Philip Soriano
@philip
Philip Soriano
They Architect the Way Work Gets Done
Bezos redesigned work to create a system of independent, decoupled teams who were guided by a set of hows dramatically different from prior practices at Amazon and other large tech companies. For example, most software companies require teams to utilize one another’s code to increase efficiency. To increase velocity and reduce dependency, Amazon does the opposite: Its software teams are mostly free to choose whether they use common services or create their own building blocks of code. This results in duplicative work and some inconsistencies in the user experience, but Bezos justifies it by saying he’d “rather have two than none.”
Some of Amazon’s managerial innovations have become celebrated. For example,
teams adhere to the “two-pizza rule,” limiting team size to only as many people as can be fed by two pizzas (typically eight or fewer).
PowerPoint presentations are forbidden because they lull participants into passivity; instead, Amazon requires every proposal to be written in a narrative memo of six pages or fewer, to deliver more detailed thinking than is typically found in slide presentations.
After all the meeting attendees read the memo closely, they have a nonhierarchical, no-holds-barred debate. The goal is to interrogate everything thoroughly, and vigorous dissent is encouraged. Before stepping down as CEO, Bezos participated in hundreds of these meetings himself. Instead of sitting back and waiting for the CEO to make the decision, everyone at Amazon is expected to speak up and disagree—even with Bezos or his successor, Andy Jassy. Once a determination is made, the CEO supports the path forward, knowing that most conclusions are provisional and can be revisited as new information comes in—what Amazon calls “two-way-door decisions.”
This is what we mean when we say leaders architect the way work gets done. It’s not about changing org charts. It’s about shifting decision rights closer to the front lines—and equipping those teams with the tools and frameworks that allow them to act. Those include customer-value metrics, structured memos, and experimentation protocols. It’s difficult work because it often requires leaders to give up control—to redistribute authority, remove approvals, and reduce the frictions that slow teams down. When done well, it promotes speed, clarity, and autonomy—which is why Amazon, a giant company, continues to launch innovative products and services quickly.
All four leaders we studied recognized that frontline teams are key to creating and delivering value for customers, whether they are internal or external. They made it their personal mission to design work processes so that employees are empowered with the tools and support they need and don’t hit obstacles that slow them
They Obsess Over the Metrics That Customers Value
RELX is a 200-year-old London-based company formerly known as Reed Elsevier. In 1995 Forbes magazine predicted the company’s business model would make it “the first casualty of the internet.” In fact, since becoming its CEO, Engstrom has transformed RELX (its name since 2015) into a technology-driven... See more
RELX is a 200-year-old London-based company formerly known as Reed Elsevier. In 1995 Forbes magazine predicted the company’s business model would make it “the first casualty of the internet.” In fact, since becoming its CEO, Engstrom has transformed RELX (its name since 2015) into a technology-driven... See more
They Obsess Over the Metrics That Customers Value
RELX is a 200-year-old London-based company formerly known as Reed Elsevier.
CEO—Engstrom, who was a McKinsey consultant and an executive at two publishing houses before assuming leadership of RELX, did that by coaching every RELX employee to obsess over “customer value”—the benefit the customer realizes from using a product. He has been repeating the same questions for 20 years: How does the customer measure value? How do we know? How do we measure that? How does using this product improve the customer’s economics? How do we know how much better off the customer is with our product—and how do we know that it is better on that metric than the alternatives are?
All too often when companies talk about customer metrics, they look at numbers such as customer acquisition cost, customer retention, lifetime value, and average transaction size—metrics that reflect how a customer benefits the company. In contrast, the how-obsessed CEOs we’ve studied focus on metrics that reflect how the company benefits the customer.
Focusing deeply on how the company creates and delivers value for its customers was a cornerstone of the practices of the leaders we studied. According to our interviews, people in the organization don’t experience this specific kind of detail orientation as micromanaging. Rather, it creates mission clarity. When leaders show how much they personally care about what matters most to customers, attending to details becomes a shared norm for every employee—which expands the decision rights of those close to the front lines.
The Surprising Success of Hands-On Leaders
hbr.org
They are not inserting themselves into every decision or displacing their teams. Instead, they act as teachers and system builders: They're present in the work not to control it or make every decision themselves but to model standards, sharpen problem-solving, and establish behavioral norms that enable others to act with autonomy and discipline. They don't meddle-they coach. They don't override-they elevate. They don't hoard decision rights—they teach others how to make sound decisions on their own. Their involvement is not disempowering—it is energizing. And it is purposeful: to build a system that performs reliably even when they're not in the room.
Jensen Huang: “The best career advice I got was from a gardener”
“Very few people know this but I don’t wear a watch,” Nvidia founder Jensen Huang begins. “And the reason I don’t wear a watch is because now is the most important time. Just dedicate yourself to now.”
Jensen explains by... See more
Startup Archivex.comSometimes, I notice this when working with people who have spent time in organizations with poor feedback cultures. They have been taught that it’s so bad to name problems that they focus on resolving acute issues while keeping the peace, all the while navigating an invisible psychological obstacle course. Over time, they become trapped in... See more
Atman Chaser and
The best way to learn is the opposite of what we're taught.
You don't learn everything, then start. You start, then learn why it did or didn't work. You start with minimum viable knowledge, then experiment, then succeed or fail, then study to understand why.
People dumber than you tend to... See more
DAN KOEsubstack.comI think we are moving away from the era of social media and into an era of online micro-communities. More intentional, less chaos. Smaller, but more valuable. More boundaries, more containment.
We were never made to read the unhinged thoughts of hundreds of strangers each day, but we were made to gather around fires... See more
Laura Matsue Guenthersubstack.comMost people quit because they don't realize that 2-3 months of feeling like you have no idea what you're doing is a feature not a bug.
DAN KOEsubstack.com