Big Tech In Action: Amazon & AWS 16 Leadership Principles
While Harvard provides the humanistic and strategic foundations, tech giants like Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) transformed leadership tenets into a battle-tested daily operating system. Originally codified by Jeff Bezos as 14 tenets, the framework expanded in 2021 into the Amazon 16 leadership principles. Amazonians do not treat these as inspirational posters—they are evaluated against them in every performance review, hiring loop, and architectural design doc.
- 1. Customer Obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backwards, vigorously working to earn and keep customer trust above competitor focus.
- 2. Ownership: Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They never say “that’s not my job.”
- 3. Invent and Simplify: Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify complex processes.
- 4. Are Right, A Lot: Leaders possess strong business judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and disconfirm their own beliefs.
- 5. Learn and Be Curious: Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves.
- 6. Hire and Develop the Best: Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion, taking coaching and mentorship seriously.
- 7. Insist on the Highest Standards: Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high.
- 8. Think Big: Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate bold directions that inspire transformative results.
- 9. Bias for Action: Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. Value calculated risk-taking.
- 10. Frugality: Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention.
- 11. Earn Trust: Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when awkward.
- 12. Dive Deep: Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and remain skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ.
- 13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit: Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when uncomfortable. Once a decision is made, they commit wholly.
- 14. Deliver Results: Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with high quality in a timely fashion.
- 15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer: Added in 2021, focusing on creating a safer, more productive, higher performing, diverse, and just work environment.
- 16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility: Added in 2021, recognizing that global scale demands humble awareness of local communities, the planet, and future generations.
Amazon Leadership Principles Interview Questions (The STAR Method)
If you are interviewing at Amazon or AWS, technical skill alone will not secure an offer. Interviewers are trained “Bar Raisers” dedicated to probing behavioral evidence based on these principles. Candidates must answer using the STAR Method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) with quantitative data and personal ownership (“I”, not “we”).
- Customer Obsession Question: “Tell me about a time when you had to balance what was best for the customer with what was financially or operationally convenient for your company.”
- Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit Question: “Describe a high-stakes scenario where you strongly opposed a direction chosen by your executive leadership. How did you advocate your perspective, and what did you do once the final decision was made?”
- Bias for Action Question: “Walk me through a critical business decision you had to make with incomplete data and tight deadlines. How did you assess risk, and what was the outcome?”
- Dive Deep Question: “Tell me about a time when a metric appeared healthy on the surface, but your intuition or customer feedback led you to discover a deep underlying systemic defect.”