What This Principle Means for Amazon Leadership
The Amazon leadership principle, Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility, is about considering how Amazon impacts the companies and people around it. Leaders should consider the impact of Amazon on the community, the planet, and the world’s future. They should not only recognize the direct actions of the company, but also the indirect actions and their effects. Leaders are expected always to be humble.
Daily Awareness of Impact
This principle is about Amazon considering its effects on customers, employees, partners, and many people worldwide. The principle tells Amazon leaders that they should recognize those effects every day.
Why This Principle Matters
The principle is important because, as a large company, Amazon’s actions affect many people and other companies. It is the mission of Amazon to make a difference and inspire its teams to help people around the world with common challenges and obstacles.
Amazon’s Philosophy in Their Own Words
The following quote shows how Amazon thinks of the principle “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility.”
“We started in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.”
Characteristics of Broad Responsibility
A company that has broad responsibility will consider the effects of its actions, think about the impacts when making decisions, strive to be better every day, and help others work around common obstacles.
Demonstrating This Amazon Leadership Principle in Interviews
In an interview, you should give examples that show you can think about the effects of a decision and consider the point of view of others. You should demonstrate how you can consider those effects in your decision. Amazon wants candidates to show that they understand how their job impacts others, further beyond their everyday work. Amazon also wants to see that you care about positively impacting other people while you work at the company.
Sample Interview Questions
Examples of interview questions for the principle Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility:
- Describe a time you and a partner had a tough situation. How did you solve the problem?
- Was there ever a time when you lost a partner?
- Explain how you think about the impact of your company and work on the world.
- Describe a time when you didn’t consider the effects of your actions. How did you learn from it and prevent it from happening again?
- When was a time you changed the direction of a project because it could potentially harm someone else?
- Tell me about a time when you recognized the impact of your work on everyone affected by it, not only your organization.
Aligning with Other Amazon Leadership Principles
When you answer questions about the principle “Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility,” keep in mind that a lot of the major points of this principle are related to other principles like “Customer Obsession,” “Hire and Develop the Best,” and “Strive to be the Earth’s Best Employer.” When this principle talks about partners, it is similar to customer obsession, and you can rephrase your stories to think of the customers as partners. When it talks about impact on communities, talk about how your job and actions have impacted people outside your company. When it talks about doing better, you can talk about how you have helped people do better by noticing their talents. Amazon wants you to show that you care about the positive impact of your company on the world.
Read More: Amazon Leadership Principle 1: Customer Obsession