Speaker 1: Well, we think, particularly for people leaders, as we try
Speaker 1: to think of our role as to find a way
Speaker 1: to yes, so rather than you know, go into a
Speaker 1: lot of meetings and people think it's their job to
Speaker 1: say no. Really, my job is if someone's brought me
Speaker 1: a proposal, is to try to work out how to
Speaker 1: get it to yes.
Speaker 2: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 2: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 2: much out of their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 2: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 2: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work date.
Speaker 2: My guest on today's Best Of episode is Paul Migliarini.
Speaker 2: Paul leads the Amazon Web Services business across Australia and
Speaker 2: New Zealand, which is a role that he's been in
Speaker 2: for the last four years. Prior to joining a WS,
Speaker 2: Paul held senior leadership roles in Asia and Australia with
Speaker 2: bt Motorola, Regis and Ernst and Young and most recent
Speaker 2: as the CEO for Regis A and Z and the
Speaker 2: Regional Managing Director for South Asia at BT SO. I
Speaker 2: was really keen to have Paul on the show because
Speaker 2: I've heard so many things about Amazon's culture and just
Speaker 2: their ways of working, which I find fascinating. And there
Speaker 2: is nothing better than and able to get an insider's
Speaker 2: perspective on how it all works. So if you've ever
Speaker 2: wondered what goes on behind the scenes of one of
Speaker 2: the world's biggest, fastest growing, and most powerful companies, I
Speaker 2: think you'll love this chat with Paul. So on that note,
Speaker 2: let's go to Paul to hear about how he works. Paul,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. Great to be I want to
Speaker 2: start with what we were just talking about before we
Speaker 2: started recording, and this is that you've been having email
Speaker 2: and calendar problems on your phone and now you're actually
Speaker 2: going to change your behavior as a result of what happened.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me about that.
Speaker 1: So it's totally by accident, and as I say, constraint
Speaker 1: does breed innovation in many cases. And so I had
Speaker 1: an issue with I with my phone, so for some
Speaker 1: reason that I still haven't resolved, my email and the
Speaker 1: calendar stopped working and I just haven't gotten around to
Speaker 1: getting it fixed. And so I've been living in this
Speaker 1: world without email and calendar. And my realization is that
Speaker 1: I really miss my calendar, but I don't miss my email.
Speaker 1: And it's helped me be a lot more present and
Speaker 1: helped me manage the context switching that happens during my
Speaker 1: work day, but equally the context switshing that needs to
Speaker 1: happen when I go home in a much more effective way.
Speaker 1: So you're very intentional about when you look at your
Speaker 1: email and when you're focused on it what you do
Speaker 1: with it. And I'm thinking it's contributing to a pretty
Speaker 1: good increasing productivity. So when and if I get my
Speaker 1: phone fixed, I think I will leave my email off
Speaker 1: and put my calendar back on. But it's been a
Speaker 1: really positive change by accident.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. And so you're saying when you get home,
Speaker 2: like rather than in the pre broken phone days, you
Speaker 2: might maybe check your email a few times, like throughout
Speaker 2: the night, because it's just so easy to do when
Speaker 2: it's on your phone, But now it's intentional. You open
Speaker 2: up your laptop once and check totally.
Speaker 1: And because you know, in our world and I think
Speaker 1: most people would work in this way, you're working across
Speaker 1: multiple time zones, you know, within Australia and New Zealand,
Speaker 1: but around the world, and so you've got these threads
Speaker 1: that stay open, and you're trying to process things in
Speaker 1: real time because customers are looking for quick results, and
Speaker 1: so you tend to just continue to look at things
Speaker 1: because you've got so many things that are open. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that's productive because you can be really responsive, but most
Speaker 1: of the time it's not, because you get distracted by
Speaker 1: a whole raft of things. It could easily wait till
Speaker 1: another time, a more formal time.
Speaker 2: Yes, because I was going to ask, like there must
Speaker 2: be listeners kind of going, yeah, but what if there's
Speaker 2: an emergency that you're going to miss, what do you
Speaker 2: say to that?
Speaker 1: People can call or they can send an SMS or
Speaker 1: or something like that. And so there are other means
Speaker 1: to get in touch.
Speaker 2: That's right, there are, aren't they? We forget about the barone. Yes,
Speaker 2: good old fashioned calling. Yes. Well, I want to dig
Speaker 2: into Amazon's leadership principles because I think they're really interesting
Speaker 2: and maybe for those really most listeners are not aware
Speaker 2: of the leadership princes. Can you just explain briefly what
Speaker 2: they are, why they exist?
Speaker 1: Sure, So we have fourteen of these principles that the
Speaker 1: best way to think about it, I think is as
Speaker 1: an operating system for the company. So there's a set
Speaker 1: of principles that are booke ended by two the first
Speaker 1: being customer obsession, which is that everything we do in
Speaker 1: the company starts with a customer and works backwards, and
Speaker 1: we try to take a really long term perspective to
Speaker 1: that and keep customer trusts out kind of core true north.
Speaker 1: And the other end of the book end is deliver results.
Speaker 1: And then there's twelve other principles that sit between those two,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it started goes back to kind
Speaker 1: of the early days of the company when we floated
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, Jeff Bezos wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: shareholders and said some important things. In that letter. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to build a company that's really
Speaker 1: focused on the customer, and we're going to index on
Speaker 1: the long term and not be thrown off course by
Speaker 1: short term sort of market forces or other things that
Speaker 1: make it in the way of us and our customers.
Speaker 1: And I think that a lot of those principles and
Speaker 1: a bunch of others have been codified over the years
Speaker 1: into the four Leadership Principles, and what we try to
Speaker 1: do is as an organization is operate in a very
Speaker 1: decentralized way where people close to the customer can be
Speaker 1: really clear on how to make good quality decisions at
Speaker 1: high velocity velocity without having to refer them back to
Speaker 1: managers or even to head office for decision making. So
Speaker 1: it helps us move really really quickly, and it helps
Speaker 1: us make good quality decisions around what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do for our customers. And really it's one of the
Speaker 1: big fundamentals on how we can move really quickly, and
Speaker 1: it's a kind of absolute bedrock of how we run
Speaker 1: our company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fourteen, Like that's a lot. And one of them's frugality,
Speaker 2: which just sort of seems odds with having fourteen principles,
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah, So I do want to delve
Speaker 2: into maybe frugality first and tell me about what does
Speaker 2: that mean and how does that actually play out. Like,
Speaker 2: for example, we're just talking about lunch before and apparently
Speaker 2: Amazon's not giving you a free lunch what you're a
Speaker 2: tech company.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a couple of aspects to this principle of frugality.
Speaker 1: One of them is that we believe really fundamentally in
Speaker 1: this idea of investing in things that we can directly
Speaker 1: correlate with benefit to our customers. And you know, we
Speaker 1: think that, you know, a lot of these superfluous benefits
Speaker 1: don't right, We try to It's not as though where
Speaker 1: we don't spend. I think, as I recall one last year,
Speaker 1: we were one of, if not the largest spending globally
Speaker 1: in the context of R and D, you know, over
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars in R and D. But we try
Speaker 1: to make sure that investment is deliberately focused on creating
Speaker 1: value for our customers. So that's one big aspect of it.
Speaker 1: We try to be really disciplined about that. The other
Speaker 1: big aspect of frugality is this notion of constraint. You know,
Speaker 1: so when you do actively constrain resources, typically what you
Speaker 1: find is that you come up with really interesting ways
Speaker 1: to solve problems. So in a world where you have
Speaker 1: unlimited resources, you probably aren't going to be a particularly
Speaker 1: innovative company because you don't have to be. But when
Speaker 1: you're actively constraining resources, you tend to find really creative
Speaker 1: ways to solve problems. So that's a couple of the
Speaker 1: fundamentals that sit behind this notion of frugality, and it's
Speaker 1: a really important leadership principle, and often most people will
Speaker 1: say it's one of the more difficult ones because we're
Speaker 1: growing so quickly and investing so readily and in so
Speaker 1: many important things, and you know, we try to think
Speaker 1: really big, which is another one of our leadership principles,
Speaker 1: and be very expansive as to how we think about
Speaker 1: creating value for our customers. And you have to invest
Speaker 1: a lot, you know, and then to actively constrain resources
Speaker 1: at the same time is quite a difficult discipline, but
Speaker 1: a really important one.
Speaker 2: And so can you give me an example of where
Speaker 2: you've had to apply that in a way. I guess
Speaker 2: that's been challenging for you and your role.
Speaker 1: So typically what will happen is, you know, we will
Speaker 1: get an investment plan and often the teams will be saying, look,
Speaker 1: I'm looking to you know, there's this many customers and
Speaker 1: we believe fundamentally we can we can help them in
Speaker 1: a really interesting ways, and therefore we need this, you know,
Speaker 1: this level of investment, and we'll go, okay, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: but you know, how would you do that with half
Speaker 1: the investment? Because we're constantly thinking about this idea of
Speaker 1: scale and in particular the notion of doing it in
Speaker 1: a non linear way. You know, so as we're trying
Speaker 1: to grow our business, you know, how can we be
Speaker 1: doing it in a way that's not proportional ae where
Speaker 1: because that's allmly not effective in the long term. So
Speaker 1: we'll consciously say well, okay, you can have half or
Speaker 1: you can have a quarter, and invariably what happens is
Speaker 1: it's super interesting because the team go away and because
Speaker 1: it's conditioned through our principles, it's not a real frustration.
Speaker 1: People know that's why we're doing it, and it's just
Speaker 1: as a forcing function to go away and think about
Speaker 1: a problem in a very different way, and most people
Speaker 1: find it to be pretty useful.
Speaker 2: So would that then be unusual to give a project
Speaker 2: the full funding that has been requested.
Speaker 1: It really depends. I mean, we are investing, you know,
Speaker 1: really really heavily, you know, lots of people, and that's
Speaker 1: because the market opportunity is there and we see that
Speaker 1: customers are driving a lot of value from the work
Speaker 1: we're doing, and therefore we're investing against that. And so
Speaker 1: there's a tension, you know, between the two. And it's
Speaker 1: a question of how well you manage that tension. I
Speaker 1: guess that just coming back to leadership principles for a moment,
Speaker 1: I mean, part of the way or one of the
Speaker 1: easier ways I think to think about it, is that
Speaker 1: we have this kind of fundamental belief around the company
Speaker 1: that we are a company where builders come to build.
Speaker 1: And so this notion of being a builder, it really
Speaker 1: is the embodiment of these fourteen leadership principles that you
Speaker 1: really focused on invention, you really want to think big,
Speaker 1: you have a strong level of ownership and biace for
Speaker 1: action around how you solve customers, and so you can
Speaker 1: roll all of those principles up into this idea of
Speaker 1: being builders. And we think that everyone's a leader and
Speaker 1: everyone should be a builder and really therefore represent those
Speaker 1: principles in a really kind of effective way.
Speaker 2: So how does that relate, like in terms of everyone's
Speaker 2: a builder. If you're in say sales marketing or something
Speaker 2: like that, like you're not an engineer, how do those
Speaker 2: people conceptualize that.
Speaker 1: I can give you a real example. So my current manager,
Speaker 1: Ed who was my predecessor in my current role a
Speaker 1: number of years ago, now four or five years ago,
Speaker 1: was looking at what we're doing for our customers, and
Speaker 1: he had a hypothesis around this notion of global customers
Speaker 1: and how they wanted to deploy tech. And so he
Speaker 1: had an idea basically, and he wrote it up in
Speaker 1: a six page and he said, look, we need to
Speaker 1: think about building a new organizational unit that's really built
Speaker 1: specifically for the needs of these global multinationals who who
Speaker 1: want to consume tech in different ways. They're highly distributed.
Speaker 1: And so he wrote a six pager and when build
Speaker 1: a entirely new business today is a multi billion dollar
Speaker 1: business from a six page document. So that's a really
Speaker 1: good example in the world of sales of how this
Speaker 1: works today. We have a team of people here who
Speaker 1: are doing an incredible work around this idea of what
Speaker 1: we call the cognitive customer experience. So we've got a
Speaker 1: platform that effectively creates a software based contact center called
Speaker 1: Amazon Connect. But equally, what we're seeing is that loads
Speaker 1: of customers are looking to integrate that with AI and
Speaker 1: a whole raft of other things that will help them
Speaker 1: to transform the customer experience. And so we created a
Speaker 1: small team we called it a two pizza team of
Speaker 1: builders who are out there.
Speaker 2: And I can explain what you mean by a two
Speaker 2: pizza team that are not familiar with that chanel.
Speaker 1: So it's essentially a small cross functional team that has
Speaker 1: their requisite skills within it to operate completely autonomously. And
Speaker 1: the idea is that what we want in terms of
Speaker 1: scale is a team that it's kind that you could
Speaker 1: feed with two pizzas is the basic rule of thumb.
Speaker 1: So we think it kind of ten to twelve people roughly.
Speaker 1: And the reason we try to keep it small is
Speaker 1: because what happens is as teams grow is you tend
Speaker 1: to have to create a whole series of mechanisms to
Speaker 1: establish to manage cross functional communication. So what happens is
Speaker 1: once you get to a certain level of scale, you're
Speaker 1: building all of these overheads into the team and it
Speaker 1: impairs your ability to move fast. So we call it
Speaker 1: a two pizza team and have a principle around scaling
Speaker 1: those teams horizontally that enables us to move fast. So
Speaker 1: we created this two pizza team around Connect and today
Speaker 1: we've got many, many hundreds of customers across Australia and
Speaker 1: New Zealand using the Connect platform integrated with a whole
Speaker 1: aft of our artificial intelligence services to think in a
Speaker 1: very different way around improving the customer experience. And there's
Speaker 1: many of those types of examples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like the idea of scaling horizontally. That's an
Speaker 2: interesting way of putting it. And I've heard Bezos say
Speaker 2: that he would prefer two completely separate teams working on
Speaker 2: the same thing and not knowing about each other's work,
Speaker 2: and then just kind of finding out after the resources
Speaker 2: have been used. Can you maybe go into that a
Speaker 2: little bit, because I feel like that's a really challenging
Speaker 2: concept for most organizations that are organized and really structural.
Speaker 1: As a leadership principle, that's kind of helpful there. It's
Speaker 1: called having a bias for action, and so we believe
Speaker 1: that one is probably better than two, but equally too
Speaker 1: is a whole lot better than zero. And what we
Speaker 1: mean by that is that doing nothing is not a
Speaker 1: good answer. So invariably, what we accept that if we
Speaker 1: have a bias for action and we see an opportunity,
Speaker 1: rather than stopping and waiting and aligning all of the
Speaker 1: resources and making sure there's no waste, invariably what tends
Speaker 1: to happen in a lot of companies is nothing right,
Speaker 1: And we accept that in some cases, what we might
Speaker 1: create is a situation where there may be two people
Speaker 1: or two groups of people doing the same thing or
Speaker 1: even more. But if we're moving forward around the customer's
Speaker 1: agenda and we've got good rigor in what we're doing
Speaker 1: and we're learning, then ultimately it's going to be better
Speaker 1: than doing nothing because we'll learn and at some point
Speaker 1: in the future we may consolidate or aligne or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it's way better than doing nothing. So accept that
Speaker 1: in moving fast and having a bias for action, there
Speaker 1: may be some waste.
Speaker 2: So how does that then sit with you as a leader,
Speaker 2: Because again, I would imagine most senior leaders it is
Speaker 2: important for them to retain control and understand what's going
Speaker 2: on in every pocket of the organization and feel like
Speaker 2: they're all like across it. But I would imagine it
Speaker 2: couldn't be like that here based on that. What's that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I often tell people that
Speaker 1: you don't do a whole lot of management work at Amazon.
Speaker 1: You do a whole lot of coaching, and the leadership
Speaker 1: principles become really helpful there because you know, we're hoping
Speaker 1: that people are out in front of customers making great
Speaker 1: decisions and helping customers in a really effective way. And
Speaker 1: the last thing I want to do is get in
Speaker 1: the way of that. I want to give them as
Speaker 1: much freedom to do that work as I possibly can,
Speaker 1: because it'll enable them to move faster, and we'll learn
Speaker 1: from that and we'll just get better and better over time.
Speaker 1: In terms of helping our customers, what we try to
Speaker 1: focus on, rather than outputs is a set of inputs.
Speaker 1: So we try to feel really convicted around the inputs.
Speaker 1: You know, in the case of the cognitive c X
Speaker 1: work that we're doing, we look at, you know, how
Speaker 1: many customers are experimenting with a platform. We look at
Speaker 1: how much value they're getting from it. We look at
Speaker 1: the skills that they might otherwise need to be able
Speaker 1: to really affect change and get value from the platform.
Speaker 1: So we'd measure those sorts of inputs and make sure
Speaker 1: that we're applying our effort on the right inputs, because then,
Speaker 1: you know, what we try to do is apply the
Speaker 1: test that says, well, let's then measure the causality to outputs,
Speaker 1: you know, which might be sort of a set of
Speaker 1: business goals might be in our case, it may be
Speaker 1: revenue or sales or the p and l or whatever,
Speaker 1: and as long as we feel like we're convicted on
Speaker 1: the right inputs, then it's really about ensuring that we're
Speaker 1: supporting the teams effectively and enabling them as much freedom
Speaker 1: as possible to move quickly in front of the customer. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Kind that's interesting, so kind of like lead versus lag measures,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could call them leads. You know, we use
Speaker 1: the term inputs quite intentionally, and we do measure a
Speaker 1: lot of things. We're a very data driven organization and
Speaker 1: we try to be very, very convicted and have a
Speaker 1: whole lot of rigor on in terms of what we
Speaker 1: measure and the inputs we measure. So that's some of
Speaker 1: the thing we think about, and hopefully those inputs really
Speaker 1: guide us to the things that are most important for
Speaker 1: our customers and in the fullness of time, we think
Speaker 1: that'll mean that will create value for us.
Speaker 2: Now, you mentioned bias for action as one of the
Speaker 2: leadership principles. There's also deep dive is another one. And
Speaker 2: for me, kind of when I was looking through them
Speaker 2: and thinking about them, they feel kind of at odds
Speaker 2: and I want to know how do they actually play
Speaker 2: together and complement each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's certainly a tension there, and that tensions quite deliberate.
Speaker 1: So the way we think about that particular aspect is
Speaker 1: that it comes down to judgment, which is embodied by
Speaker 1: another Leedgshire principle called write a lot, and we try
Speaker 1: to ensure that we're making a judgment call. In this case,
Speaker 1: the judgment call is built around the type of decision,
Speaker 1: and so we think about decisions in two forms. We
Speaker 1: think about a decision being a two way door, that
Speaker 1: it's inherently reversible, in which case we should index on
Speaker 1: moving quickly even if we don't have perfect information. We
Speaker 1: just need to kind of use into wish and judgment
Speaker 1: and move really quickly. Equally, if we take the view
Speaker 1: that it's what we call a one way door, so
Speaker 1: inherently irreversible, then we expect that our leaders and by
Speaker 1: the way, everyone inside Amazon is a leader, so when
Speaker 1: I talk about leaders, I'm talking about everybody as opposed
Speaker 1: to people leaders. Then we expect our leaders to exercise
Speaker 1: good judgment and dive deep and go really deep into
Speaker 1: the problem, get to the root of the opportunity or
Speaker 1: the root of the challenges in a very rigorous data
Speaker 1: driven way to ensure that we're making as good as
Speaker 1: decision as we possibly could. And so that's how we
Speaker 1: think about that.
Speaker 2: Is it always obvious whether the door is one way
Speaker 2: or two ways?
Speaker 1: No, it's not always obvious, which is why we rely
Speaker 1: on good judgment. You know, we're hoping that people can see, hey,
Speaker 1: this is you know, I think in most cases it's
Speaker 1: reasonably obvious when you look at a decision and go, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I can see how that's inherently reversible. Like
Speaker 1: if we've got that wrong, as long as we've got
Speaker 1: good rigor around what we're learning, then you know, we'll
Speaker 1: pivot and iterate in an effective way. Equally, if it's
Speaker 1: a really big decision, and you've seen some of those,
Speaker 1: there's really big decisions you know that we've made invariably
Speaker 1: people like Jeff Bezos and in our case Andy Jasse
Speaker 1: you are super involved in those decisions, and everyone goes
Speaker 1: really deep on those specific decisions. But usually it is,
Speaker 1: but in some cases not so much.
Speaker 2: I feel like, disagree and commit gets a lot of
Speaker 2: pr as one of the leadership principles, And can you
Speaker 2: explain for those that haven't come across it what it means?
Speaker 2: And then I'm curious how you have personally gone about
Speaker 2: applying that, because I think it's a challenging one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's one of my absolute favorites on
Speaker 1: many levels. The root of the principle is this idea
Speaker 1: that you know, if you have if you're a scenario
Speaker 1: where we're in a room for context that has white
Speaker 1: walls and there's another wall that is black, and you know,
Speaker 1: we could have a debate as to whether the wall
Speaker 1: is white or black. And what happens in many companies
Speaker 1: is you tend to land on consensus and you go, okay,
Speaker 1: let's agree that it's great, but the answer is that
Speaker 1: wall's white and ambiguously white. And so what we should
Speaker 1: do is we should have a really robust and rigorous
Speaker 1: argument that gets us to the right answer, and let's
Speaker 1: have a lot of backbone about that, you know, and
Speaker 1: make sure that you know, if we have a strong
Speaker 1: opinion on it, we're putting that opinion on the table
Speaker 1: in really forthright ways and because it'll we believe it
Speaker 1: will get us to a better quality answer. And we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be meek and mild about that, and we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be consensus based because ultimately, if we land on the
Speaker 1: wrong answer, it's going to be mean about outcome for
Speaker 1: our customer. And so what we try to do is
Speaker 1: we try to build a bunch of cultural conditions that
Speaker 1: say it's really okay to have a very rigorous debate. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly it needs to be respectful, it needs to be
Speaker 1: data driven, but it needs to be forthright, and we
Speaker 1: expect people to have a load of backbone on that.
Speaker 1: And it's good because it creates a level of permission.
Speaker 1: And what happens is we you know, it's a big
Speaker 1: part of how we recruit people that you know, we
Speaker 1: have an expectation that you're going to going to really
Speaker 1: fight your corner on a position if you think it's
Speaker 1: important for customers, you're not going to back down for
Speaker 1: unless you you know, you've really made your case clearly.
Speaker 1: And then the other part of it, of course, is
Speaker 1: to say, look, when we've made a decision, then let's
Speaker 1: make sure we've made it, you know, and nobody is
Speaker 1: second guessing the decision, because we'll choose to move forward.
Speaker 1: And so I find it's really really helpful because most
Speaker 1: of the people I work with at whatever level I
Speaker 1: can rely upon to give me a really honest, data
Speaker 1: driven view on a perspective, and that's really really useful.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to second guess or assume
Speaker 1: that people won't most people, I would hope all people
Speaker 1: inside our company will.
Speaker 2: So how does that work in a meeting then, because
Speaker 2: normally I'm just thinking about a typical meeting where it's
Speaker 2: a consensus based decision as it is that you know
Speaker 2: nine to nine percent of companies and you know when
Speaker 2: the meeting has finished because you've reached consensus. But here, like,
Speaker 2: how how do you know when you've reached the decision
Speaker 2: because you don't have that natural consensus of closure.
Speaker 1: Well, we try to make sure that we make a
Speaker 1: clear decision, and most meetings are kind of unusual in
Speaker 1: the sense that we do really believe in being very
Speaker 1: data driven and rigorous in our decision making, and we
Speaker 1: have a mechanism for that. Most meetings, by the way,
Speaker 1: internally we don't use PowerPoint. Most meetings are governed by
Speaker 1: a sixty well and as long as six page narrative.
Speaker 1: But it's a written form narrative. And the reason we
Speaker 1: use a narrative is because it does that job right.
Speaker 1: You're not relying on interpretation you're not using high level,
Speaker 1: superficial data and know nice pictures. You're actually having to
Speaker 1: write a long form narrative and you have to substantiate
Speaker 1: the statements you make in that narrative with clear data,
Speaker 1: and when they're well written. What we find is it's
Speaker 1: really useful because at the start of a meeting, we
Speaker 1: stop and we read it and usually take fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty minutes in silence to read it, and it gets
Speaker 1: everyone onto the same page in a really effective way,
Speaker 1: really quickly. And what I tend to find and we
Speaker 1: have basically a set of principles around how these meetings
Speaker 1: should run, which is that people that the senior most
Speaker 1: person in the room should speak last so as not
Speaker 1: to introduce any any bias inadvertently, and then we have
Speaker 1: a robust debate and then the opinions of the senior
Speaker 1: person you're kind of informed by everyone else's opinion, and
Speaker 1: then typically we get a fairly clear decision as a
Speaker 1: consequence of that. So I find that that mechanism, in particular,
Speaker 1: that narrative is really helpful to getting clear decisions, you know,
Speaker 1: and that have backbone disagree and commit principle is clearly
Speaker 1: at work. But what happens is with the document is
Speaker 1: you do tend to get a lot of rich data
Speaker 1: that kind of removes a lot of the interpretation and
Speaker 1: subjectivity that you often see with PowerPoint in other organizations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to come back to the six page narrative,
Speaker 2: but on the disagreeing commit for you, how how do
Speaker 2: you manage that just internally because I imagine there must have
Speaker 2: been many decisions that you disagreed on but had to
Speaker 2: commit to. Like how how internally has that worked? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Totally fine. I mean I love it, you know, you
Speaker 1: know because I feel and certainly it's the case with
Speaker 1: the people I work directly with, is that you know,
Speaker 1: you really, you really are expected to have a strong,
Speaker 1: strong opinion. And actually it's it counts against you if
Speaker 1: you have an opinion and you don't share it. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you my opinion, but you know,
Speaker 1: the expectation is you do it in a very objective,
Speaker 1: data driven way, and so here's the basis of my opinion,
Speaker 1: and you'll have a good quality argument and it's not subjective,
Speaker 1: it's objective, and you tend to get the argument or
Speaker 1: conversation built around the right things, and you get to
Speaker 1: a much clearer decision. And you know, it's happened many
Speaker 1: times that decisions have gone against me, and I feel
Speaker 1: totally fine about that because it's not as though you're
Speaker 1: having voiced an opinion and you usually what you find
Speaker 1: is that it's a good, considered decision that gets made,
Speaker 1: even if it's one that you probably don't agree with,
Speaker 1: And so I find it to be really effective.
Speaker 2: How do you pick up for that in recruitment? Because
Speaker 2: I feel like so many cultures, my own workplace culture
Speaker 2: and Inventium included, like we've got very nice, agreeable people,
Speaker 2: and I love this principle of Amazon's and you know,
Speaker 2: it reminds me of radical candor, and like there are
Speaker 2: sort of lots of versions you know of that, I guess, So,
Speaker 2: how do you pick up for that in recruitment to
Speaker 2: find someone that's actually going to thrive in a disagreeing
Speaker 2: commit environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we test for it. And the way we test
Speaker 1: for it is that we have another leadership principle called
Speaker 1: hire and develop the best, And the thinking behind that
Speaker 1: leadership principle is that we want every person who comes
Speaker 1: into the organization to be a creative. In the context
Speaker 1: of our company, culture that they're bringing something that's additive,
Speaker 1: and the test we use is that they're better than
Speaker 1: fifty percent of people already in that role. So we
Speaker 1: try to apply an empirical test to that, and then
Speaker 1: we have a mechanism that we call the loop. And
Speaker 1: in the loop, it's quite a a structured process where
Speaker 1: a candidate who usually has already met a competency bar
Speaker 1: goes into a process and specifically, what we're trying to
Speaker 1: test for is whether the person is raise the bar
Speaker 1: in the context of our culture. And each of the
Speaker 1: interviewers in the loop is assigned to one or two
Speaker 1: leadership principles, and we'll ask a series of questions related
Speaker 1: to gathering data as to whether that person raises the
Speaker 1: bar or not against the leadership principles, and then we
Speaker 1: have a debrief at the end and we compare data points,
Speaker 1: and one of those leadership principles will always be have backbone,
Speaker 1: disagree and commit, and we'll have a conversation about it.
Speaker 1: If we don't feel like the person raises the bar,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about why and whether we feel like it
Speaker 1: can be mitigated, because nobody is going to be perfect
Speaker 1: against forteen leadership principles. It's usually the case, but the
Speaker 1: question is can they be mitigated and do we feel
Speaker 1: like the strengths outwigh some of the perhaps risks that
Speaker 1: we see, and then what happens, which one of the
Speaker 1: things I really like is we have typically in recruitment processes,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of biases that are built into
Speaker 1: recruitment processes. You have a bias from the hiring manager
Speaker 1: who's invariably got it incentive to hire you because at
Speaker 1: that particular point in time he or she may not
Speaker 1: have someone in the role and therefore is suffering as
Speaker 1: a consequence of doing two jobs. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of biases there. So we have what's called
Speaker 1: a bar raiser, and the bar raiser is typically what
Speaker 1: we think of as a role model, amazon in someone
Speaker 1: who's really kind of embodies of leadership principles in a
Speaker 1: really strong way, and they're certified and they have no
Speaker 1: stake whatsoever in the outcome of that decision other than
Speaker 1: to ensure that this person raises the bar against our
Speaker 1: leadership principles. And in the debrief, that person has a
Speaker 1: veto and it often gets exercised, and so we try
Speaker 1: to make sure that if you accept the premise that
Speaker 1: you know, our culture and our people are going to
Speaker 1: drive in the fullness of time, our ability to be
Speaker 1: successful for customers and therefore successful ourselves, then the point
Speaker 1: of hiring is a massively important point in time in
Speaker 1: the context of our long term success. So we spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time and effort on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. With the questions that you're asking around
Speaker 2: the leadership principles, are they more like behavioral questions where
Speaker 2: you're like, tell me about a time where you've disagreed
Speaker 2: and committe like, is.
Speaker 1: That we're just looking for an evidence base around how
Speaker 1: the persons operated through their career that you know that
Speaker 1: we think aligned strongly to the things we think are
Speaker 1: really important.
Speaker 2: Do you remember your recruitment process?
Speaker 1: I do. I do.
Speaker 2: What are some of the things that stood out to
Speaker 2: you or that you that were most memorable in terms
Speaker 2: of how they worked out whether you were right for
Speaker 2: the role?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because you don't get visibility to your
Speaker 1: own process. Yeah, no, you don't see the output. Obviously
Speaker 1: it must have been, okay, must have been. But look,
Speaker 1: one of the things I find and I get this
Speaker 1: feedback consistently from people is that culture is a kind
Speaker 1: of interesting thing because it's not as though it's good
Speaker 1: or bad. There's no judgment. I think typically people are good,
Speaker 1: you know, fit well in a culture, or they don't right,
Speaker 1: and you may be an outstanding performer but not right
Speaker 1: for the culture, in which case you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to be successful or happy in an organization like this.
Speaker 1: It's so strongly attuned to these fourteen leadership principles. So
Speaker 1: what I found is that even though it's a very
Speaker 1: time intensive process, it's a really good screen both ways
Speaker 1: because you know, often what I've had is people coming
Speaker 1: into the process going, look, I've got a really clear
Speaker 1: sense of your culture now, because you know it's so
Speaker 1: evident through the process, and you know, I just don't
Speaker 1: think it's the right culture for me. And that's awesome,
Speaker 1: you know when you get that sort of an output,
Speaker 1: because it's given people a chance to get a real
Speaker 1: sense of how the culture works and whether they're going
Speaker 1: to be happy and thrive and operate well in that environment.
Speaker 1: So it's really useful in that sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting. I want to come back to the six
Speaker 2: page and narrative because I had heard that power points
Speaker 2: are banned. Was that hard by the way to I
Speaker 2: imagine in your pre Amazon or pre WUS life you
Speaker 2: would have credited lots of PowerPoint. What was that like
Speaker 2: getting that up?
Speaker 1: In actual fact, I used to be a management consultant,
Speaker 1: so I lived in PowerPoint for a long time, and
Speaker 1: so I thought I would struggle with it. Actually, but
Speaker 1: it became a big It took a long time. And
Speaker 1: because it's not it's not a natural thing. A lot
Speaker 1: of people don't spend time writing long form documents in
Speaker 1: any company, and so actually it's a learned skill and
Speaker 1: it just takes a bit of practice. And we you know,
Speaker 1: so we use long form narrative for most things. So
Speaker 1: for instance, when we when we do an interview, we'll
Speaker 1: write our notes up as long form narrative. We don't
Speaker 1: use bullet points. We just write them up as long
Speaker 1: form narrative. And so you just become very practiced at it.
Speaker 1: And so what I find is now it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's so useful. I just couldn't imagine operating without them now. Actually,
Speaker 1: because because of the level of rigor and depth you
Speaker 1: get to and when you're writing one, what I find
Speaker 1: is I probably write maybe six or seven of them
Speaker 1: a year, long form, six pages, and when you're writing them,
Speaker 1: it gives you exceptional clarity because you really have to.
Speaker 1: It forces you to be quite rigorous and to think
Speaker 1: things through deeply, So both in terms of consuming it
Speaker 1: in terms of getting people onto the same page and
Speaker 1: writing them, it's a really really useful mechanism. And so
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be a lot harder than it was,
Speaker 1: to be frank, and it wasn't at all.
Speaker 2: Like I imagine when you say narrative, I imagine something reading like
Speaker 2: a short story. Is that the right interpretation?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, six page long form narrative, full sentences, no.
Speaker 2: Dot points, no dot points, beginning, middle, and end, with
Speaker 2: data woven in.
Speaker 1: Black and white. You know. Yeah, wow, you can have
Speaker 1: lots of appendencies, by the way, and so some people do.
Speaker 1: I never do. But you see these documents that are
Speaker 1: so well but you don't have to read them, and
Speaker 1: that's the rule. And so again it's a forcing function.
Speaker 1: So people have them, but you're not expected to read them.
Speaker 1: So you need to write the document with a view
Speaker 1: that the apendicies may not be read.
Speaker 2: How long does it take to write one of it?
Speaker 1: Kind of depends. It depends. So like I sit down
Speaker 1: and write, you know, a kind of a document that
Speaker 1: summarizes our aims at business once a year, and I
Speaker 1: take a lot of time on that because you know,
Speaker 1: I really go deep in every part of the business
Speaker 1: and thin deeply about it. So maybe that's you know,
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty hours of my time to write that. Equally,
Speaker 1: I've written docs that I can do, you know, in
Speaker 1: an afternoon in three or four hours, that aren't perhaps
Speaker 1: as deep or kind of analytical as the broader docks.
Speaker 1: It just kind of depends. You just get very good
Speaker 1: at writing them. Some of them are quick to write,
Speaker 1: Others take a lot longer that.
Speaker 2: You taught how to write, because I feel like the
Speaker 2: ability to write, and particularly the ability to write pros
Speaker 2: is a lost skill. Does Amazon give you training?
Speaker 1: We do have narrative writing courses and so it's totally optional.
Speaker 1: So if people want coaching on it, you can get
Speaker 1: you can get coaching. And then there's what you do
Speaker 1: find to your point is there's a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who are just really good at it, and they invariably
Speaker 1: become coaches to everyone else as well. I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those people.
Speaker 2: So how did you get better at it? I assume
Speaker 2: that you've improved at it during your time here.
Speaker 1: It's just practicing conditioning. You just get you consume a
Speaker 1: lot of them, you know, you write a lot of them.
Speaker 1: You just get good of it. I think moderately competent,
Speaker 1: I would describe probably not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just I'm fascinated by that. I feel like
Speaker 2: there'd be you know, people listening to this going, ah,
Speaker 2: do away with powerpoints. But then I feel like with
Speaker 2: the amount of time and rigor that's going into a
Speaker 2: six page narrative, and I assume that they don't have
Speaker 2: to be six pages, but that's just the limit that's right.
Speaker 2: And I assume that they are like font sized guidelines,
Speaker 2: so you're not just going eight point five.
Speaker 1: Totally ten point font minimum. There's there's hard rules around
Speaker 1: margin sizes and line spacing the whole lot. Because you know,
Speaker 1: you can imagine every trick in the book has been
Speaker 1: tried absolutely. You know that this notion of a forcing
Speaker 1: function is an interesting one. That the idea that it's
Speaker 1: a fixed six pages is really useful as well, because
Speaker 1: you know, I know that Andy writes a six pager
Speaker 1: on AWS each year for Jeff and I sit there
Speaker 1: and going, you know, goalie, how would you know fit
Speaker 1: an entire business into six pages? And you know when
Speaker 1: I struggle to do the AMZ business and Edwin, who
Speaker 1: runs out APEC business, does the same. And it's a
Speaker 1: super forcing function because it does force you to synthesize
Speaker 1: your messaging into a coherent six page narrative. You can't
Speaker 1: just waffle on forever, and you've got to get to
Speaker 1: the important points and you've got to you've got to
Speaker 1: make it constructive and really focused, and so that becomes
Speaker 1: useful as well.
Speaker 2: I imagine that must be a beautiful time saving device
Speaker 2: because I feel like like that much thought does not
Speaker 2: go into PowerPoint decks and there's often a lot of
Speaker 2: unnecessary totally waffle Where is this? It's all, It's all there.
Speaker 2: And I want to pick back up on what you
Speaker 2: said about how within the meeting is when people will
Speaker 2: actually read the narrative. Is that right? So the of
Speaker 2: time blocked out for reading.
Speaker 1: Normally, what happens is you take you read in silence
Speaker 1: for the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the meeting,
Speaker 1: and everyone reads in silence, and again as a bunch
Speaker 1: of protocols around that and what are they? We just
Speaker 1: complete silence because people are focused on it and concentrating
Speaker 1: on their docks, so you know, just being respectful those
Speaker 1: is important. So it's quite funny, like it's really feels
Speaker 1: very unnatural when you first join that. Everyone sits down
Speaker 1: and you know, hi, how are you? And let's read
Speaker 1: a dock and you sit there in silence for twenty
Speaker 1: minutes and read a dock. I find it so super
Speaker 1: useful because you do get this situation where often what happens,
Speaker 1: particularly with PowerPoint, is you've get people that are just
Speaker 1: wonderful communicators and can communicate really well and present really well.
Speaker 1: Often that can cover a lot of sins. And the
Speaker 1: reverse is also true. You get people that are poor
Speaker 1: communicators who can't get a point across well, but actually
Speaker 1: what they're saying is really important, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: I think that's potentially very risky in a lot of companies.
Speaker 1: What you want to do is get the right message
Speaker 1: and because you've got time to construct it well and
Speaker 1: a narrative, typically what happens, and it's not always the case.
Speaker 1: You know, invariably, if you've get a poorly written narrative.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get a great caller outcome, but
Speaker 1: when it's well written, getting everyone to the same page
Speaker 1: with the same data set at the end of that
Speaker 1: twenty minutes is really powerful. Because the other thing that
Speaker 1: happens with PowerPoint is you'll have someone who has seen
Speaker 1: an hour and they'll spend forty five minutes of the
Speaker 1: hour presenting a pack and you've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: questions for each of each of the pages, so you
Speaker 1: can stop and ask questions, and often you don't get
Speaker 1: to a really clean endpoint because you're debating different things
Speaker 1: and it leads a lot to interpretation. So often find
Speaker 1: that you just don't get as cleaner an outcome, which
Speaker 1: means it actually takes a lot longer because you're reving
Speaker 1: through things a lot more. That doesn't seem to happen
Speaker 1: as much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do like the fact that it really takes
Speaker 2: out a lot of the biases that you know, if
Speaker 2: you've got the gift of the gab, you can sell
Speaker 2: moost things through a PowerPoint deck and the reverse is true.
Speaker 2: But also I like the fact that the ratios of
Speaker 2: consuming information versus talking about the information is really different
Speaker 2: here because You're not just like in passive mode listening
Speaker 2: to a PowerPoint presentation. You're actively reading and processing something
Speaker 2: that must make for a very different quality of discussions.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, invariably it does.
Speaker 2: I want to ask about the PRFAQ, which, from what
Speaker 2: I understand, is Amazon's version of a minimum viable product.
Speaker 1: Well, probably not. I'd say it's a precursor to a
Speaker 1: minimum as we would call a lovable product as opposed
Speaker 1: a viable product. So invariably it goes back to our
Speaker 1: leadership principle, right, which is that everything we do starts
Speaker 1: with the customer and works backwards. And so one of
Speaker 1: the mechanisms we use to underpin that is the PRFAQ.
Speaker 2: So what does that look like?
Speaker 1: So essentially what happens is that we have a process.
Speaker 1: We call it a working backwards process clearly, and the
Speaker 1: idea is that it's working backwards from the customer. There's
Speaker 1: a set of questions. Your listeners won't be able to
Speaker 1: see these questions, but I'm just funking security on my
Speaker 1: security tag, and there's five questions. If you want to
Speaker 1: look at those and.
Speaker 2: Can I read these out?
Speaker 1: I can?
Speaker 2: So the working backwards questions, who is the customer? What
Speaker 2: is the customer problem or opportunity? Is the most important
Speaker 2: customer benefit? Clear, how do you know what customers need
Speaker 2: or want? What does the customer experience look like? That's cool?
Speaker 2: And this is like a little laminated card that you've
Speaker 2: got attached to your Curity neckcloud.
Speaker 1: And the reason it's called the working backwards process is
Speaker 1: because everything we do starts with a customer and works backwards. Now,
Speaker 1: the first step is to say, all right, well, how
Speaker 1: do I know that this is useful for the customer?
Speaker 1: And so our way of doing that is to write
Speaker 1: a press release. And what we do is we write
Speaker 1: a press release at some point in the future about
Speaker 1: this particular service or product or initiative. And the reason
Speaker 1: we do that is and we tend to have fictitious
Speaker 1: quotes from potential customers and other people, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to apply a test that says, how do we know
Speaker 1: that this particular thing that we're proposing to do is
Speaker 1: really going to have impact for our customer? Because you
Speaker 1: can build a whole lot of things and then find
Speaker 1: you've gotten to the end of a process and go, well,
Speaker 1: you know that really just didn't add a whole lot
Speaker 1: of values. So the pifique is our tool to do that.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is you start drafting these press
Speaker 1: releases and it really helps you to think about them
Speaker 1: in with the customer in mind, because you're saying, it's
Speaker 1: total point of reference is whether this will create value,
Speaker 1: will be useful, or be valuable. And the quotes help
Speaker 1: you because you're actually saying, well, how will this person
Speaker 1: consume this and what would their reaction be to this
Speaker 1: particular thing. So that's the press release. Now the FAQ
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting because what you then do is
Speaker 1: you think up a whole series of frequently asked questions,
Speaker 1: and typically they're grouped into sort of outward facing questions.
Speaker 1: You know, it might be how would we think about
Speaker 1: pricing this? You know, all of the things you could
Speaker 1: otherwise think of, and you know, internal questions like maybe
Speaker 1: an investment type conversation, those sorts of things. And what
Speaker 1: we try to do is apply a test that says, look,
Speaker 1: how do we think We try to come up with
Speaker 1: the hardest possible question. So again we're trying to use
Speaker 1: a forcing function that says, look, let's have considered as
Speaker 1: much about this problem as we possibly can through these FAQs,
Speaker 1: and again it's just a forcing function to do that
Speaker 1: planning and assuming. And what tends to happen is these
Speaker 1: power of FAQs tend to iterate a lot and if
Speaker 1: you get to a good answer, then you go into
Speaker 1: your sort of MLP type phase where you're starting to
Speaker 1: build a prototype and getting this thing built. But everything
Speaker 1: starts there. There's nothing significant that we do that doesn't
Speaker 1: have a paer FAQ. And often what happens is you'll
Speaker 1: get to a certain point in the life cycle of
Speaker 1: this thing. Because I'm using the word thing because it
Speaker 1: could be a product or a service, it could also
Speaker 1: be a project, it could be a whole after things,
Speaker 1: and your reference back to the PERCQ going well, you
Speaker 1: know what do we envisage this would look like? And
Speaker 1: you know how do we track back against that? So
Speaker 1: it's quite a useful mechanism.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating. What percentage of ideas get past the PRFIQ stage?
Speaker 1: I would say a lot. And the reason I would
Speaker 1: say a lot is because we don't have a defined
Speaker 1: process for ideation and investment. There's no investment committee, there's
Speaker 1: no clear path. And that's pretty intentional because you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know where an idea is going to come from,
Speaker 1: and so you don't necessarily want to preordain you know,
Speaker 1: how to get an idea. So we have this management
Speaker 1: I guess philosophy, this idea of the organizational Yes, have
Speaker 1: you heard about that context?
Speaker 2: I don't think I have nice.
Speaker 1: So what we think, particularly for people leaders, as we
Speaker 1: try to think of our role as to find a
Speaker 1: way to yes. So rather than you go into a
Speaker 1: lot of meetings and people think it's their job to
Speaker 1: say no, really, my job is if someone's brought me
Speaker 1: a proposal, is to try to work out how to
Speaker 1: get it to yes. And so in many cases, what
Speaker 1: happens with a per FAQ is it iterates, which is, look, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you should think about A, or you
Speaker 1: think about B, and look, why don't you go to
Speaker 1: have a conversation with person over there? And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure this is quite ready, but like I think,
Speaker 1: if you think about A, B and C, you know
Speaker 1: we can get it there. So often what happens is
Speaker 1: the per of FAQ becomes a tool to help with
Speaker 1: the process of iteration. So the reason I say most
Speaker 1: is because if you've got a fundamentally good idea that
Speaker 1: holds water in the context of creating value for customer.
Speaker 1: Then most of what we're trying to do is work
Speaker 1: out how to get it executed. Now, in some cases
Speaker 1: that could be really quick and really easily easy, and
Speaker 1: the process enables that. In other cases, though, it'll take
Speaker 1: a lot of iteration to get to a point where
Speaker 1: we go, Okay, good, let's move, you know, And so
Speaker 1: most of the time you're really working towards yes as
Speaker 1: opposed to a killing idea and saying no.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, working towards yeah, getting to a yes.
Speaker 2: That's so different to how most people operate because no
Speaker 2: makes you sound smart generally because you you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: It's easy to say no. It's a lot harder to
Speaker 1: say yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Absolutely, I love that. My final question for you,
Speaker 2: Paul is how can people find out more about you
Speaker 2: and Amazon Web Services and by what you're doing? Like,
Speaker 2: where where can people go to find out more?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Well, look, I really appreciate this opportunity because
Speaker 1: you know, fundamentally, the thing that enables us to be
Speaker 1: successful for customers in the fullness of time is being
Speaker 1: able to attract great quality of people who have awesome
Speaker 1: careers here, so you know, it's fun to be able
Speaker 1: to talk about our culture and hopefully you know, people
Speaker 1: see it as being interesting and you know context around
Speaker 1: where they can do great work. And you know, we've
Speaker 1: got lots of lots and lots of roles open in
Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand today, so always looking for great people.
Speaker 1: You can go on to our website. You know, I'd
Speaker 1: love it if you're based in Sydney or Auckland. We
Speaker 1: have made your customer events each year. Our summer he's
Speaker 1: in April, about thirty thousand people are expected at the
Speaker 1: International Convention Center in Sydney, and we'll have a similar
Speaker 1: one in Auckland i think in the June July time frame,
Speaker 1: and we have a whole lot of events. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're a developer, we have big developer days through
Speaker 1: the year, so i'd encourage you to come to any
Speaker 1: one of our events as well. And you know we
Speaker 1: often have meetups and our partners have meetups, so there's
Speaker 1: many different ways you can you can come and meet
Speaker 1: our team and get us sense of the work that
Speaker 1: we're doing and hopefully the work that you might do.
Speaker 1: If you chose to come and work with us.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. And we'll link to the career's page in
Speaker 2: the show notes and also just the events page as well,
Speaker 2: so I people want to find out more, we'll put
Speaker 2: those in the show notes. Paul, it has been an
Speaker 2: absolute delight and just fascinating hearing how Amazon works. So
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure. Thank you really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Hey, there, that is for today's show. If you like
Speaker 2: this episode, why not share it with someone else that
Speaker 2: you think could benefit from it. I just thought there
Speaker 2: were so many great tips that Paul shared that so
Speaker 2: many organizations and leaders could benefit from knowing and maybe
Speaker 2: trialing out at their organization. So that is it for
Speaker 2: today's show and I will see you next time.