The CEO That Jeff Bezos Called “His Teacher” with Jeff Wilke & James Currier

The NFX Podcast

In this episode, James Currier converses with Jeff Wilke about Amazon's leadership principles, writing culture, and the role of software architecture. They delve into individuality in leadership, the power of authenticity in communication, and the importance of teaching. They also touch on Jeff's new venture, Rebuild Manufacturing.

Jeff Wilke (former CEO, Amazon's Worldwide Consumer Business) sheds light on a counter-intuitive driver behind unusual success: Focus on the inputs, not the outputs. Jeff shares the 3 drivers underlying the rise of Amazon, Prime, Alexa, and AWS, including:

1. "Mechanisms": Amazon's definition, two failure modes, and why they're harder to implement than it first appears

2. A Single-Page Culture: How Amazon's set of principles proved to be an inoculation against a drifting culture

3. Single-Threaded Invention

In practice, operational excellence is the key driver to executing consistently for the long term. It is the secret for harnessing creativity that compounds value over time.

(0:00) Introduction and personal catch-up (0:17) Discussing the Amazon "s team" and its role (2:34) Amazon's leadership principles and writing culture (9:31) Individuality in leadership and explanation of "mechanisms" (12:19) Revisiting past insights, single-threaded leadership and the role of software architecture (15:08) Protecting nascent businesses and creating courage in a team (18:30) The phases of leadership and the power of authenticity in communication (23:16) The importance of teaching in leadership and reflections on the journey at Amazon (24:42) Introduction to Jeff Wilke's new venture: Rebuild Manufacturing (28:06) Conclusion and outro: You've been listening to the NFX podcast