Leadership Style Of Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur and the founder, CEO, and president of Amazon.com. Since high school, he has had an interest in computer science which led to him pursuing a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University in 1986. Jeff Bezos is well known as an American engineer, technology, retail entrepreneur, philanthropist, and investor, (Lashinsky & Adam 2)

I admire the leadership qualities which Jeff Bezos employs in his management of Amazon which has seen the company rise from scratch to one of the leading online streaming platforms in the United States. Some of the attributes which Jeff Bezos employs include prioritizing customer service wherein every meeting he places an extra chair in the conference room which reminds him of a person who is a customer and is conscious of how the customer would feel or react to their decisions; having the notion that customer should come first by focusing on customer satisfaction instead of wasting time formulating plans to have leverage over other businesses; having long term thoughts by having long term plans of making his company great which he has already achieved; and encouraging his employees to think like owners, (Lashinsky & Adam 4)

According to an interview conducted with Jeff Bezos by Forbes in 2018, it reveals one of Bezos maxim which keeps Amazon Inc. going, that, relatively, we are still at “day one” of the internet and, by extension, that Amazon is just getting started. The article by Forbes says that Bezos talks about Amazon as if it is just a startup company that just closed its Series A and yet the company currently experiences profits that goes up to 103% per year. The interview reveals that Bezos has always viewed stealthiness as an asset, making new initiatives inside larger expenditures and feigning disinterest in burgeoning favorites.

The interview also reveals that Bezos is not fond of talking to other people and acknowledges that he has a more prominent duty to do of giving his customers the best instead of discussing other people. This is revealed when the interviewer asked Bezos to comment on Donald Trump’s comment on Twitter attacking him and Bezos refuses to discuss that and acknowledges the fact that he has a target on his back. That is quite an admirable attribute of a good leader. This is because immediately people start hitting on each other on social media, they tend to forget their target and focus on the utterances they are making on each other. This makes the company they are leading lag behind in terms of sales, profits, and customer satisfaction. Bezos opting to ignore commenting on Trump’s post on Twitter was really a good and thoughtful idea that will see his career through a big success.

Bezos also acknowledges that the most important word at Amazon is yes. This came up when Bezos was explaining the traditional corporate hierarchy of the company when a junior executive comes up with a new idea which they want to try in the company. He says that the initiator of the idea has to convince their boss, their boss’s boss, their boss’s boss’s boss, and so on. He then says that any no in that chain may kill the idea. This means that he is not the final say in the company but he acknowledges the leadership of all employees in the company and any suggestion by an employee regarding an idea is taken seriously.

The interview also revealed the plans Bezos has in venturing into Healthcare which is America’s biggest industry and one of its inefficient. Bezos has come into a partnership with Buffett and Jamie Dimon and hired Atul Gawande to lead a non-profit initiative that is made to deliver better healthcare at a lower cost to their employees. This shows the kind of love Bezos has for his employees as well as his customers and is ready to do anything for their well-being. Bezos finishes the interview by saying, “Corporate America, take note, either innovate or Jeff Bezos will do it for you.” This shows the ambitions of Bezos. Bezos is one of the admired entrepreneurs in the world and if one follows the traits of Bezos and his wise talks, he can also achieve in the world of corporate.