eff Bezos' obsession: at work, you should always avoid “day two”

[jrineakter]

Everything Jeff Bezos does, says or undertakes is news, and not by chance: the founder of Amazon is considered one of the great visionaries of the new business world. We have already talked about his sophisticated leadership methods here ; and we will do so again:


In an article published by the digital magazine The New Barcelona Post , the author explains, based on a book by Tim O'Reilly, the great insight –key to solving a problem– that Bezos shared in several meetings with his workers to face the challenges of the future.

According to O'Reilly, the Amazon CEO always began these meetings by reminding everyone that “it's still day one,” a sort of catchphrase Bezos used in every meeting. One of his employees asked one day, “So what's day two going to be like?” To which Bezos replied by explaining the essential principles that underpin his motivation: “Day two is stasis; followed by irrelevance; followed by excruciating decline.”

In a way, Bezos wanted to say that working in an industry like his, doing so with completely new mechanisms, requires always rowing as if it were the first day, because germany number data beyond that, the next thing you can expect is disappointment and frustration.

But how do Amazon and Bezos avoid that dreaded day two? Here are four tips to help you stay on top of the game.

Customer obsession
The customer is at the centre of all your activity. It is the one who gives and takes away meaning from your organisation; when a company moves away from the customer, it begins its descent into its own economic hell. “Even if customers haven’t discovered it yet, they always want something better,” says Bezos. In this sense, those companies that try to constantly innovate will renew their efforts, and also their ambitions, almost daily.

Don't fall into complacency
Bezos encourages people not to get carried away by the idea that things are going well just because the indicators say so. Evaluation is usually done according to the old dynamics, but it is always advisable to be alert to everything that falls outside the old evaluation processes. Bezos asks to go further, not to fall into complacency. What is important are the results, and these must be subjected to a demanding, tense judgment like that of the first day.

Keeping up to date with exogenous trends
For Bezos, it is very important to enthusiastically adopt trends that come from outside the organization. It is vital to be up to date with everything that moves outside, the global winds, to identify them and know where they come from, to get on them and surf them to take advantage of the moment. This will help the company to improve and grow. This is how the text of The New Barcelona Post sums it up: “Staying out of these disruptive and global improvements can mean being out of the game in a short time. It is essential not to waste the new sources of value creation, efficiency, and currents of change that are emerging and on which to grow, and which we can also enrich with our own capital stock.”