Why do the Amazon Leadership Principles Work? How Do They Change Behaviors?

Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I’m Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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A ton of companies have some type of core values, principles, mottos, visions, or mission statements. I’m going to call it a statement of value, as it is supposed to represent what the organization values regarding behaviors, methods, and outcomes.

At mission-driven non-profits, I’d be willing to bet that most people in the organization understand and care about those values. You’re generally not working at a non-profit to get rich. I would assume, optimistically, that if you worked at the World Wildlife Fund you’d believe that it’s important to act with courage, respect, integrity, and collaboration.

However, at many for-profit companies, employees report that these phrases are strictly for PR purposes. They are not front of mind; employees would usually have to look at their website to remember what they say, and they don’t drive behaviors in any way.

Amazon has plenty of weaknesses (particularly lately!), but one thing it got right was the Amazon Leadership Principles.

I remember a discussion I had at Amazon about the Leadership Principles (LPs) with a few new employees. We talked about how (and why) the Amazon LPs differed from their previous companies internal values. We asked them what their company had written as their values, and how it differed from Amazon.

Without exception, every employee in the group had to pull out their phone and look up their company values on the internet. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I believe having your company’s values memorized (as many Amazon employees have the LPs memorized) is rare.

Why is it that a few companies have clear and frequently used statements of value, and why are most simply PR statements? What’s the difference? And why should we care?

Why would someone want these statements of value to be used?

As I pointed out, simply having statements of value means nothing. If you say that you value something, but don't encourage it in any way, it creates zero results. For example, you could say that your company values transparency, but if you don't encourage transparency in any way, you have not changed any behaviors.

Pretend that you create a startup. You begin hiring employees. And you personally care deeply about being friendly and nice.

You’re nice to your direct employees, because that’s how you personally like to act. As a personally friendly person, you’ll likely drive that culture naturally through your direct employees.

However, as your company grows, you stop being able to personally influence all employees. Soon, you start to read comments about working at your company, saying that it’s a bruising workplace. They say that some managers are rude and mean.

You’re horrified. How is it possible that your personal preferences didn’t stick? Because your personal influence (without any additional mechanisms) doesn’t scale.

This is true for any large organization. As your team grows in size, your personal behaviors can no longer drive significant influence without any mechanism in place.

Assuming you care about certain things, you want to figure out mechanisms to scale those values.

Going back to your startup, if you edited the employee handbook and wrote, “Employees are friendly to each other,” would that drive behaviors? I suspect it would do nothing.

(As a side note, kindness is absolutely not an Amazon Leadership Principle, and I assure you that this fact is obvious if you work there.)

If you want your organization to behave a certain way, you certainly need to document and clarify exactly what you value. But then you need to drive those values through your organization. This is true for startups, managing teams, and influencing across teams.

Let’s talk about the variety of mechanisms that Amazon in particular uses to ensure that the Amazon Leadership Principles are widely used and continue to influence to this day...