Amazon Leadership Principle 2: Ownership

Understanding Ownership At Amazon

Ownership is about taking responsibility for your actions and the results caused by them. It is also about taking responsibility for problems you face and thinking of how you can solve them with solutions that work long-term and don’t just consider your team but the whole business.

If you see something that is not working in a part of your job, you are responsible for fixing it or suggesting a way to improve it. If you fail when working on a project, you should be accountable for your failure.

The Amazon Standard of Ownership

People who work at Amazon can go beyond their abilities to get their work done, and if they fail, people will expect them to take responsibility for it. Everyone is expected to be an owner, and everyone thinks long-term instead of short-term.

If you work at Amazon, you also need to be able to think outside the box when working on a project and do projects with skills that you do not specialize in. The following quote demonstrates how Amazon views ownership:

“Leaders are owners. They think long-term and do not sacrifice long-term values for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond their own team. They never say, ‘that’s not my job.”

Characteristics of an Ownership Mindset

A person who has ownership will:

Disregard the boundaries between certain jobs if necessary to get their project done
Try to fix problems they see even if they are not in their department
Own up to mistakes
Consider long-term consequences of actions
Not make excuses for failure
Help their team to do those things as well

Demonstrating Ownership in Interviews

Candidates in an interview should demonstrate that they have taken ownership in the past and fixed a problem themselves. They should talk about how they did that and what steps they took to solve the issue until it was no longer a problem. They should focus on the main problem and how they solved it.

Amazon will also look for details, and the more specific you can be in answering a question, the better. If you are in an interview, find examples of times you went above and beyond – find times when you did something extra that wasn’t in your job description to finish your project or fix a problem you saw.

Ask yourself:

Was I doing something that was not part of my normal job?
Was it something I don’t do every day?

If the answer is yes, then your story would be good to talk about in an interview.

Sample Interview Questions About Ownership

When was a time when you demonstrated ownership in your job?
What is an example of a time when you went above and beyond?
When did you see a problem outside your department or outside your role, and what did you do about it?
Give an example of a time when you worked on something outside your area of expertise and responsibility. For what reason was it significant? What was the result?
Tell me about an idea or project that happened because of you.
Describe a time when you noticed a team member not doing as well, and you helped them. What happened and what did you do to reach the outcome? What was the result?
Give an example of how you have created a balance between focusing on your work that specific day but not losing focus on long-term results.

How to Answer Ownership Questions Effectively

When you answer questions like those about ownership, you should be ready to talk about past experiences while focusing on the main problem of your story. You should be able to talk about times when you have demonstrated ownership, what actions you took, and what the result was.

If asked about doing work outside your job description, make sure to give specific examples that make it clear that you did something outside your normal area of work that you did not do frequently but that you did at that time because you knew it would help your company. Make sure your answer is not too short and has plenty of details. Remember that ownership is not just taking responsibility for what you did but also what you did not do that you could have done.