencies” is key to being a leader at Amazon. As I’ve been talking with leaders, this concept of “managing dependencies” in an aggressive manner and far beyond a normal expectation really resonates.

“We’ve done price elasticity studies,” Bezos once said. “And the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don’t do that, because we believe—and we have to take this as an article of faith—that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.”

There’s a common assumption that it’s important to know the exact right action to take before doing anything. That’s not how things are viewed at Amazon. As Jeff once said, “If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake, don’t do anything new.”

Jeff also believes that successful leaders, when presented with new evidence and data, are able to adapt their perspective. Accordingly, he looks for people who are constantly revising their understanding and circling back on problems they thought they’d already solved.

It’s a practice that enables every leader at Amazon.com to overcome traditional organizational barriers—another form of bureaucracy-busting that crashes through the obstacles that might delay or distort progress or learning along the new performance dimensions.

, I learned that disagreeing with Jeff and the other senior executives was not only beneficial to me personally (as an “owner”) but also my obligation to the customer, to the shareholder, and company. “If I drive us over a cliff,” Jeff would say, “You’re as much at fault as I am.”

In addition, Kimberly still had the responsibility of maintaining compliant processes and procedures. If she was going to innovate, she had to be able to present options, choices, trade-offs, and opportunities. This required her to combine both her years of expertise and a “beginner’s mind-set.”