In business, speed disproportionately matters, according to Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon. But, as Jassy shares in his latest letter to shareholders, it is not preordained: “Speed does not happen unless the entire company and culture embrace it,” he writes.
Below is an excerpt from his annual letter where Jassy explores how speed is a leadership decision, and how a company can move fast—while still striving for the highest quality:
Speed disproportionately matters for every business, in every industry, at all times. It’s a false binary to argue that you can move fast or deliver high standards. If you want to be fast, you can be fast, and still be high quality. We’ve done it for many years (though we can still be faster). Speed is a leadership decision. The leadership team has to believe it’s a priority, reinforce it constantly, organize and remove structural barriers, and build in modular ways that enable pace. But, speed does not happen unless the entire company and culture embrace it. We have this persistent feeling, throughout the company and in every business in which we operate, that there are closing windows all around us. We operate in fiercely competitive market segments, with highly talented, well-funded, ambitious companies at every turn. Customers are always looking for something better. We spend a lot of time identifying how to unlock these experiences for them as quickly as possible, and know if we don’t, somebody else will.
Another way to gain speed is to eliminate bureaucracy. There is a difference between process and bureaucracy. When you're running something at scale, you need mechanisms to deliver the right experience and constant improvement for customers. However, as companies grow and add more managers, unneeded processes get layered on that add little value. Last fall, I asked teammates across the company to send me bureaucracy examples that they were experiencing. I’ve received almost 1,000 of these emails, and read every single one. Builders hate bureaucracy. It slows them down, frustrates them, and keeps them from doing what they came here to do. As leaders, we don’t always see the red tape buried deep in our organizations, but we can sure as heck eliminate it when we do. We’ve already made over 375 changes based on this feedback. We need to move fast, and we are committed to rooting out bureaucracy that ties up time and dispirits our teammates.
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