Lessons from Colin Bryar

Colin Bryar joined Amazon in 1998 and spent 12 years on its senior leadership team, including two years as Jeff Bezos’s chief of staff, or ‘Jeff’s shadow.’ He is a co-author, with Bill Carr, of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, and co-founder of Working Backwards LLC, where he coaches executives on implementing management practices developed at Amazon. [1] [2]

Infographic for "Lessons from Colin Bryar".

On Customer Obsession

On Customer Obsession: Bryar describes starting with the customer problem and designing backwards from the experience people should have, rather than beginning with current capabilities. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Customer-Facing Inputs: Bryar and Carr distinguish actions a team can control that improve customers’ experience from output measures such as sales and profit. — Working Backwards — Input Metrics.
On Amazon’s Flywheel: The Working Backwards account identifies selection, lower prices and customer experience as controllable inputs in Amazon’s flywheel. — Working Backwards — Input Metrics.
On Four Cultural Pillars: Bryar and Carr describe Amazon’s culture through customer obsession, long-term thinking, invention and operational excellence. — First Round — Invention Machine.

On Innovation and the "Working Backwards" Process

On Dedicated Teams: A single-threaded initiative has a leader working on it full time, the necessary resources and a team dedicated to that initiative. — Working Backwards — Single-Threaded Teams.
On Working Backwards: Bryar says product design should define the desired customer experience first, then work backwards to determine what to build. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On the PR/FAQ Origin: Bryar and Carr recount arriving at a proposed press release and FAQs through trial and error, to force a clearer account of a product before building it. — Working Backwards — PR/FAQ Process.
On Written Narratives: The Working Backwards approach uses precise prose to expose weak reasoning and give decision-makers a common factual basis for discussion. — Working Backwards — Narratives.
On Focus and Speed: Bryar and Carr argue that dedicated teams can spend less time negotiating resources and more time building, while acknowledging the model has tradeoffs. — Working Backwards — Single-Threaded Teams.
On Experimentation: Bryar treats uncertain product bets as experiments: teams may stop after a failed attempt or revise the idea when evidence warrants. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Screening Many Ideas: Bryar favors drafting many inexpensive PR/FAQs so stronger customer ideas can emerge before the company commits major engineering resources. — First Round — Invention Machine.

On Leadership and Decision-Making

On Imperfect Information: Bryar says many decisions must be made before every desired fact is available; a team should preserve the ability to adapt as evidence arrives. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Course Correction: Bryar describes planning as a tool for choosing a direction, with room to revise the plan when new information makes the original path worse. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Principles as Mechanisms: Bryar and Carr argue that leadership principles matter when they are built into repeatable practices such as hiring, narratives and product decisions, rather than left as slogans. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Daily Decisions: Bryar explains that Amazon’s leadership principles give employees a shared framework for difficult decisions across the company. — The Boardroom — Colin Bryar.
On Ownership: Bryar and Carr present clear ownership as a way to give a leader authority and accountability for an initiative rather than dispersing responsibility across teams. — Working Backwards — Single-Threaded Teams.
On Raising the Hiring Bar: Bryar says a deliberate hiring process should evaluate people against the organization’s own values so new hires reinforce the culture it intends to build. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On High Standards in Hiring: The Bar Raiser process uses independent assessments and a trained interviewer to check whether a candidate meets the company’s defined performance standards. — Working Backwards — Bar Raiser Hiring.
On Disagreement and Commitment: Bryar and Carr describe Amazon’s practice of surfacing objections before a decision, then aligning execution after a decision is made. — Working Backwards — Leadership Principles.
On the Work of Hiring: Bryar argues that leaders must spend real time defining and assessing hires; an improvised process can change a company’s culture as it grows. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Choosing What Not to Build: Bryar recommends inexpensive PR/FAQ reviews that allow teams to reject weak ideas before they consume scarce product and engineering resources. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Principles Under Time Pressure: Bryar argues that codified leadership principles provide a decision framework when a team must move before all desired information is available. — The Boardroom — Colin Bryar.
On Decisions Without the Founder: Bryar advises founders to write down their organization’s own principles so colleagues can make consistent decisions when the founder is not in the room. — The Boardroom — Colin Bryar.

On Building a High-Performing Culture and Teams

On Coordination Costs: Bryar recalls Amazon adding engineers without commensurate speed because teams spent growing time coordinating with one another. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Cross-Team Dependencies: Bryar describes projects stalling while their owners waited for other teams; assigning a dedicated leader was one response to that drag. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Structured Hiring: The Bar Raiser process combines common criteria, written independent assessments and a trained interviewer outside the hiring manager’s reporting line. — Working Backwards — Bar Raiser Hiring.
On Stretch Goals: The Working Backwards account says Amazon’s S-Team did not expect every annual goal to be met; it reports roughly 70% achieved on average. — Working Backwards — S-Team Goal Review.
On Hiring Feedback Loops: Bryar and Carr describe Bar Raiser hiring as a repeatable process whose interviewers and debriefs can improve with practice and feedback. — Working Backwards — Bar Raiser Hiring.
On Resource Ownership: Bryar’s single-threaded-team example gives one leader ownership of a risky initiative and the resources to pursue it rather than leaving it as part-time work. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Deliberate Culture: Bryar warns that a growing organization develops a culture either way, so leaders should define the values and hiring practices that shape it. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.
On Writing Leadership Principles: Working Backwards recommends identifying behaviors of existing role-model leaders when drafting a company’s own leadership principles. — Working Backwards — Developing Principles.

On Operational Excellence and Problem-Solving

On Repeated Why Questions: Bryar describes using repeated why questions in error reviews to uncover several underlying causes rather than stopping at a surface symptom. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Correction of Errors: Bryar says teams should document significant failures, identify contributing causes and own corrective actions so the same failure is less likely to recur. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Managing Inputs: Bryar and Carr emphasize tracking controllable input measures that teams can act on, while treating revenue and profit as lagging outputs. — Working Backwards — Input Metrics.
On Defects as Systems Problems: Bryar says a serious customer-facing defect should prompt a process review and a mechanism to prevent recurrence, not merely a call for good intentions. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Acting on Inputs: Bryar and Carr argue that teams should allocate resources to controllable inputs and monitor whether those actions improve customer experience, rather than trying to directly manipulate lagging outputs. — Working Backwards — Input Metrics.
On Resource Constraints: Bryar notes that even at Amazon, scarce resources forced teams to choose where to invest; dedicated ownership and planning made those tradeoffs explicit. — Jason & Scot Show — Colin Bryar.

On Long-Term Thinking

On Long-Term Product Value: Bryar asks teams to judge a proposed product by whether it solves a meaningful customer problem and could matter over the long term, not just next quarter. — First Round — Invention Machine.
On Long-Term Ownership: Bryar presents long-term thinking as part of the operating principles that keep teams focused on durable customer value rather than the next immediate result. — Guy Kawasaki — Colin Bryar.
On Customer and Shareholder Interests: Bryar says Bezos held a conviction that serving customers over the long run would also serve shareholders; Bryar uses that belief to explain Amazon’s customer-trust decisions. — Guy Kawasaki — Colin Bryar.

Learn more:

On Customer Obsession

On Innovation and the "Working Backwards" Process

On Leadership and Decision-Making

On Building a High-Performing Culture and Teams

On Operational Excellence and Problem-Solving

On Long-Term Thinking

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