Amazon

Enable the triumph of the everyday hero

Be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work

Choose values that inspire an entrepreneurial spirit

• Customer obsession rather than competitor focus
• Passion for invention
• Commitment to operational excellence
• Long-term thinking

Provide lower prices, better selection, and convenient services

Kick off every project with a press release

At the beginning of every new initiative, Amazon product managers write an internal press release announcing the product as if it were finished. This page-and-a-half announcement centers around how the product solves a specific customer problem and how it will "blow away existing solutions."

The goal is to keep the writing simple. Paragraphs should have no more than three to four sentences and not include any "geek-speak." As a guideline, Ian McAllister, Director of Amazon Day, recommends writing it as if you were Oprah explaining it to her audience. If the press release doesn't "sound interesting or exciting," the product manager continues to revise it or cancels the project's development.

While creating the press release takes a lot of time, Amazon finds it quicker and less expensive than iterating on the product itself. The press release also serves as a guide in the product's development to help avoid scope creep.

See an example outline.

Start meetings with memos, not PowerPoints

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos removed PowerPoint presentations from meetings in 2004 because "you can hide a lot of sloppy thinking behind bullet points." Instead, presenters prepare a six-page memo for meetings. Memos, unlike PowerPoints, force authors to take the time to truly understand the scope of their ideas.

Often, a memo can take two weeks to create as it is written and rewritten, shared with colleagues for feedback, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again.

To ensure people read the memo, the first thirty minutes of the meeting are dedicated to reading it in silence. Attendees write comments and ideas in the margins while the author anxiously waits. Once the memo has been read, an "elevated discussion" begins where ideas can wander and grow toward the best solution, even if that means going longer than expected.