Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon and the driving force behind the creation of Amazon Web Services (AWS), has cultivated a leadership style deeply rooted in customer obsession, long-term thinking, and a culture of relentless innovation. Following in the footsteps of a visionary founder, Jassy has carved out his own authentic approach to leadership while championing and evolving the core principles that define Amazon's success.
On Leadership and Management Style
Jassy's leadership is characterized by a commitment to authenticity, continuous learning, and upholding Amazon's iconic Leadership Principles. He emphasizes empowering teams, maintaining high standards, and fostering a culture of open debate and ownership.
1. "You can learn from whoever you've worked with in the past, but you can't be that person. You've got to be who you are."[1]
2. "The second you're not learning is the second you're starting to unwind."[1]
3. On earning trust: “What we mean is being honest, authentic, straightforward, listening intently but challenging respectfully if you disagree, and then delivering what you said you would.”[2]
4. "I'm a big believer in hiring and developing leaders who are smarter than you and can help take the company to the next level."[3]
5. "The best leaders are those who are humble, who listen to feedback, and who are always looking for ways to improve."[4]
6. On transitioning to a larger leadership role: “You have to massively delegate to be successful. When you have 25 businesses across the company, you can't be in the weekly rhythms of each business."[5]
7. "I'm still working on it... The Leadership Principles are something you have to constantly work at. When they're applied well, they're powerful.”[2][6]
8. On decision-making: "Great owners are always asking themselves, what would I do if this were my personal money?"[7]
9. "Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high."[6]
10. Regarding the "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" principle: "We're not trying to compromise with one another to make each other feel better or to get along. We are trying to get to truth for what matters to customers."[7]
11. "Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others."[6]
12. When stepping into a new role, Jassy advises to "have humility and respect for what you don't know, but trust your gut."[5]
13. He acknowledges that when you become the ultimate leader, "every single relationship reset."[5]
14. "Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.”[6]
15. "If you own something and it's not going well, be self-critical, and fix it."[2]
On Strategy and Execution
Jassy’s strategic approach is marked by a long-term perspective, a willingness to make bold bets, and a focus on operational excellence and speed.
16. "If you're going to invest in something over a long period of time, that you believe is important and can change the company, you have to be strategically patient and tactically impatient."[8]
17. "At Amazon, we are very careful about what big strategic bets we place, but the ones we make, we keep iterating until we find something that we think has resonance with customers."[9]
18. "Speed is not preordained; speed is a choice. You can make this choice, and you've got to set up a culture that has urgency and actually wants to experiment."[10]
19. On self-disruption: "You are much better off cannibalizing yourself...than you are howling at the wind or wishing it away or trying to put up blockers."[8]
20. "I believe in having a relentless focus on execution and delivering results."[3]
21. "Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results."[6]
22. He distinguishes between "one-way door" (consequential and hard to reverse) and "two-way door" (reversible) decisions, urging that the latter be made quickly at the team level.[7]
23. "Our goal is to be the infrastructure technology platform underneath all of these enterprises in their transformation strategies."[11]
24. On the pace of business: "You can't wait for things to be perfect; it's better to go sooner rather than later."[12]
25. When entering a new market: "Simply because Amazon decides to pursue a market segment doesn't mean the customers are going to spend their money there, and so it means that we have to do an amazing job."[8]
26. "I'm a big proponent of focusing on the long-term and really being tenacious about trying to achieve your goals, whatever they are."[3]
27. "We don't wait for opportunities, we create them."[12]
28. AWS's goal is not to optimize for a specific quarter, but to establish lasting customer relationships and a business that "outlasts all of us."[13]
On Innovation and Technology
Having built AWS from the ground up, Jassy is a firm believer in constant invention, experimentation, and leveraging technology to redefine customer experiences.
29. "Invention requires two things: One, the ability to try a lot of experiments, and two, not having to live with the collateral damage of failed experiments."[8]
30. "I think it's important to have a strong culture of innovation, and to be willing to experiment and take risks."[4]
31. On the pace of change: "If you're not constantly inventing and reinventing...it's actually difficult to sustain being successful."[14]
32. "I believe that if you don't take risks, you can't really grow and you can't really create something new."[3]
33. On generative AI: "Every single customer experience we know of is going to be reinvented with generative AI."[15]
34. "There is no compression algorithm for experience."[8]
35. "As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time."[6][14]
36. "Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify."[6]
37. "The democratisation of technology has fundamentally changed the way businesses operate.”[12]
38. "I think every single SAS company and application that we know of will be reinvented with what's available in the cloud."[15]
39. He believes every company is becoming a technology company.[4]
40. The cloud has "flipped the business and startup model on its head," by dramatically lowering the cost of experimentation.[11]
On Customer Obsession
Jassy is a true disciple of Amazon's "Customer Obsession" principle, viewing it as the ultimate driver of long-term success.
41. "The most important thing you can do is focus obsessively on the customer."[4]
42. "Our approach has always been to listen to our customers, then develop solutions that meet their needs."[4]
43. "Customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great.”[4]
44. On helping customers save money: "We have a support team that is spending a very large amount of its time trying to help customers optimize what they have on us."[13]
45. "If you really listen to your customers, they will tell you what they want.”[4]
46. He champions "working backwards" from the customer's needs to drive innovation.[10]
47. "We believe that customers should have the freedom to use any language and any platform that they want.”[4]
48. Jassy's focus remains on delivering value to customers as the key to sustained success, rather than getting distracted by internal goals or competitors.[16]
49. "It doesn't matter if it was your idea or not. We're all trying to get to the best possible answer for customers, whoever's idea it is."[7]
50. The company's mission is to be "Earth's most customer-centric company," a principle Jassy continues to uphold.[10]
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