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Jeff Bezos, Firmenkultur

A word about corporate cultures: for better or for worse, they are enduring, stable, hard to change. They can be a source of advantage or disadvantage. You can write down your corporate culture, but when you do so, you’re discovering it, uncovering it – not creating it. It is created slowly over time by the people and by events – by the stories of past success and failure that become a deep part of the company lore.

If it’s a distinctive culture, it will fit certain people like a custom-made glove. The reason cultures are so stable in time is because people self-select. Someone energized by competitive zeal may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves to pioneer and invent may choose another. The world, thankfully, is full of many high-performing, highly distinctive corporate cultures.

We never claim that our approach is the right one – just that it’s ours – and over the last two decades, we’ve collected a large group of like-minded people. Folks who find our approach

energizing and meaningful. One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins.

To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there.

Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a ten percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. 

The difference between baseball and business, however, is that

baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold.

Big winners pay for so many experiments.

Amazon’s energy internally comes from its desire to impress its customers. This means reinventing normal and delivering products before customers even know they want them. Some companies may rely on customer surveys and market research to understand their users. This is especially dangerous when designing and inventing new products. 

“Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition.”

“A remarkable customer experience starts with the heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste.

You won’t find any of it in a survey.”

-Jeff Bezos.

Empty Happy Brain

“When I walk, I have an empty, happy brain and I see things.”
– Maira Kalman

More about her here.

It's all about the song

It's nearly time for the Christmas parties once again and what would be the point of parties without music and songs. Thinking about my favourites on the walk home yesterday one of the best ever suddenly popped into my mind again. Everybody's Talkin', the Nilsson tune, the theme for Midnight Cowboy, the Oscar winner for best picture in 1969. My, my, that was some time ago. 

It's a very short but powerful song.

"Everybody's talking at me! I don't hear a word they're saying. Only the echoes of my mind. People stopping, staring. I can't see their faces. Only the shadows of their eyes."

What a beautiful song! Makes me smile everytime. 

"He's going where the sun keeps shining, thru the pouring rain. He's going where the weather suits his clothes. Backing off the northeast wind, sailing on a summer breeze, and skipping over the ocean like a stone."



And what a unique talent Harry Nilsson was.