Colin Bryar, Bill Carr

working-backwards

According to online reviewers, the best thing about "Working Backwards" is its insightful perspective on Amazon's unique leadership principles and practices, offering valuable lessons for business leaders. Conversely, some reviewers noted that the book can feel overly detailed and lengthy, which might detract from its overall impact for some readers.

Key Insights

  • Working backwards from the customer — the PR/FAQ process. Amazon’s product development discipline: before writing any code, product teams write a press release (what will this product do for customers?) and an FAQ (what will customers and internal teams ask?). If you can’t write the press release compellingly, the product idea isn’t good enough yet. This forces clarity about customer value before investment.
  • Controllable input metrics vs. output metrics. “What’s really important is to focus on the ‘controllable input metrics,’ the activities you directly control, which ultimately affect output metrics such as share price.” Amazon’s WBR (Weekly Business Review) tracks leading indicators — selection, price, delivery speed — rather than lagging ones like revenue. When a metric moves, you ask why until you reach something actionable.
  • Culture is the Leadership Principles, operationalized. “Leadership Principles are deeply ingrained in every significant process and function at the company.” Amazon’s LPs are not aspirational statements — they are used in hiring, performance reviews, escalation decisions, and product debates. The test of a principle is whether it changes behavior in ambiguous situations.
  • Single-threaded leadership — the “two-pizza team” corollary. Amazon’s solution to the coordination tax: give one person full ownership and accountability for each initiative, with a team small enough that two pizzas could feed them. Committees and shared ownership diffuse accountability; single-threaded ownership concentrates it.
  • The six-page narrative memo instead of PowerPoint. Amazon replaced slide decks with written narratives read silently at the start of every meeting. The discipline of full sentences and connected arguments exposes fuzzy thinking that bullets hide. The memo is the thinking, not a summary of thinking done elsewhere.
  • If you don’t fix the underlying condition, the problem will recur. “If you don’t change the underlying condition that created a problem, you should expect the problem to recur.” Amazon’s Correction of Error (COE) process requires five-why root cause analysis and a fix to the system, not just the instance. Symptomatic fixes are explicitly insufficient.

— Drafted from external sources; review and edit to make your own.

Kindle Highlights: Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

Highlights

“Our culture is four things: customer obsession instead of competitor obsession; willingness to think long term, with a longer investment horizon than most of our peers; eagerness to invent, which of course goes hand in hand with failure; and then, finally, taking professional pride in operational excellence.” — location: 48 ^ref-57206

Leadership Principles are deeply ingrained in every significant process and function at the company. — location: 288 ^ref-22767

Amazon’s Leadership Principles6 Customer Obsession. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Ownership. Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say, “that’s not my job.” Invent and Simplify. Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time. Are Right, A Lot. Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. Learn and Be Curious. Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. Hire and Develop the Best. Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. Insist on the Highest Standards. Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Think Big. Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. Bias for Action. Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking. Frugality. Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. Earn Trust. Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best. Dive Deep. Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are… — location: 347 ^ref-29241

if you don’t change the underlying condition that created a problem, you should expect the problem to recur. — location: 396 ^ref-7348

A common mistake among less-seasoned product managers is to not fully consider how third parties who have their own agendas and incentives will interact with their product idea, or what potential regulatory or legal issues might arise. — location: 2078 ^ref-12053

What’s really important is to focus on the “controllable input metrics,” the activities you directly control, which ultimately affect output metrics such as share price. — location: 2140 ^ref-54724

When the retail, operations, and finance teams began to construct the initial Amazon WBR, they turned to a well-known Six Sigma process improvement method called DMAIC, an acronym for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.1 Should you decide to implement a Weekly Business Review for your business, we recommend following the DMAIC steps as well. — location: 2177 ^ref-21534

focusing most of its effort on leading indicators (we call these “controllable input metrics”) rather than lagging indicators (“output metrics”). Input metrics track things like selection, price, or convenience—factors that Amazon can control through actions such as adding items to the catalog, lowering cost so prices can be lowered, or positioning inventory to facilitate faster delivery to customers. — location: 2189 ^ref-61782

the first page of the WBR deck has a picture of the very same flywheel above. — location: 2214 ^ref-61615

Over multiple WBR meetings, we asked ourselves, “If we work to change this selection metric, as currently defined, will it result in the desired output?” — location: 2229 ^ref-50147

Often the data you want will be scattered across different systems and may take some serious software resources to compile, aggregate, and display correctly. Do not compromise here. Make the investment. If you don’t, you may find that you are flying blind with respect to some important aspect of the business. — location: 2266 ^ref-35712

Start with the customer and work backwards by aligning your metrics with the customer experience. — location: 2290 ^ref-18136

This COE process requires the team who had a significant error or problem to write a document describing the problem or error, and to drill down on what caused it by asking and answering “Why?” five times in order to get to the true root cause. — location: 2309 ^ref-6264

Jeff is not exempted from this program. While I was working as his shadow, it came time for his Customer Connection recertification, and we dutifully traveled an hour each day to the customer service center in Tacoma, Washington. Jeff was particularly good with customers over the phone, though he was sometimes overly generous. He — location: 2513 ^ref-20418

“Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.” — location: 2556 ^ref-57649

his first action was not a “what” decision, it was a “who” and “how” decision. This is an incredibly important difference. — location: 2791 ^ref-39221

moved to a casual but most definitely businesslike tone. “I’m — location: 3266 ^ref-50193

  • [[Working backwards]]
  • [[Flywheel virtuous cycle]]
  • [[Feedback loops]]