A Short Guide To Bezos-Amazon Teamwork Principles

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Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is notorious for a lot of things; the immense success of his company is just one of them. His basic leadership and teamwork philosophy has been cited by many other leaders as key to their success as well—and can be pieced together through reports and interviews over the years. In truth, it boils down to some fairly straightforward, though not necessarily easy, principles.

The Bezos-Amazon teamwork principles in a nutshell

super simple summary:

Know where you’re going, and do whatever it takes to get there. That means being willing to disagree, stand up, and change. Also, don’t waste time or people.

Detailed explanation:

Bezos advocates for a relentless focus on long-term success. This means that patience, adaptability, and a willingness to take a harder road are baked into the few rules he’s strict about:

Be stubborn on vision, and flexible on the details. Being firm about where you want to go is the important part of strategy. Being firm about how you get there, on the other hand, is unwise.
Have backbone; disagree and commit. “Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.”
The Two Pizza Rule. No working group should be larger than the number of people that two pizzas can feed. In other words, if your team is larger than 5-7 people, you’re losing effectiveness. (This speaks to the idea of simple inclusion vs. active participation. If someone is in a meeting but not doing anything, you’re wasting potential—and time. Working groups with too many members very easily fall into this trap of false inclusion.)

How To Use These Principles

This is clearly not a comprehensive list of team principles, nor a teamwork framework. But it’s good universal advice. Pair it with the Dream Teams and 5 Dysfunctions frameworks for best results.