> That's the way Amazon works, it's like a theology debate club.
I don't think you have a grasp on the subject. Leadership principles are decision-making guidelines. Instead of paralyzing teams because someone needs to make a call, amazonians are encouraged to simply act based on a set of guidelines. That's why "customer obsession" is the top principle, and everyone talks about "ownership". You're expected to show "bias for action" which means making decisions instead of waiting around for someone else to do or say something.
Everyone needs to make decisions on a daily basis and if you have a clear guideline telling you that you need to do things a certain way or prioritize something, it's hard to justify doing the exact opposite just because you felt like it. That's the exact opposite of a theological debate, as there is a very clear actionable item and deliverable without requiring anyone to sit around debating nonsense.
The leadership principles aren't guidelines for making decisions in practice because any decision can be justified in terms of the principles. The decision comes first, then a justification in the principles is found.
I know what the company documents say about it, but I'm talking about how it actually gets used.
Except you can invoke other leadership principles to counter that.
You are not "waiting around for someone else". You are "being right, a lot" and "insisting on the highest standards". It's just about how able you are to use them in your favor.
In a sense, it is all bullshit. Just like a theological debate.
I think, just like theological debate, it looks arbitrary from the outside trying to reconstruct the whole discipline from first(/leadership) principles and ignoring the scholarship that has been done in the past couple thousand years/implicit understanding that has been built in years of meetings.
When you have two or more parties saying diametrically opposite things, each citing the same texts to justify themselves, it's pretty damn arbitrary. Each side will say they have so many years of scholarship backing their position, so that turns out to be meaningless.
Reading and citing the same book, Christians have been debating whether Christ was poor for damn near a thousand years. What's more likely, they're getting their opinions from the text, or they're using the text to justify whatever their opinion already was?
I don't think you have a grasp on the subject. Leadership principles are decision-making guidelines. Instead of paralyzing teams because someone needs to make a call, amazonians are encouraged to simply act based on a set of guidelines. That's why "customer obsession" is the top principle, and everyone talks about "ownership". You're expected to show "bias for action" which means making decisions instead of waiting around for someone else to do or say something.
Everyone needs to make decisions on a daily basis and if you have a clear guideline telling you that you need to do things a certain way or prioritize something, it's hard to justify doing the exact opposite just because you felt like it. That's the exact opposite of a theological debate, as there is a very clear actionable item and deliverable without requiring anyone to sit around debating nonsense.