When it comes to CEO’s that have really made a difference in their organization, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com leads the list. While Jeff’s leadership style is quite unconventional, it has proven to be extremely effective as Amazon has become the leader of online e-commerce. When making decisions for the organization Jeff is typically most effective when using an intuitive decision making model process. According to the textbook an intuitive decision making model is, “arriving at decisions without conscious reasoning. The model argues that in a given situation, experts making decisions scan the environment for cues to recognize patterns (Bauer and Erdogan 265.)” Bezos is known all too well for these “leaps of faith” in which his decisions are made without any true evidence or studies to back them up. Most of these intuitive decisions are actually made on a rather large scale and don’t have the time or effort to be tested first on a smaller scale.
While some of these decisions made by Bezos have hurt the company in terms of sales and profits in the short run, Bezos is always concerned for the long term effects of the decisions on the customers. If the decision will be good for customers in the long run than it was exactly the right decision according to Bezos. This customer pleasing focused decision making concept is what has helped Jeff become as successful as he is today and has proven to truly help the company in the long run.
Bezos is constantly searching for ways to improve efficiency at Amazon, regardless of how small of a positive impact that change may have. As long the company is always increasing efficiency, than the company is heading in the right direction. However, while he does constantly search for small short-term ways to increase efficiency at Amazon’s warehouses Bezos is still committed to the sustaining the company’s long term goals of changing the world over decades.
Even though Bezos does value the importance of using creativity when coming up with decisions and new ideas, he is not afraid to use/steal other company’s creative ideas that have proven successful as well. According to the textbook creativity is referred to as, “The generation of new ideas that are original, fluent, and flexible (Bauer and Erdogan 266).” While Amazon is constantly coming up with new innovative and creative ideas they realize the importance of learning from your competitors creative ideas. In the very words of Jeff Bezos, “We watch our competitors, learn from them, see things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can.” For example, when EBay started becoming increasingly popular Amazon decided that they too needed an auction style way of selling their products. While the first attempts struggled to take flight, Bezos persistently searched for a successful auction system. Finally Amazon came up with Marketplace, where third parties could sell their goods side by side with Amazon’s own offerings using an auction style way of selling. Amazon’s copying ways have not stopped there. Similar to Google’s Froogle feature, Amazon is in the process of expanding its search capabilities to help its customers find what types of products they need to buy on other websites and compare prices.
While Amazon has gone through some extremely tough times, such as the dot come crisis, Jeff Bezos continues to be optimistic and keeps his company on track to achieve their long term goals. During a PC forum conference in 2001 Jeff gave a presentation in which he displayed a slide showing figures indicating Amazon’s stock falling from $100-a-share to a measly $6. What Bezos claimed while showing this slide was that if you think the Amazon Company is not achieving its long term goals than you’re a pessimist. After that he displayed a slide showing Amazon’s cumulative wealth since the day it went public ($1.50, split-adjusted) and that current day ($11.64). Bezos explained to the crowd that he concentrates on this aspect of the business and really concentrates his definition of a successful business on its ability to achieve long term results, rather than short term times of struggle.
Stimulating Questions to think about/dicuss:
Do you agree with Jeff’s intuitive decision making style, in which he relies on taking “leaps of faith” rather than using evidence and data to support decisions?
Do you consider Jeff promoting his employees to steal successful innovative techniques that competitors are using a breach of ethics?
With the plethora of e-commerce companies out on the web, what do you personally feel sets Amazon apart from its competitors?
Work Cited:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/85/bezos_1.html
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0bio-1
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=218119&ticker=AMZN:US
By: Jason Dangles
Jason I was very intrigued in how Jeff Bezos makes his decisions by using the intuitive decision making model. I believe that in using your own experiences without taking into effect other options can be rather risky. Although like mentioned in the book, some decisions must be made quickly without much discussion among the organization. In these circumstances I am all for making a quick response of action. I believe that it can be very beneficial to an organization to consider all of their options and do extensive research to learn more about the plan you are going to put in place. There is no wrong in doing more research then what is necessary. There is always room to expand your intelligence. Therefore, one should consider using the bounded rationality model and the rational-decision based model. I also believe it is smart to use the creative minds of others when considering a problem or decision that needs to be made before making it. Using all of your resources available to you can help your organization choose the best option to implement in your company. Although, using the intuitive technique seems to be working for Jeff Bezos. Like they say,” Don’t fix something that isn’t broken.”
ReplyDelete-Mitchell Terry-
Jeff Bezos’ leadership style has proved to be effective as he has made Amazon prevail over the competition in both brick-n-mortar and online stores. I would agree that Jeff’s intuitive decision making style does rely on taking “leaps of faith” rather than taking a rational decision making approach. However, I believe that he must take this approach in making quick decisions for Amazon in an effort to stay ahead of the competition in the rapidly changing and developing world of ecommerce. It is not a breach of ethics, on the other hand, for Jeff to promote his employees to steal successful innovation techniques of competitors. This is because all companies do this to some extent in order to offer the same group of customers a similar product or service. One example of this is Motorola recently releasing the Xoom to compete with Apple’s Ipad. Overall, I believe that Jeff’s style of leadership and decision making abilities are the reasons why Amazon is pulling away from competition because of the companies low prices, minimal overhead, easy access, efficient delivery, and superior customer service.
ReplyDelete-Zach Seibel
Top leaders that share similarities with Jeff Bezos have attained something that most people never come to realize; they have accurately located the skills and innate abilities exclusive to themselves. Not only have they found the best facets of themselves, they have completed this from an early beginning. The skills and abilities have become thorough knowledge within their subconscious and provides them with certain things that astonish and outperform the competition. These types of people have refined their skills many times over to the point that they are radiated and exemplified, but not duplicated.
ReplyDeleteThe average manager or leader has not realized their inner workings to the extent that takes them to the top. This process is lifelong and highly-entailed wherein most never come to realize their full potential because they simply have not found and utilized the best parts of themselves. People like Jeff Bezos have a genuine trust in their own decisions, moreover, they often have intuition and premonition that contributes to their everyday success. They have the resources within themselves to make risky decisions with potentially devastating outcomes and not think twice about doing so. Leaders like Jeff Bezos are few and far between and are quite a spectacle to the external (and internal) organizational environment.
Mike Magaruh & The Big Bang Bloggers
I think a certain level of adaptability is required in business. This is especially true in Amazon's industry. We could look at the culture Jeff wants to instill at Amazon. If an organization in this industry chooses to implement a stable culture, it would surely be left behind by its competitors. The technology industry and the online retail world depend heavily on innovation and change. If a leader or organization is unwilling to adapt to the current situation, only failure awaits them. For these reasons, I think Jeff has done what he needs to do in order to ensure the survival and success of his company.
ReplyDelete