Don’t compromise for the sake of social cohesion
Jeff Bezos' lesson on driving a culture where good ideas are not missed and fully informed decisions can be made
Ethan & Jason here—welcome to today’s article of Level Up: Your source for executive insights, high performance habits, and specific career growth actions.
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At Amazon, Jeff Bezos told us to "not compromise for the sake of social cohesion."
I saw him tolerate lengthy, exhausting arguments as a result. When I was a director, my VP constantly argued with Jeff and refused to back down.
Their main, recurring argument was about an arcane economic model called the Prime Attribution Model (PAM). PAM mattered because it determined how the fee paid by Prime members was divided between business units. Prime Gaming (our business) was getting almost nothing, and we disagreed with how the model was designed.
During one chapter of the debate between Jeff and my VP, the discussion went on for so long that the CFO stepped in and asked: "Jeff, do you want me to end this?"
Basically, he was offering to scold my VP and shut him up so that Jeff would not have to be the bad guy.
Jeff explicitly said no.
The debate was drawn out and exhausting, but Jeff clearly showed his preference for a strong, lengthy debate instead of a comfortable, convenient compromise.
In the end, we never got the PAM model changed.
But, Jeff never shut us down.
He continued to entertain the debate, and we kept revisiting it every time we had new evidence for a change.
It was a years-long debate that never changed anything, but not shutting it down allowed every piece of each argument to be brought to light.
The result was that a fully informed decision could be made, even if it was one that my VP and I disagreed with.
Now, there is a point where rehashing old debates becomes impractical if it is simply perseverating on things that have already been decided. This is why we would reintroduce the debate when we had new evidence, not just whenever we felt like it.
In between rounds of debate, we would “Disagree and Commit” — an Amazon Leadership Principle (LP).
We never felt like the PAM model was a good model, but we didn’t pout about it as we continuously failed to change it. We reintroduced our argument when we had something new to say, but we otherwise committed to its use.
This is where Jeff’s advice of “Don’t compromise for the sake of social cohesion” and the LP of “Disagree and Commit” come together.
The time for debate is when you have evidence; the time for commitment is when that evidence has been thoroughly heard, analyzed, and accepted or rejected.
The result is a culture where good ideas are not missed because people feel like they can’t argue on their behalf and things also aren’t stuck in holding patterns when key stakeholders inevitably disagree.
In the below clip, Jeff says that any high performing organization must have mechanisms and a culture that supports truth telling.
Why? Because humans are social animals and truths don’t want to be heard because important truths are uncomfortable, awkward, challenging, and exhausting.
An example of a culture that supports truth telling is where the most junior person can overrule the most senior person if they have data. To cultivate this, Jeff speaks last in every meeting to avoid influencing others and has the most junior person go first, then the second, and so forth in order of seniority to hear everyone's opinion in an unfiltered way.
Readers—How has this worked in your organizations? Is debate encouraged or do people often compromise for the sake of cohesion?
Follow-up Audience Q&A
Q1: This is clearly an amazing attribute of Jeff and the Amazon culture. Why do you think this ethos of debate and commit inconsistently occurs within Amazon, as I hear so often from Amazonians who are exiting its polarizing culture, Ethan?
The leader has to be willing to engage in it.
Many leaders are either too insecure to allow a challenge or in too much of a rush to move on to execution. They fail to see that the best way to keep a strong team is to "slow down to go fast" by creating the right culture. They get a short term win that day but lose the hearts of the team, leading to a long term cost.
Unfortunately, systems (rules) are generally aimed at preventing low end outcomes and mistakes. It is hard to "systematize" your way to greatness. Amazon did better than most with the Leadership Principles, but it does not have 90% good leaders. I wish I could tell you that I knew how to create that at scale.
Q2: I'm conflicted on disagree and commit. It sounds good in theory & Jeff walked the walk. I saw different uses of it at Amazon where the debate ended abruptly and seemed inpatient without regard to beloved data. I saw a Steve Jobs video recently where he described a more compromising approach where a better idea often resulted. He mentioned that in severe cases of disagree that he simply fired the other person. That seems more like the Apple I remember ;). The problem with disagree and commit is the open wound that continues to fester. It seems like it did in your case too. While, you describe bringing it up to Jeff, the PAM model likely came up even more at a team level and while the team committed, they never really let it go. So many of the LPs were double edged swords and could be weaponized by either side. I believe it was more pure in the early days.
The LPs do sometimes get weaponized.
And yes, it takes a certain kind of person who can both truly disagree and then truly commit without a grudge. Many cannot and I think that makes this principle the hardest to fully implement in practice...because there are people who even though they are smart and motivated just cannot do this.
More articles on Amazon LPs:
More articles on lessons from Jeff Bezos:
Q3: Did that person get scolded or did they last long there?
That CFO was the current CFO, and he was simply offering to protect Jeff's time. He was not scolded because (a) he asked if that was what Jeff wanted and (b) when Jeff said no he waited patiently for the debate to continue.
He's a very good CFO and leader. I think he played a reasonable role by asking, is this debate still having value or should we move on.
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