I love the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but few people reference them, even when organizations build their cultures on the same ideas. I also like Amazon’s leadership principles, though some are describing organizational behavior more than personal behavior. Having worked in 14 corporate environments, ranging from the very small to the enormous, this is a list of the recurring ideas on effectiveness I’ve encountered.
Time is your most valuable asset
Everyone has the same 24 hours, my Amazon mentor once told me. Manage your calendar and commitments, and differentiate between urgent and important. This is described in Seven Habits… as “Put first things first” and it included the need to balance personal and professional priorities. In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf tells Frodo, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Responsiveness
When I joined Amazon, the expected response time for an e-mail was 24 hours, no matter how many e-mails you received. The first rule of distributed organizations is the same as that of distributed systems: that a connection exists.
Reliability
Say what you’ll do, then do what you say. Amazon’s principle is “Deliver results”, but an equally important yet unstated idea is that you have to make clear your delivery commitment in advance. A lack of up-front commitment muddies the value of your delivery, no matter how spectacular. So do outsized expectations. Communication about your delivery is as important as the delivery itself.
Have a perspective
If you’re present, bring a perspective. If necessary, ask a basic question to get started. One good way is to have “strong opinions, weakly held”.
Be a good partner
The Seven Habits… concept was called “Think Win-Win”. To find win-win territory, you have to understand what is important to others. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. If you’re having trouble aligning, try going up one level:
Mission → principles → outcomes → approach
Disagree, then commit 1 When a group faces a decision, there must be a point where the discussion is stopped and the decision made. This principle says that an individual must state their perspective, make their best case, disagree with others if necessary, but once a decision is made, they must commit to it wholly, as though it was their own decision. This means no second guessing, no silent dissent, no foot-dragging, and no I-told-you-so.
1 Amazon’s version is "Have backbone, disagree and commit" but the desire for backbone may vary by organization. Also a colleague at Amazon pointed out the need to refine the wording because you can’t both disagree and commit."