Like tales of Christmas past, the Amazon Leadership Principles can be woven into the fabric of any good holiday analogy.
Customer obsession. Invent and simplify. Learn and be curious. And, who could forget, know when it’s OK to nail a Christmas tree into your wood floor.
Huh?
That last one stuck out to us like an empty stocking hanging over the fireplace. And while nailing your Christmas tree to the floor is definitely not a leadership principle at the tech giant, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy used the odd description this week to make a point about employees who take ownership in their jobs.
During an appearance at the company’s Accelerate seller conference in Seattle, Jassy was asked how Amazon can operate as the world’s largest startup and what goes into creating the culture that fosters that mindset.
Hold onto your Santa hat, here’s how it unfolded:
Jassy was talking on stage about the company having a culture in which it aims to hire “builders.” He explained that Amazon seeks innovators who are driven to constantly analyze and reinvent the customer experience, even if it is already considered good.
He stressed the importance of fostering a culture of “high ownership” to combat the complacency that can arise in large companies, where employees might feel a task is “good enough” or outside their specific area of responsibility. He wants employees who think like owners, taking full, end-to-end responsibility for seeing a project through to completion.
Then he delivered the line: “I think the canonical example we use a lot is that somebody who’s renting an apartment may choose to nail the Christmas tree into the wood floor. But if you own that apartment or that building, you would never nail a Christmas tree into the wood floor.”
What the … ?
Jassy, who was raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., may very well have grown up in a household where nailing the tree to the floor was viewed as an acceptable way to keep it upright throughout the season. Maybe he lived in a rental, and took mental notes as a child about how someday he’d own his own house and a proper tree stand.
Clearly Jassy was offering up a deliberately exaggerated hypothetical as a way to make a point about careless, short-term thinking (a renter) vs. careful, long-term thinking (an owner). No one really nails their tree to the floor no matter where they live … right?
But his reference to the analogy as a “canonical” or definitive example that’s used “a lot” at Amazon is what seemed particularly strange, no matter the culture embedded in your holiday or your giant startup.
Then again, in the spirit of learning and being curious, we’re open to being told that we’ve got a screw loose.
