Amazon founder Jeff Bezos related the timeless lessons he's learned for business success in a recent interview. The three big ideas are:
- Think on a different timescale
- Put the customer first
- Always be inventing
Bezos stated that the three ideas go together. He related that thinking long term is essential because if you are continually inventing, you are going to experience more failure than success. A lot of inventions don't work - that's one reason why you need to constantly experiment.
Bezos also recognizes that big things start out small. Inside Amazon, when a new business reaches some small milestone of sales, email messages go around and everybody's given virtual high fives for reaching that milestone. Bezos knows from past experiences that big things start small. The biggest oak starts from an acorn, and if you want to do anything new, you've got to be willing to let that acorn grow into a little sapling and then finally into a small tree and maybe one day it will be a big business on its own.
Step-by-step is another "absolute" Bezos/Amazon lesson. It recognizes that you can't skip steps. You have to put one foot in front of the other - things take time. There are no shortcuts, but you want to do those steps with passion and ferocity.
Love what you do. Recognize that not every day is going to be fun or easy. That's why it is called work. Bezos is passionate about Amazon. He thrives on the rate of change. He loves the fact that he gets to work with brilliant people who are focused on helping Amazon customers. He admits that there are things he does not enjoy doing, but at the end of the day, he believes that he is lucky to work alongside passionate people and asks, "why would I go sit on a beach?"
No comments:
Post a Comment