Knowing, beyond a doubt, what customers want requires a zealous commitment to metrics. And no one commits better than Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.

Here’s what a “culture of metrics” has allowed Bezos to do as a leader:

1. Keep all eyes focused on the customer. Amazon tracks its per-formance against roughly 500 measurable goals, and nearly 80% of those have to do with cus-tomer objectives.

(Bezos also has a habit of keeping a seat empty at the conference table to rep-resent the customer, “the most important

person in the room,” he says.)2. Allow for feisty debate, knowing

the best idea will triumph. Amazon employees often debate about which of

the many metrics is worth watching.

“If you can stand a bar-rage of questions, then you have picked the right metric,” says Manfred Bluemel, a former senior market researcher at Ama-

zon. “But you had better have your stuff together. The best number wins.”

3. Weed out customer turn-offs. Because nearly everything is measured,

Inside Amazon’s ‘culture of metrics’Leadership Snapshot

(800) 543-2055 www.ExecLeadership.com

Continued on page 2

As one of the most well-known women in technology, Google VP Marissa Mayer turned a few heads when she announced that she doesn’t believe in burnout.

How can the woman who was hired in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee, who once worked 130 hours per week, now say that she doesn’t really believe in burnout?

Avoiding burnout isn’t about sitting down for three meals a day, getting home at a decent hour, or getting eight hours of sleep, she says. (Indeed, Mayer pulled her share of all-nighters in her early Google days.)

“I have a theory that burnout is about resentment,” the tech maven says. “And you beat it by knowing what it is you’re

giving up that makes you resentful.“I tell people: Find your rhythm. Your

rhythm is what matters to you so much that when you miss it you’re resentful of your work.”

For some, the thing that’s important might be a vacation, for others it’s movie night, and some people may just want eight hours of sleep per night.

When it comes to leading, Mayer deploys her theory regularly. After notic-ing signs of burnout in one recent college grad, she approached him and asked about his “rhythm.”

He replied that he had a standing din-ner night with friends on Tuesdays. When

Google VP tells how to avoid burnoutPersonal Productivity

VOLUME 27 • JUNE 2012

Get it done with virtual assistants. Task services are the new office assis-tants. You post odd jobs online for personal assistants to bid on. Do it either where your business is based or on the road. Examples: TaskRabbit and Zaarly.com.— Adapted from “Hop to It,” John Brandon, Inc.

Real research shows. When mak-ing research-based decisions, how to tell when research is sound? Ask: Where is the independent confirma-tion? Are these fancy acronyms or real outcomes? Does this approach have a solid record of replication? If a researcher won’t admit mistakes, beware.— Adapted from “Research Shows,” Douglas Reeves, American School Board Journal.

New paradigm. Science writer James Gleick thinks the basis of the uni-verse isn’t matter or energy, but data. The author of Chaos says physics has started to think of the bit as the ultimate fundamental particle. The more we understand the role infor-mation plays, he says, the more skill-ful we’ll be.— Adapted from “The ballad of the bit,” Kevin Kelly, Wired.

Leadership Tips

Transforming Honeywell New culture doubles profits ..............2

How We Think About Strategy Does your company matter? ............3

Make Faster Decisions Stand-up meetings speed it up .........4

Power Questions Use Socratic Method to lead .............8

INSIDE

Even a minuscule 0.1-second delay in a webpage loading can

translate into a 1% drop in customer activity.

Continued on page 2

2 • Executive Leadership • June 2012 www.ExecLeadership.com

When David Cote took the reins at Honeywell in 2002, the company was still reeling from a series of unfortunate events.

In 1999, Honeywell was bought by Allied Signal, a company twice its size. The newly formed company didn’t mesh well. In 2001, the company’s plan to be acquired by General Electric was rebuffed on antitrust grounds.

Enter Cote.Having trained under GE’s Jack

Welch, Cote began the task of forming a new Honeywell culture. He started by identifying 12 measurable behaviors that he wanted to see within the busi-ness—including customer focus, self-awareness and championing change.

To allow those new behaviors to take hold, he launched a new training process, called “One Honeywell,” or “One Hon.” Then he shook the earth by launching the “Honeywell Operating System,” or HOS, which is really a cus-tomized version of the Toyota operating system.

The new system has transformed the company from one of the country’s most messed-up firms to one of its best.

Managers say that without the focus on continuous improvement, the company wouldn’t be nearly so productive, or profitable. Since 2002, the company’s profits have doubled to $4 billion.

Every day begins with a 15-minute or less shop-floor meeting, where em -ployees try to pinpoint problems and possible improvements, which are sent up to managers. The company expects every employee to come up with two implementable ideas for improvement, per month.

That’s the sort of focus that has helped improve every action taken at the factory. For example, it used to take 42 days to make and deliver a toxic-gas detector for clients such as Intel. Now it takes 10 days. And whereas the process used to occupy the entire factory floor, now it uses only one-quarter of it. The other three-quarters can be used for making other products.

In other words, the factory makes more stuff and generates more revenue, using essentially the same head count, square footage and energy consumption. — Adapted from “From bitter to sweet,” The Economist. ■

Honeywell thrives under new cultureTurnaround TacticsAmazon’s metrics

Continued from page 1

Bezos can tell when the site begins to function in a way that will irritate and turn off customers.

Bezos relentlessly conveys to his team that even small issues are far from trivial. For example, one of Amazon’s metrics shows that even a minuscule 0.1-second delay in a webpage loading can translate into a 1% drop in customer activity.

4. Take risks. Because the data speaks to him, Bezos feels more secure when he takes innovative risks.

“We are comfortable planting seeds and waiting for them to grow into trees,” says Bezos. “We don’t focus on the optics of the next quarter; we focus on what is going to be good for customers. I think this aspect of our culture is rare.”

Example: Synthesizing hundreds of data points, Bezos came to believe that consumers would want an e-reader that could download a book in less than 60 seconds. The idea of the Kindle was born, though Bezos left it to engineers to figure out the technical challenges, a process that took years.

Bezos didn’t waver. When one finance exec asked how much he was prepared to spend on the project, the CEO replied, “How much do we have?”— Adapted from “Inside Amazon’s Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes the Customer,” George Anders, Forbes. ■

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How to avoid burnoutContinued from page 1

he missed it, he spent the rest of the week feeling resentful.

So now, she knew that he couldn’t miss a Tuesday dinner again. She knew he’d be more productive for the entire week, if he could make it to that Tues-day dinner. It was that simple.

Another employee, who was run-ning Google Finance and had a team in India, seemed stretched thin. The employee, Katie, had been running con-ference calls at 1 a.m.

But when Mayer expressed her con-cern, Katie said, “Don’t worry about the 1 a.m. calls to Bangalore. I love my team. It doesn’t bother me a bit. What

bothers me is missing soccer games or having my child see me walk in late to the recital.”

From then on, Mayer made sure Katie was empowered to leave for the things she loved.

What matters to Mayer? A one-week vacation she takes every four to six months. If she has to cancel a trip or postpone it, she starts to feel resentful.

Lesson: Find your rhythm, under-stand what makes you resentful, and protect it.— Adapted from “Marissa Mayer Offers Five Tips for Young Women Entering Tech,” Matt Rosoff, Business Insider; “How to Avoid Burnout,” Marissa Mayer, Bloomberg Businessweek. ■

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