You and your co-author spent a combined 27 years working at Amazon, sharing founder Jeff Bezos’ conviction that the long-term interests of shareholders are perfectly aligned with the interests of customers. Please unpack that belief for us.
It’s more than just a belief — it’s an unshakeable conviction that is embedded into the company’s thinking and behaviour. The idea is that if you constantly focus on addressing customer needs and solving their problems, things will work out over the long term for your company. Amazon’s success proves that when you have customers’ best interests in mind, they reward you with trust and ongoing business over a lengthy period of time.
Some leaders think that if you adopt this kind of long-term mindset, it will take too long to get where you want to go, but Amazon’s experience has been just the opposite. There are less ‘zigs’ and ‘zags’ focusing on short-term needs that don’t actually accrue long-term value. If you’re focused on hitting a quarterly number and you’re throwing together a promotion, typically you’re pulling demand from a future period into a current period and not really creating anything new. So on the first day of the new quarter, you’re back to where you started from. If the next quarter.
