Beautifully simple approach to leadership from Amazon

Everything you read about Jeff Bezos, and about the Amazon leadership principles that guide his company, leads you to believe he is a business mad-man. The cutting-edge technology and business thinking he has driven created Amazon, the company that disrupted the entire retail ecosystem. And it all originates from the Bezos way of thinking.

But is his approach all that radical? Is what Bezos preaches incredibly advanced, or just beautifully simple? The answer lives in the Amazon leadership principles, a list far plainer than the company’s scale would suggest.

What Are the Amazon Leadership Principles?

I’m presently looking to fill a management role within my organization, and we’re struggling to find the ideal candidate. Finding the technical skills is relatively easy. Finding someone who pairs those skills with genuine leadership ability proves elusive.

And that’s not just in my organization. A lack of leadership is apparent in a great many companies I interact with on a regular basis. The best fix I’ve found pairs a backbone with heart, exactly the balance in WD-40’s approach to leadership and culture.

Can you teach leadership? I’m not sure, but you can offer guides that encourage the leadership every individual already holds within them. It also takes clear thinking under pressure, which is really what tough and competent leadership means when it counts. The Amazon leadership principles are one of those guides. You can read the full list at Amazon’s careers site, but here are the essential points:

• Customer Obsession
• Ownership
• Invent and Simplify
• Are Right, A Lot
• Learn and Be Curious
• Hire and Develop the Best
• Insist on the Highest Standards
• Think Big
• Bias for Action
• Frugality
• Earn Trust
• Dive Deep
• Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit
• Deliver Results

Why the Amazon Leadership Principles Still Work

What strikes me is how plain the list is. There is no jargon and no framework to memorize. Each principle is a short, clear instruction anyone can act on today, and that simplicity is the point. Principles only shape a culture when people actually remember them, and people remember short ideas.

Contrast that with the mission statements most companies bury on a wall or a slide deck no one reads. The Amazon leadership principles work because they get used, referenced in hiring, in reviews, and in the everyday decisions that actually build a company. The first two do most of the heavy lifting. Customer Obsession keeps the whole organization pointed outward, at the people you serve rather than the internal politics that quietly drain most companies. Ownership asks everyone to act like the outcome is theirs, because it is.

Hiring for Leadership, Not Just Skills

This is where the principles earn their keep for an operator like me. When I screen for that hard-to-find management candidate, I’m really testing for a handful of these traits. Do they have a Bias for Action, or do they wait to be told? Do they Earn Trust, or protect their own corner? Will they Have Backbone and Disagree and Commit, or simply agree with whoever spoke last?

Technical skills get someone through the interview. These behaviors are what tell me whether they can lead once the job gets hard. You can teach a process in an afternoon. It is much harder to teach someone to care about the customer, or to own a result that went sideways. The good news is that the principles give you a shared language for spotting those behaviors, so hiring stops being a gut call and becomes something your whole team can evaluate consistently.

The Beautifully Simple Takeaway

So, back to the original question. Bezos is not preaching anything radical. He is preaching the fundamentals, written plainly enough that a company of over a million people can rally around them. That is the beautifully simple part, and it is a standard worth stealing for a team of any size. If you want to trade notes on building that kind of culture, you can always connect with me on LinkedIn.