Jeff Bezos: Technological Business Leader that Stands behind the Success of Amazon

DuBrin defined leadership as “the ability to inspire confidence and support among the people who are needed to achieve organizational goals”[2]. It exists in every level of an organization from top to the bottom. But it’s more noticeable in the higher managerial roles as they have the power to make drastic changes, charisma to inspire subordinates, passion on their work and long term vision about the corporation which makes them competent to make strategic decisions. Irrespective of a specific geographic location, great leaders are born everywhere in the world. Some of them are well known due to media and technology, the rest are working silently somewhere in a remote place. As an IT professional, I like to observer global IT market changes. It always fascinated me how Amazon as a company has emerged from a small startup to a huge corporation in a short period of time! The person behind the success, Jeff Bezos is the technological business leader I would like to discuss about in this assignment. Jeffrey Preston Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964 [1]. He was adopted by his stepdad at the age of 4.

Jeff has studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Princeton University. After graduation, he started working in a startup Root of Leadership SkillsetJeff has spent a lot of summer in his youth at his maternal grandparent Lawrence Preston Gise’s ranch. His grandpa gave the illusion to the kid (Jeff) that he was a great helping hand [3]. This helped the young mind to grow confidence and self-esteem. There he learnt with Mr. Gise what to do when something went wrong in the ranch and how to make decision to solve those issues. He developed problem solving skillset at early age.

Diversity

Amazon has 566000 employees worldwide. Jeff is clearly a multicultural business leader who motivates and inspires the employees. He says “We want our employees to be empowered to speak their minds, and to be heard. Every Amazonian should feel comfortable sharing their unique perspectives, and every Amazonian should seek out the perspectives of others. We want our employees and the communities where we operate to embrace that we are all human, we are all different, and we are all equal”[6]. “Amazon is an Equal Opportunity-Affirmative Action Employer”[6] and employs 60% male and 40% female employees. It also employs people from different race and ethnicity. For example, in the USA, it employs 42% White, 22% Black, 14% Asian, 14% Hispanic and 8% other employees. A company with equal opportunity makes high job satisfaction among the employees. Amazon employs local people in different countries, this offers a marketing advantage. Customer services in local language increases customer satisfaction because clients can express the issue easily and the customer support employee can understand it better and take actions accordingly.

Personality Traits of Jeff BezosDuBrin has identified a set of personality traits of successful leaders. We will discuss those traits in context of Jeff in the following sections: Jeff Bezos is a self-confident business leader. From the beginning of his business career, he knew what he wanted to do and had a clear path in mind. He was confident that Amazon will be number 1 online book store because there was no competitor.

Moreover, no physical book store could ever have such a wide range of available books. Although Jeff is the richest person in the world, he is down to the earth person. He is humble to his employees and to the outside world. He listens to the complains and controversial questions with an open mind in the interviews and try to answer it correctly. He often tells to look at the mirror, when there is a complain and make a self-evaluation [3]. This is a very interesting trait of a successful business leader. It helps the leader identify what went wrong and how to improve it in the next time. Jeff is a trustworthy CEO. He has courage to accept the mistake. When Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider's asked him that Jeff was criticized by the union and media for paying low wages and inappropriate working conditions, he accepted that they have made mistakes before and changed the working environment [3]. He has courage to accept the mistake. He is an authentic leader who is honest about his personality, values and believes.

Mathias Döpfner asked him in the interview that what would Jeff like to do with his money? Jeff didn’t give any false promise about charity or social work. He told that he is investing his earning in “Blue Origin”, an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services [7]. He thinks that someday, the world will go out of resources and human race has to travel to the other planet of the solar system for energy. This is an example of a vision of Jeff for the future of the human civilization. He has a clear authentic leadership style. Jeff is an extravert leader. He is a friendly and socially active person. He is an assertive leader who expresses feelings, opinions, attitudes and demands. Under his leadership, Amazon has grown from a small organization with 125 employees to huge corporation with 566000 employees. He appreciates the idea from coworkers with enthusiasm. At the early days of Amazon when every employee had to pack books in the boxes on hands and knees on the concrete floor, a software engineering colleague gave the idea to use packing table [3]. Jeff immediately accepted the idea openly and it doubled the productivity. Jeff is an optimist business leader. Amazon had financial crisis on 2002 when Barnes & Noble started their online store to compete against Amazon.

When everyone of Amazon was worried including the family and friends, Jeff stayed calm. He handled the situation with optimism and told his colleagues to focus on the customers instead of the competitors. This is one of the core business & leadership policy of Bezos. Amazon’s mission is “Earth's most customer-centric company” [8]. Effective use of humor makes leadership role people oriented [2]. Bezos has good sense of humor. He makes little jokes in the interview and smiles when listens to one. This makes him approachable by other employees and increase job satisfaction.

Task oriented personality traits of BezosJeff has a passion for the work and the people. He has started Amazon as the online seller of books. Interestingly, he never stopped only with the books. He then used Amazon as a Ecommerce site to sell everyday products. Unlike Ebay, Amazon was selling products on their own as well as letting other companies sell the same product. This business model helped Amazon to gain trust from clients and gain brand value. He made platform to buy digital books from Amazon and read them with Kindle (E-book reader made by Amazon). He extended the business to make hardware like cell phones, tablet and day to day accessories. He is a visionary like any other great business leaders. He didn’t stop himself on in the online book store. In 2002, he established Amazon Web Services, the leading on-demand cloud computing platform [9]. His knowledge and skillset in computer science helped him to understand how complicated it is to manage, scale a production server on the cloud. AWS supports reliable storage system, scalable instances. Bezos has courage to start something new. He takes risk to enter into a new market. He has started the online book selling business when nobody else was doing it. He has started “Blue Origin” with a long term vision. He is a flexible leader who understands the necessity of change. When there is a problem, he listens to it, analyzes it and is flexible enough to make a change. Jeff appreciates creativity and apply it in workplace and business.

Amazon doesn’t use traditional meeting with PowerPoint presentation. They use printed memo, all of the participants have to read the memo silently for about 30 minutes, after that, they discuss the findings with everyone in the meeting. This improves participation of everyone in the meeting. SummaryJeff Bezos is one of the most successful business leaders in the word. He didn’t receive a celebrity status like Steve Jobs. But that didn’t stop him to be innovative and be creative. He has contributed positively in the society and I’m very sure that he will keep doing that in the future.