Leadership Profile of Jeff Bezos

Leader and Background
Jeff Bezos is one of the prominent and renowned leaders in the present day. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Amazon. Prior to founding Amazon, Bezos worked at hedge fund D. E. Shaw where he thrived and became the firm’s senior vice president in just a span of four years. However, he had an aspiration of creating a startup and in 1994 he quit his job and established Amazon.com. He started the company in a garage and a great deal of his meetings were held at a Barnes & Noble store within the neighborhood. Since then, Bezos has immensely developed the company and is one of the highest paid CEOs and has a net worth of $57 billion. Most of all, Bezos is well known for investing in different companies and ideas and is accredited for being one of the key individuals who have revolutionized e-commerce to the place it is today (D’Onfro and Kim, 2016).
The Organization
Amazon.com is one of the top companies in the world. It is ranked position 12 in the Fortune 500 list. From its humble backgrounds and expectations of its downfall, Amazon can be deemed to be the epitome of a growing start-up to a successful company. The company is presently known for coming up with appealing and high retailing products in the industry. Essentially, Amazon is an e-commerce organization whose center of operations is situated in Seattle, Wash. It is acknowledged as being one of the first biggest firms to retail products over the internet. It was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and went public in the year 1997. It is imperative to note that from the outset, Amazon began as an online bookstore and rapidly broadened its horizons through product diversification and including goods such as clothing, video games, and electronics (Schneider, 2017). In addition, not only has it diversified its operations, it has also increased its accessibility to more consumers. Over the years, Amazon has grown to become one of the biggest and most relied upon online retailing corporations across the globe, that sells a wide range of commodities to prospective buyers across the United States and internationally as well. The company endeavors to make certain that the needs of its consumers are addressed and satisfied at all times. Its key business strategy is utilizing the low-priced strategy where it maintains the prices of its commodities at a minimum level. Most of all, Amazon endeavors to have consumer satisfaction and is one of its key objectives. For instance, if a consumer purchases a product from the website that has any defections, the company accepts product returns (Schneider, 2017). In the contemporary, Amazon has a market capitalization of $458.778 billion and its shares retail at $954.99. This is indicative of the magnitude to which the company has grown and developed considering the share price during its initial public offer (IPO) was $18. Moreover, the remarkable financial performance of the company can be perceived from the fact that the revenue generated in the past three years increased from $88.988 billion in 2014 to $107.006 billion in 2015 and further up to $135.987 billion in 2016. More outstandingly, the net income increased from $-241 million in 2014 to $2.371 billion in 2016 (Yahoo Finance, 2017).
The Philosophy
The philosophy employed in Amazon by Jeff Bezos is one that he delineates as “Day 1” and “Day 2” philosophy. This philosophy is largely accredited to the success of the company. One of the key aspects of this philosophy encompasses laying emphasis on results and not the process. In accordance to Bezos, as an organization grows and develops, it becomes very easy to depend on process instead of the result. When this takes place, more often than not organizations cease looking at results and solely taking into consideration whether they have adhered to the process in the right manner, and not whether the right result was accomplished. A second aspect is making decisions hastily. Jeff Bezos outlines that “Day 2” corporations do in fact make good decisions, but the issue is that such decisions are made sluggishly. Start-up do not experience challenges in making fast-paced and high-quality decisions but huge companies have problems in doing the same. Bezos insists that the executive team at the organization is resolute to maintain its decision-making speed high as he proclaims that speed is vital in business (Roemmele, 2017). To accomplish this, the “Day 1” philosophy instituted by Bezos is a “disagree and commit” system on which personnel rely on to make decisions. The notion is not that not all people will consent on a decision, but it is still conceivable for individuals who disagree to work towards the similar objective. Bezos pinpoints the creation of Amazon Prime, which he was initially hesitant about but let the philosophy prevail (Roemmele, 2017).
Another fundamental element of the philosophy is considering what is external to the company. This includes being able to espouse powerful trends hastily. Some of the examples of how Amazon has managed to do so is to embrace the key trend today, which encompasses artificial intelligence and machine learning. As a result, Amazon has come up with ground-breaking products such Echo/Alexa. Similarly, the company is also embracing such trends through the ongoing creation of delivery drones and Amazon Go convenience store, which utilizes machine vision to eradicate checkout lines (Roemmele, 2017). An additional component of the philosophy is undertaking market research. Bezos argues that making use of consumer surveys as well as market research can end up being misleading and hard to understand (Roemmele, 2017).
The prevailing philosophy at Amazon delineates the role that Jeff Bezos plays at the organization. One of the key roles is that of a visionary leader. For instance, Bezos outlines the significance of leaders and managers within organizations to monitor as well as adapt significant external trends. He maintains that despite the fact that such trends might be difficult to embrace, they are not difficult to notice and such top leaders should be quick to take them on. He outlines that taking a great deal of time debating whether a new trend is going to be big and impactful could mean that the company misses out on the opportunity at hand. Aside from being the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos plays the role of being a transformative leader in the organization. He outlines the significance of being ready to change the direction currently being taken by the company. In this regard, once in a while, Bezos accepts and embraces being overruled by the employees of the company and with respect to the ideas being presented. Bezos lays emphasis that it is necessary to build a corporate culture that is suitable and fitting for the organization. For instance, the culture that is at Amazon is one that is full of pace and one that is vastly conscious of the costs incurred within its operations. Bezos insists that Amazon’s corporate culture is not necessarily the correct one, but it is ideal for them and this enables them to become even more successful (Lashinksy, 2017).





References
D’Onfro, J., Kim, E. (2016). The life and awesomeness of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Business Insider. Retrieved 28 September 2017 from: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-life-of-amazon-founder-ceo-jeff-bezos-2014-7?IR=T/#his-grandfather-preston-gise-was-a-huge-inspiration-for-bezos-and-helped-kindle-his-passion-for-intellectual-pursuits-at-a-commencement-address-in-2010-bezos-said-gise-taught-him-that-its-harder-to-be-kind-than-clever-5
Lashinsky, A. (2017). What Makes Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Such a Visionary Leader. Fortune. Retrieved 28 September 2017 from: http://fortune.com/2017/04/14/data-sheet-be-like-jeff-bezos/
Roemmele, B. (2017). What Is Jeff Bezos's "Day 1" Philosophy? Forbes. Retrieved 28 September 2017 from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/04/21/what-is-jeff-bezos-day-1-philosophy/
Schneider, L. (2017). Overview of Amazon.com's History and Workplace Culture. The Balance. Retrieved 28 September 2017 from: https://www.thebalance.com/amazon-com-company-research-2071316
Yahoo Finance. (2017). Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN). Retrieved 28 September 2017 from: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/