How well does this employee exemplify our company values? Our cultural DNA?
The move codifies and formalizes what was previously implied: that Amazon managers should evaluate employees in part on how well their actions live up to the company’s 16 Leadership Principles – corporate totems or values like “Bias for Action,” “Customer Obsession, and “Frugality” that are supposed to guide behavior, decision-making, and new-idea development inside the tech behemoth.
“By making Leadership Principles a formal input… the updated process helps us strengthen the connection between performance and culture,” the new internal guideline read in part, according to the report.
The formalization of this new evaluation is not surprising if you’ve tracked Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s leadership of the company in recent years. But it is significant; it’s the latest salvo in his years-long crusade to strengthen, and in some corners of the organization, resuscitate, the company DNA architected by founder and previous CEO Jeff Bezos. What Jassy is seeking to do doesn’t have many examples to model after: to transform the 1.5-million person company into the “world’s largest startup,” as he’s said is his goal.
Jassy also mandated that company leaders squeeze out layers of middle management and increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15%.
“If we do this work well,” Jassy wrote at the time, “it will increase our teammates’ ability to move fast, clarify, and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day.”
While formally evaluating how well employees exhibit the leadership principles will surely create its own challenges due to the subjective nature of the task, Jassy’s recent track record says it won’t be his company’s last attempt to fortify Amazon’s culture.
