Colin Bryar, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon (Book Review)
This is a really provocative "read" regarding how Amazon gets stuff done. For the most part, the attention that Amazon pays to the long term is very impressive: Their methods hang together and they've obviously been effective delivering value. I think what I like about this book is that it shows that there are reasons for a variety of rituals (what they call "mechanisms") at Amazon; they're obviously the result of considerable internal self-analysis and refinement.
The book may have some blinders, though.
One peculiarity of the book is that the descriptions of operational successes aren't contextualized very well in terms of what other companies are doing. Let me give you an example. The S-Team (executive team) sets goals that must be "SMART" (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely), but the book doesn't cite the article by Doran. Meanwhile, we are told that these goals are reviewed quarterly, and that "Amazon only expects about three-quarters of them to be fully achieved during the year" (pp. 19-20). So they're like OKRs. I think this is worth pointing out, because as a planning device, the S-Team goals are likely subject to many of the difficulties inherent with OKRs. Another puzzle is that we never learn exactly who's on the S-Team (see esp. pp. 80, 99): Which roles from technology have a seat at the table? Security? How many people are on the S-Team, and is it analogous to the leadership teams of other companies? These details matter.
In 2004, Amazon banned PowerPoint at meetings, in favor of documents that take about 1/3 of a meeting to read and process. So, for example, for a one hour meeting, 20 minutes is set aside for reading a "six-pager" that is written in advance. This decision was driven by the experience of Jeff Bezos and and Colin Bryar's reading of a famous article by Edward Tufte on "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint." Following Tufte, the authors point out that PowerPoint has a lot of problems: It reduces critical points to simplistic bullets, and it overly rewards people who are great at sharing/performing slides. That's all true. Amazon replaces that with a closely-reasoned document that provides context for the decision at hand. There is solid discussion here about the biases that can emerge from running meetings with PowerPoint. However, is written text the answer? Here's the blinder: The authors have little sensitivity to the fact that many people have styles of cognition for whom the written word is sometimes not optimal. I personally find that before I create a slide deck, I write out the main things I want to communicate in sentences and paragraphs. When I share the deck, I also share the writing. By this means, my audience can select the document that fits their cognitive style. In other words, I'm not sure that PowerPoint as a medium is necessarily the problem, but rather bad thinking that produces bad decks (and bad thinking can also produce bad six-pagers, which is acknowledged in the book). The book is also light on what constitutes good writing or deceptive writing. I.e., we're to understand that PowerPoint can hide a lot of deficiencies -- well, writing can do that as well.
There is a great chapter on hiring (Chapter 2), but little on retention (except for some discussion of how Amazon rewards people not with cash but with stock with a long cliff). Amazon knows that its people are one of its critical assets. Still, very frequently in the book you learn that a specific player is no longer at the company. To me, that's a red flag (to be sure, there are also people who are apparently still with the company). The book notes that some initiatives required "heroics" (p. 208) -- I read that as unsustainability. In that same section, Amazon wanted to announce Prime for an earnings call, but because Prime was late, the earnings call had to be delayed (p. 209). That sounds like unrealistic planning which can take a toll on staff. On another occasion, a staff member who had completed plans for holiday marketing and was going for a three day weekend in Portland was called while en route and was asked to return to Seattle immediately to help with a complete re-do of a the holiday promotions (p. 196). While Amazon is in it for the long term, there are many moments in the book where a project was scrapped at the last minute. What's the cost?
Alright, enough nit-picking. This book is good enough that I may need to re-read it.
Originally reviewed on Goodreads on 13 March 2023.
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