Running head: LEADERSHIP ASSIGNMENT 1

Leadership Assignment
Amazon CEO: Jeff Bezos
Breanna N. Mefford

Jeff Bezos: CEO of Amazon

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According to the article, Jeff Bezos Biography, “Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff

Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos had an early love of

computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After

graduation, he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 he became the youngest senior vice president

at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Four years later, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com,

a virtual bookstore that became one of the internet's biggest success stories. In 2013, Bezos

purchased The Washington Post in a $250 million deal (Biography Editors, 2018).” Jeff Bezos

started at an early age in his parents’ garage, turning it into his little work lab putting together

electrical contraptions together and using it around the house. During his high school years, he

started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and

sixth graders. He ended up graduating from Princeton University, were he was summa cum laude

in 1986. Bezos opened Amazon.com, named after the meandering South American River, on

July 16, 1995, from a small two-bedroom house with the help from friends testing the initial beta

when he was finished. From the start he was passionate, and his vision with that passion and

drive allowed him to start one of the most successful companies in the world. The initial success

of the company was meteoric. With no press promotion, Amazon.com sold books across the

United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days. In two months, sales reached $20,000 a

week, growing faster than Bezos and his start-up team had envisioned. According to the

biography, “Amazon.com went public in 1997, leading many market analysts to question

whether the company could hold its own when traditional retailers launched their e-commerce

sites. Two years later, the start-up not only kept up but also outpaced competitors, becoming an

e-commerce leader (Biography Editors, 2018).” In 2006, Amazon launched its video on demand

service; initially known as Amazon Unbox on TiVo, it was eventually rebranded as Amazon

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Instant Video. Bezos also released the Kindle in 2007, a handheld digital book reader that

allowed users to buy, download, read and store their book selections, the first of its kind at the

time.

It’s not hard to see the success Jeff has accumulated from the start. His passion and leadership

has helped innovate high tech devices, as well as easy access to new and improved means of

entertainment we can have through the Kindle and all the books, games and other apps you can

attain through that device. Amazon is not only a large conglomerate of books but with the help of

Amazon-Prime, is a quick and easy site to purchase just about anything you need for everyday

life, whether it’s books for college, movies for entertainment, or supplies required to run a

business, all with various prices.

Kevin Baldacci states that “The latest results from the American Customer Satisfaction Index

reveals Amazon.com as the reigning and undisputed champ in both Internet retailing and across

the entire department in overall customer satisfaction. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos perhaps more

than any business leader has taken the philosophy of truly caring for the customer and ushered it

into the digital era (Baldacci, 2013).” The seven lessons Baldacci illustrates are:

1. Don’t just listen to your customers, understand them;

2. Serve the needs of the customer;

3. The empty chair: the most important person in the room;

4. Never settle for 99%;

5. Respect today’s customer;

6. Strive to create a customer-centric company;

7. Don’t be afraid to apologize.

Jeff’s lessons should be a guide to all businesses trying to achieve success in all markets.

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Jeff Bezos has demonstrated many types of leadership qualities. From task-oriented

leadership, people-oriented leadership, being a charismatic leader and having team-oriented

leadership. He has a mixture of leadership styles that benefited Jeff into the successful leader he

is today. He has achieved the tasks they were put in front of him, as well as set the trend in

technology with the production of the Kindle. The people he has surrounded himself with and

developed a relationship with shows his people-oriented mindset, which I believe allows the full

development of an overall team relationship. Having that team relationship can lead to not only

completed goals and tasks but the perfect harmony in completing those tasks with excellent

quality and timing. Jeff’s team-oriented skills are just as high as his people-oriented and are

considered similar. Team-oriented leadership emphasizes team building and a common purpose

among team members, which Jeff has clearly shown since 1995 with Amazon. Jeff and his team

have been successful in becoming the number 1 e-commerce website in the world. His charisma

has allowed his followers to show their passion alongside Jeff and making Amazon one "of the

most profitable companies in the world (Bornus, 2017)".

“Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. But in 1995, when the company launched,

it was an online book retailer. At the time, no one would have guessed that the small company

selling books on the Internet would evolve into the world’s largest online retailer, selling

everything from paperbacks to refrigerators (John, 2013).” Amazon is considered one of the best

companies to work for. Being that successful and having a company everyone wants to be a part

of already shows how much of a charismatic leader he is. According to the blog, “Be unmovable,

but willing to give,” which Jeff asks in return, “how can you be stubborn and flexible at the same

time (John, 2013)?” Jeff states the answer is simple. You must stay focused on your business

plans and goals but be willing to make changes if necessary. A business leader that cannot be

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stubborn will abandon plans instead of seeing them through. I can see that statement being right,

but stubbornness in your ways can also leave no room for further growth. If you’re so set in your

usual leadership style, how can you continue to develop your skills for yourself, and your

followers around you? It makes it very difficult to do so, because, in the end, everyone must

grow and grow together to achieve the perfect harmony in which all success and visions come

together for the greater good, whether it be some task of reaching your quota for the quarter, or

something more significant, such as a new development in technology that can change the very

organization, country, or world for good, the greater good.

Jeff does mention that lack of flexibility can lead to overlooking solutions to problems. I

agree on that statement because without the flexibility to learn new skills in how you lead, how

your followers respond to your leadership, and just being open to new and improve opportunities

that can form that bond you have with your team, who in return can conquer tasks big or small,

in their path. Jeff has stated in the blog that Amazon became a leader by paying attention to the

trends in their industry and adjusting accordingly. To find success, you need to stay true to the

company’s goals but be willing to adapt as the industry involves. Its great advice and I commend

it. If your passion and vision keeps you on the right path and enables you to grow and evolve,

then that must be the right way. Jeff Bezos has said that having a team too large can hinder your

success. Other companies see that delegating work to a large organization is beneficial regarding

saving time and money. If you allow creativity in a team them perhaps, the team should be

smaller than most, if you can achieve your goals, big or small. “Recognize true misalignment

issues early and escalate them immediately,” he writes. “Sometimes teams have different

objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no

number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute

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resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the

decision. (Lashinsky, 2017).”

It is hard to argue with Jeff, considering Amazon has jumped up 28% in quarter three from last

year, netting sales at $29.1 billion. Jeff now owns the Washington Post, confirming that his

leadership skills, passion, and vision is succeeding. Using the web and social media has also

influenced others to achieve their goals, giving back to everyone who is willing to listen and

follow him. He believes that a leader needs to be able to identify the key players who can make a

project succeed and then offer the resources to help them succeed. Too many so-called leaders

don’t seem to see the value in who you have at your disposal but throw anyone out there without

any resources or training and expect them to get results. I have seen it first-hand that those

leadership skills fail from the start. I currently work at a company who have supervisors who

lack knowledge, motivation, and people skills to even be in the position they are in, and I believe

because of that we have moral issues, as well as productivity issues at times. Having a small

team of talented individuals who can work well together, tend to work well together, increases

the chances of identifying ideas that can help the organization innovate and evolve.

Companies tend to get stale in their production or overall business, so experimenting can

breed innovation towards setting a company apart from the industry. Bezos encourages Amazon

employees to experiment constantly and even tests promising ideas with the knowledge that they

can fail at any time. The only way that can be successful is through trust. Trust from leader to

follower and back, developing team unity. Those innovations from his followers have produced

new features like Gold Box, Prime, and things like free shipping on orders over $25, and even

one-day shipping for just $3.99. Those ideas weren’t a guaranteed success, but the trust he had

with his followers allowed him to take that chance of it failing. In the process, Bezos grew the

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company and developed his relationship with his followers. His philosophy with customers and

how all you need to do is listen to them is right on. In reaching your goals, especially in any

retail or sales conglomerate, you must meet the needs of the customer. Satisfying the customer

needs not only helps sales for the time but can lead to future sales due to returning customers, as

well as penitential new ones from word of mouth of those customers that were satisfied with

their experience, leading to company growth. With Jeff behind the wheel at Amazon, sales and

revenue should continue to grow. Eliminating risks can help, but Bezos believes that you should

identify them and not just reduce them but eliminate them. Bezos has built the company through

trust, charisma, compassion, and innovation from his passion and vision. Having that success is

something everyone should learn and follow.

"What Jeff Bezos has done and is likely to do is perhaps the most remarkable achievement I've

seen," Warren Buffett told me last year, after I asked him, open-ended, to name the most

impressive business mind in his almost eight decades of market-watching. "Because he's taken

two very major industries, and simultaneously, and sort of under the nose simultaneously, of

competitors, he's become in effect the leader and is redefining them and succeeding at really big

businesses. (Lane, 2018)".

References

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Baldacci, K. (2013, June 10). 7 Customer Service Lessons from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Retrieved November 14, 2018, from https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/06/jeff-bezos-

lessons.html

Bornus, D. (2017). The Money and Politics of Criminal Justice Policy. Corrections Today, 79(2),

82.

Jeff Bezos. (2018, September 14). Biography. Retrieved November 14, 2018, from

https://www.biography.com/people/jeff-bezos-9542209

John, J. (2013, July 16). Leadership Lessons from Jeff Bezos. Retrieved November 18, 2018,

from https://onlinemba.unc.edu/blog/leadership-lessons-from-jeff-bezos/

Lane, R. (2018) Bezos Unbound. (cover story). Forbes, 201(7), 74-85. Retrieved November 16,

2018, from https://login.proxy.tamuc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=bth&AN=131523228&site=ehost-live

Lashinsky, A. (2017, April 14). What Makes Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Such a Visionary Leader.

Retrieved November 12, 2018, from http://fortune.com/2017/04/14/data-sheet-be-like-jeff-bezos/

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