Advance Praise
“As a result of a highly successful advisory and consulting career, Ram Charan has studied innumerable companies and their management systems. The Amazon Management System challenges readers and their organizations to understand and then implement the management system that shortly will be demanded by their customers.”
—Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell and coauthor of Execution, which spent more than 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
“Amazon is secretive, but it is not a black box. The management secrets of this supremely successful company are here, revealed by Ram Charan and Julia Yang. You can’t afford not to read this fascinating book.”
—Geoff Colvin, bestselling author and Senior Editor-at-Large, Fortune
“Ram does it again. He distills the maximum brilliance from a very complex company into the minimum number of pages, leaving the reader smarter and better prepared.”
—Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President & CEO,
Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
“Most of us watch in awe as Amazon dominates the competition with nonstop rapid-fire disruption. But they are no outlier. Anyone can replicate their success by learning Amazon’s management system as revealed in this short but powerful book.”
—Charlene Li, bestselling author of The Disruption Mindset and Senior Fellow at Altimeter, a Prophet company
“Amazon’s incredible success is a premier case study of organization reinvention. Ram and Julia discover and define six building blocks of Amazon’s success that can be adapted to any organization. Their easy to read ideas and simple to do actions template are the playbook for anyone wanting to create a more effective organization.”
—Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business,
University of Michigan coauthor of Reinventing the Organization
“No company should try to be like Amazon. But every company can learn from Amazon. Ram Charan and Julia Yang reveal how you can adapt elements from Amazon into your own 21st-century management system to become stronger, smarter, faster, and more successful.”
—Thomas A. Stewart, Executive Director,
National Center for the Middle Market and co-author of
Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art of Customer Delight
“As I was reading this short, to-the-point book, I paused and reflected about our own management system and determined what I needed to change. Whether it’s data, machine learning; cash flow, hiring or customer obsession, Amazon is the leader to learn from and this book is the guide.”
—Michael J. Graff, Chairman, CEO and President, American Air Liquide
“[Ram] has the rare ability to distill meaningful from meaningless and transfer it in a quiet, effective way without destroying confidences.”
—Jack Welch, former Chairman of GE
“[Ram is my] secret weapon.”
—Ivan Seidenberg, former CEO of Verizon
“[Ram]’s like your conscience,”
—John Reed, former CEO of Citicorp
“The most influential consultant alive.”
From Ram
Dedicated to the hearts and souls of the joint family of twelve siblings and cousins living under one roof for fifty years, whose personal sacrifices made my formal education possible.
From Julia
Dedicated to Judy, my daughter, who continues to amaze,
inspire and enlighten me.
Our purpose
Going forward, all companies will be digital. The century-old management approach designed for command and control has become obsolete.
What’s the new way of thinking and managing in the digital age? The Amazon management system and the six building blocks methodically analyzed in this book can be enlightening for all.
Our research is based on public sources, interviews of ex-and current Amazon executives, and cross-checking of facts. Some of the Amazon tools and best practices have been introduced to our clients and have been proven useful and effective.
For you, our dear readers, we are not suggesting that you become Amazon; but that you understand how it works and pick the valuable ingredients and inspirations for your own digital way.
This book will be a short read. If coupled with intense reflections, it will generate relevant, practical, and useful learnings.
Chapter Highlights
Why this book?
Why now?
Why Amazon?
What’s the Amazon management system?
Building Block 1: Customer-Obsessed Business Model
Building Block 2: Continuous Bar-Raising Talent Pool
Building Block 3: Al-Powered Data & Metrics System
Building Block 4: Ground-Breaking Invention Machine
Building Block 5: High-Velocity & High-Quality Decision-Making
Building Block 6: Forever-Day-1 Culture
Why does this matter to you, and everyone?
Founders and business owners
Senior executives
Junior to middle managers
The young and fresh
The entrepreneurs
Why this book?
Why now?
Our 21st century prevailing management systems are still largely inherited from the oldest forms of human organization, such as the military and the church. They were designed for the purpose of command and control in an age when there was no Internet, no smartphone, and none of the various forms of digital technology such as big data, algorithms and AI, and when personal supervision was the only way to keep an eye on employees.
The military and the church were organized by function and had many hierarchical layers. So were the business organizations that mimicked their management system.
Then there came an important