Discover Exactly Why Insisting on High Standards is a Thorny Issue
Amazon's brutal culture of high-standards and transparency creates great results, and sometimes hurt feelings. And I'm not sure the latter is avoidable.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers, and specific leadership advice.
I’m a huge fan of the Amazon Leadership Principles. I think they’re a masterful mechanism for driving behaviors across large groups.
Even when Amazon has stumbled (for example — in my opinion — the Amazon wide forced RTO), it was when they took action against their leadership principles. In the Amazon I knew, they would have left their original decision in place (Directors/VPs choose RTO or remote based on their business needs). This (again, my opinion) would have been the logical way to operate, considering how the leadership principles favor leaders making independent decisions.
Whoops, I’ve gotten all distracted. Back to the leadership principles.
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Over the years, I’ve written a few articles specifically about certain leadership principles. I’ve written a detailed examination of the Dive Deep principle, Are Right a Lot, and Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. And I’ve written many articles regarding ownership, my favorite leadership principle.
After a few discussions I’ve had lately, I wanted to write about insisting on high standards. It’s one which hits directly at Amazon’s culture, both the good and the negative aspects.
Breaking down the leadership principle
Some brilliant Amazon leaders spent many hours on every precise word of the LP, so I want to share the exact wording.
Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
What are the core elements of this principle in plain English?
Insisting on high standards is emotionally and politically hard.
People are reluctant to put in the effort to meet unreasonably high standards.
Fixing things forever is significantly harder than patching issues.
Insisting on high standards is emotionally hard.
When you insist on high standards, what you’re usually saying is that someone’s current performance is not good enough. This can be impactful emotionally for the feedback receiver, as well as the giver.
Jeremiah, an engineer on my team, came into my office per my request. I’d just sent him a request to meet, and had quickly cleared 30 minutes on my calendar.
Just an hour earlier, he had reviewed a design document for a new service with our team, and he intended to review it with a few peer teams later in the week. This project was important for his career growth, and passing the peer review meeting is a milestone he needs to pass before beginning development. His project had a tight schedule.
He sat down in my office chair, looking a bit nervous. When your manager calls you for a same day meeting, it can make you worry.
“Hey Jeremiah.” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about your design document review. How did you feel the meeting went?”
He thought for a moment, looking like he was debating what to say. “I think it went fine. I have some things to fix, but it was good.”
I had a small hope that he would recognize that it wasn’t fine, but it’s pretty common for people to feel defensive about their performance. The reason I asked first was to see if he could self-correct the quality of his work, or if I’d be forced to help him.
“I think the corrections your teammates pointed out are serious. There was confusion during your meeting about multiple technical decisions you made.” I said. “You had to verbally explain your choices because your document was not clear enough. There were also at least two major concerns about the actual technical design. Does that sound accurate?”
Jeremiah fidgeted. “Well, some things were found. But I think I can still get the document updated before the next meeting. It won’t take too long to get those things fixed.”
“I want to see your document again before you present it. The quality of the document you presented today was lower than I expected. You wasted the time of your co-workers because you weren’t ready for today’s meeting.” I said.
It hurt to say this, but he needed to understand. His teammates were polite, but I was confident in how they had perceived that meeting. The purpose of that meeting was to do a final review of the plans with his team, and he wasn’t ready for a final review. He needed to understand that his performance was not at the expected level.
Jeremiah looked worried and spoke up, “I could update the document more later, but I want to start the development process. I think all the changes are fairly minor. I don’t want to slip our schedule.”
This was disappointing. He was still in the mode of protecting his career opportunity, wanting to begin development on schedule considering the situation. He probably didn’t realize that this response hurt his career aspirations much more than if he’d immediately suggested that his project needed to be delayed.
I shook my head. “Your meeting with our team was to confirm that you were ready to vet your design with our peer teams. Our team identified serious issues with your design, in addition to your document not being high enough quality. This means you need to figure out solutions in your design to their concerns, update your document, review it with our team again, and then have a peer team review. This all has to take place before you begin development. You also need to reschedule that meeting with your peer teams.”
Jeremiah was stressed, and in panic mode, watching his immediate career aspirations go up in smoke. He protested several more times, suggesting that the changes needed to the design weren’t dramatic, and the document was actually not bad. But I feel we’ve covered enough for this story.