16 Amazon Leadership Principles for Innovation, Influence and Impact

“Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don’t do anything new.” ― Jeff Bezos

On This Page:

What are Amazon’s Leadership Principles
1. Customer Obsession
2. Ownership
3. Invent and Simplify
4. Are Right, A Lot
5. Learn and Be Curious
6. Hire and Develop the Best
7. Insist on the Highest Standards
8. Think Big
9. Bias for Action
10. Frugality
11. Earn Trust
12. Dive Deep
13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit
14. Deliver Results
15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer
16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility
Amazon Leadership Culture
STAR Method for Behavioral Interview Questions

I’m always comparing top tech companies for how they take care of their people and how they take care of the world.

I did a deep into the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles to learn more about Amazon’s approach to innovation and positive impact at scale.

The Amazon Leadership Principles offer deep insight into how Amazon works, how it grows leaders, and how the company wins through talent.  Each principle is designed with a specific intent for shaping behavior.

Amazon relentlessly wraps its business around customers and focuses on speed, agility, and innovation to respond to changing needs in the market.

Amazon strives to be a lasting company.  It works hard to set the leadership standard for the decades and centuries to come.

In recent years, Amazon is embracing ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) and sustainability to create a more sustainable workforce, improve the planet, and take responsibility for its broad impact around the world.

With that in mind, please enjoy my tour of the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles…

What are Amazon’s Leadership Principles?

The Amazon Leadership Principles are the organization framework and backbone for Amazon’s culture.

Amazon uses the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles every day to guide how the workforce thinks, acts, and communicates in everything they do:

“We use our Leadership Principles every day, whether we’re discussing ideas for new projects or deciding on the best approach to solving a problem.

It is just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar.”

Jeff Bezos on Amazon’s Leadership Principles

Jeff Bezos wants Amazon’s legacy to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.

Watch Jeff Bezos explain Amazon’s Leadership Principles:

The 16 Amazon Leadership Principles

Here are the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles along with key takeaways and practice interview questions to help you understand them more deeply:

1. Customer Obsession

Amazon’s 16 principles begin with having a customer obsession.  Successful leaders start with the customer and work backwards.

They work hard to build and keep customer trust.

While leaders pay attention to competition, they obsess over customers.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders put customers front and center.   They deeply understand what customers want and need.

Leaders rigorously pursue customer feedback to “Wow” their customers.

Practice questions on “Customer Obsession”

• Tell me about a time you solved a pain point for customers.
• Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a very difficult customer.
• How do you prioritize customer needs when you’re dealing with a large number of customers?

2. Ownership

Successful leaders are owners.  They don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term success.

They never say “that’s not my job.”

They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders take on a broad responsibility for the business, and consider what’s best for the company at all times.

They consider future outcomes, work across boundaries between jobs and departments, and consider the impact of their decisions on customers and the Amazon ecosystem over time.

Practice questions on “Ownership”

• Tell me about a time when you had to work on a task with unclear responsibilities.
• Tell me about a time when you took on a task that was beyond your job responsibilities.
• Tell me about a tough decision you made during a project.

3. Invent and Simplify

Successful leaders expect and require innovation from their teams and always find ways to simplify.

Leaders are looking for new ideas internally and externally and are not limited by “not invented here”.

As leaders try and do new things, they accept that they may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Key takeaways

Successful leaders are not limited by the past or convention.  They innovate, and experiment to solve challenges and simplify the process along the way.

Practice questions on “Invent and Simplify”

• Tell me about a time where you found a simple solution to a complex problem.
• Tell me about a time when you solved a complex problem and how you went about it.
• Tell me about a time when you tried to simplify a process but failed. What would you have done differently?

4. Are Right, A Lot

Successful leaders are right a lot. Not always, but a lot.

They have strong judgment and good instincts.

They seek diverse perspectives and work to show that their belief or hypothesis is not or may not be true.

Key Takeaways

There is a high degree of tolerance for failure, but not for making the same mistake over and over.

Successful leaders learn from their mistakes, develop specific insights into the reasons behind those mistakes, and share those insights more broadly with the rest of the company.

They are capable of taking risks and thinking on their feet.

Practice questions on “Are Right, A Lot”

• Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
• Tell me about a time you made a decision based on your instincts.
• Tell me about a time when you had to convince team members on something you proposed.

5. Learn and Be Curious

Successful leaders are never done learning and are always seeking to improve themselves.

They stay curious

Leaders are curious about new possibilities, and they act to explore them.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders are always learning and improving.  They demonstrate an ability to learn new things and explore new ideas.

Leaders do something in a new way, either new to themselves or new to their business.

Practice interview questions on “Learn and Be Curious”

• How do you stay inspired, acquire new knowledge, or innovate in your work?
• Tell me about a time you built out a process.
• Tell me about a time when you made a better decision with the help of your curiosity.

6. Hire and Develop the Best

Successful leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion.

They recognize exceptional talent,

Leaders develop leaders.  They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders hire and develop the best talent.  They develop new leaders and help them realize their full potential.

Leaders encourage high-performing employees to stay with the company by providing a lot of support and opportunities to grow further.

According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, this was the first principle that Amazon embraced when he started building it in 1994.

They chose this principle to guide them because they wanted to build a lasting company.

The idea was to create a company that would last for decades and centuries, and be able to clearly show what great leadership means.

Practice questions on “Hire and Develop the Best”

• Tell me about a time when you made a bad hire. When did you figure it out, and what did you do?
• Tell me about a time you provided feedback to develop and leverage the strengths of someone on your team.
• Tell me about a time when you invested in a specific person and helped them develop their career.

7. Insist on the Highest Standards

Successful leaders have relentlessly high standards.

They continuously raise the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes.

They fix problems so they stay fixed.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders keep raising the bar, forcing people to stretch and achieve new levels of quality and excellence.

They continuously create better experiences for employees and better experiences for customers.

Practice questions on “Insist on the highest standards”

• Tell me about a time when you were not satisfied with the status quo and raised the bar.
• Tell me about a time when you personally put measures in place to ensure performance improvement targets and standards are achieved.
• Tell me about a time you had to make a decision to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.

8. Think Big

Successful leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results.

They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders create inspiring visions, and go in bold, new directions.

Practice questions on “Think Big”

• Tell me about a time when your vision led to a great impact.
• Tell me about time when you saw an opportunity to do something much bigger than the initial focus.
• Tell me about a time when you had to make a bold and challenging decision.

9. Bias for Action

Successful leaders value calculated risk taking.

Speed matters in business.

Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders make decisions quickly and take action over deliberation and inaction.

Practice questions on “Bias for Action”

• Tell me about a time when you took a calculated risk.
• Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information.
• Tell me about a time you needed to get information from someone who wasn’t very responsive.

10. Frugality

Successful leaders accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention.

There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders are resourceful and creative, and they use resources wisely.

Practice questions on “Frugality”

• Tell me about a time you had to accomplish big results with no budget and no resources.
• Tell me about a time where you came up with a new way to save money for the company.
• Tell me about a time when you had to rely on yourself to complete a task.

11. Earn Trust

Successful leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully.

They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing.

Leaders benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders are open and respectful.   They create a feeling of trust through transparency.   Leaders create an environment where people feel safe communicating their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and ideas.

Practice questions on “Earn Trust”

• Tell me about a time when you had to speak up in a difficult or uncomfortable environment.
• Tell me about a time you had to manage conflict.
• Tell me about a time when you needed the cooperation of a peer or peers who were resistant to what you were trying to do.

12. Dive Deep

Successful Leaders operate at all levels.

They stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ.

No task is beneath them.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders can create and see the big picture as well as dive deep into details.

Practice questions on “Dive Deep”

• Tell me about the most complex project you’ve worked on.
• Tell me about a time when you changed an opinion or direction using data or a specific metric.
• Tell me about a time you had to go down several layers of the problem to figure out the root cause.

13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Successful leaders respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting.

Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion.
Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders have conviction and will fight for what they believe is right in a respectful way.

But when a decision is made, they will fully commit to the decision.

Practice questions on “Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit”

• Tell me about an unpopular decision you made.
• Tell me about a time when you took an unpopular stance in a meeting with peers and your leader and you were the outlier.
• Tell me about a time when you strongly disagreed with your manager on something you believed was very important to the business.

14. Deliver Results

Successful leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion.

Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders relentlessly execute and lean in on challenges.

Practice questions on “Deliver Results:

• Tell me about a time when you worked on a challenging project with tight deadlines.
• Tell me about a time when you were persevered through setbacks, overcame obstacles, and delivered outstanding results.
• Tell me about a time where you achieved results beyond the goal and considerably exceeded expectations.

15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer

Successful leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment.

They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun.

Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next?

Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders create a safe, diverse, and just work environment that inspires the team, boosts productivity, and empowers employees to prosper.

Practice questions on “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer”

• Tell me about a time when you assembled a team.
• Tell me about a time when you managed different strengths and weaknesses of members on your team.
• Tell me about a time when you helped your team members develop their careers.

16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility

Successful leaders begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large.

And they must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow.

Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.

We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions.

Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day.

Key Takeaways

Successful leaders improve the system and ecosystem that they operate in and consider the effects their actions have on the world at large, always finding ways to leave things better than they found them.

Practice questions on “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility”

• Tell me about a time when you’ve left a project in a better position than you’ve found it.
• Tell me about a time when you had to handle a moral or ethical dilemma you’ve faced in the workplace.
• Tell me about a time where you failed to anticipate the secondary effects of a project you worked on.

How the Leadership Principles Shape Amazon’s Culture

Amazon uses the 16 Amazon Leadership Principles to define, shape, sustain, and evolve its leadership culture.

The leadership principles are a living framework for behavior change.

Every action and decision Amazon makes is meant to revolve around these principles.

Amazon is a combined culture of customer value with extreme innovation extreme execution, and continuous improvement.

When you hire, groom and grow great talent for long-term prosperity, you really start from a place of differentiation.

Amazon takes the long-term view and the leadership specifically set out to create a long-term company that would last for decades and centuries and demonstrate great leadership.

Culture is ultimately a synthesis of the values reflected by the behaviors that get rewarded and punished (and thoughts are behaviors, too).

Here are some of the highlights that I see looking in at Amazon from the outside, interpreting what the culture means for the workforce of the future:

• How Amazon creates a culture of incredible customer experience.  Customers are the lifeblood of Amazon’s business.   Amazon will do whatever it takes to wow the customer.   Case in point, on the 95.7 The Jet Mornings with Jodi and Bender, Jodi proclaimed, “Amazon has the best customer service in the world!”    This was in response to Bender complaining that so many companies don’t have real people doing support anymore.   Jodi was quick to point out that Amazon wins here and still has humans that can help you when you’re stuck or need support.
• How Amazon creates a culture of leaders. Everyone is a leader.  The Amazon Leadership principles coach and encourage people to think big, think long-term, execute, and own their impact.
• How Amazon creates a culture of diversity & inclusion. Amazon creates a culture of inclusion and diversity through its 16 Amazon Leadership Principles.  The 16 Amazon Leadership Principles remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and earn trust.
• How Amazon creates a culture of continuous innovation. Amazon creates an innovation culture.  Amazon’s ability to innovate on behalf of its customers relies on the perspectives and knowledge of people from all backgrounds.   Additionally, through the use of narrative memos and a focus on big picture and long-term value, with a focus on fast, short-term execution around customer experience, Amazon inspires its workforce to build a culture of continuous innovation.
• How Amazon creates a culture of learning and growth.  Amazon is a learning company.  Amazon creates a deep culture of learning and growth.   Taking risks and learning from mistakes is a big part of how leaders grow their experience and get better.   When you combine that with a culture where leaders are focused on growing new leaders and helping people realize their potential, that’s learning on fire.
• How Amazon creates a memo culture.   Jeff Bezos switched Amazon away from bullet points to narrative memos to communicate big ideas and decisions.   In his 2018 letter to Amazon’s shareholders, Jeff Bezos revealed that he banned PowerPoint presentations from meetings.  This switch helped reduce cognitive load, give better structure, faster meetings, and it’s a self-documenting process.   Presentations depend on the presenter.  The narrative memos can easily be shared around the world, translated, and support asynchronous collaboration.  Some say this might be a big key for Amazon’s success at innovation since they can share big ideas faster around the company.
• How Amazon creates a culture of sustainability.  Amazon added the last two principles to directly address the need to think, act, and communicate in a sustainable, long-term way, that’s good for people and good for the planet.  While the other principles already encourage this, the last two principles really put the idea front and center and help reinforce Amazon’s commitment to building a better world for customers.

STAR Method for Behavioral Interview Questions

Imagine if you practiced the Amazon Leadership Principles interview questions for personal growth and realizing your leadership potential.

I think the interview questions are an incredible way to practice the leadership principles for personal growth and greatness.

After all, Amazon created the principles to set a high bar for leaders of the future into the decades to come.

Of course, you can practice the interview questions for interviews, too.

Modern tech companies tend to use behavioral interview questions.

FAANG stands for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google.   FAANG interviews tend to integrate version of behavioral interview questions.

The STAR method is a way of answering behavioral interview questions in a succinct, yet complete way.

STAR stands for:

• S – Situation
• T – Task
• A – Action
• R – Results

You can use the STAR method to be clear and concise in your answers while still demonstrating depth of clarity and thought.

It’s a proven practice to help answer behavioral interview questions better without rambling or confusing answers.

You can recognize behavioral type interview questions because they usually start with an opener like one of these:

• Tell me about a time when…
• Describe a situation…
• Give me an example of…
• Have you ever…
• What do you do when…

How To Use the STAR Method to Answer Behavioral Interview Questions

As a guide, focus on just one or two sentences for each letter of the acronym.

Remember the point of the STAR method is to avoid long, rambling answers and to help you be clear and concise and stay on track.

You want to share stories with positive results.  That doesn’t mean that every situation needs to have gone perfectly.

It does mean that each time you failed or made a mistake, you end on a high note by talking about what you learned or the steps you took to improve.

1. Lay Out the Situation.

This is context setting.   Describe what the situation was.

Your goal here is to paint a clear picture of the situation you were in.

This is where you set the scene for the interviewer but keep it concise and focused on how you story answers the question.

For example, imagine if the interviewer asked: “

“Tell me about a time when you achieved a goal that you initially thought was out of reach.”

You might respond along the lines of:

“In my previous digital marketing role, my company decided to focus primarily on email marketing and wanted to increase their list of email subscribers pretty aggressively.”

2. Explain the Task and Your Role:

Explain the task and your role.  Tasks are not the actions you took; they are the challenge you need to solve.

This is your chance to give the specifics of what your responsibilities were in that particular scenario, as well as any objective that was set for you, before you dive into what you actually did.

You might respond along the lines of:

“As the digital marketing lead, my target was to increase the size of our email list by at least 20% in just one quarter.”

3. Explain the Actions You Took.

Show how you took immediate measures to solve the problem.  Provide information on exactly what you did.

What are the steps you took to achieve the goal or solve the problem?

You might respond along the lines of:

“I started by revamping old blog posts to inspire new subscribers.

Next, I partnered with the rest of our marketing team to host a webinar that required email registration and funneled interested people to our list.”

4. Summarize the Results.

Explain the outcomes of your actions.

What results did you achieve? How did it make a difference? Why did it matter?

Quantify results where you can.   Add any long-term effects or benefits from your actions.

“As a result of this email campaign effort, I was able to increase our subscriber base from 50,000 subscribers to 75,000 subscribers in three months—which exceeded the goal.

And now webinars are a regular event to boost and maintain our email list.”

By practicing answering each of the Amazon Principle interview questions this way, you really learn your strengths and weaknesses.

If you don’t have stories that exemplify the principle, that’s a leadership moment and learning opportunity to go create some by applying the principle to your real-world scenarios.

Amazon Hiring Manager Explains Using SBI

Here’s a good video where Amazon hiring manager, Erik Cutts, walkthrough using SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact) to answer behavior interview questions:

 

 

Call to Action

1. Learn the leadership principles as a lens into your own leadership principles, patterns, and practices.
2. As a personal growth exercise, practice telling simple stories how you’ve demonstrated the principles from your experience.
3. For any gaps you have, where you can’t tell a story because you don’t have experience there, look for opportunities to create new experiences and grow your leadership skills.

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