Amazon founder Bezos: To succeed, companies must cultivate a 'culture that supports truth-telling'

December 18 news, from founding Amazon nearly 30 years ago to building it into a technology giant with a market capitalization of US$1.5 trillion today, Jeff Bezos has learned a lot about leadership in the process experiences of strength and humanity.

Bezos gradually realized that human beings are not creatures that truly pursue the truth. Instead, we are social animals. He believes this fundamental idea has implications for the structure of a company or even any organization. Bezos recently spoke to MIT research scientist and podcast host Lex Friedman. Lex Fridman, and made the above comments. He pointed out that

Throughout human history, telling the truth often gets people into trouble.

Go back 10,000 years ago and you lived in a small village. If you could get along with other people, you could survive and reproduce. But if you were a truth teller in the village, you might be clubbed to death in the middle of the night. The reason, he continued, was that “the truth is often uncomfortable, embarrassing, and Distraught... they can also make people wary, even if it's not intentional."

However,

"telling the truth" can also be the biggest difference between a company's success and failure

, for this reason Bezos believes that "any high-performing organization must have a mechanism and culture that supports truth-telling." This includes Bezos’ space tourism company Blue Origin, to which he will apply valuable lessons learned from Amazon. Bezos resigned as CEO of Amazon a few years ago.

In meetings, one strategy he suggests can be used: Let the most senior person speak last and the less senior person speak first. The idea is to allow decision-makers to hear everyone's opinions in an unfiltered wayIn my experience, if I speak first, even if the attendees are strong-willed, smart, and have good judgment, they Also thinking: "Well, if Bezos thinks this, then maybe the other thing I came to the meeting thinking was wrong."

He also believes that leaders should discuss it openly with their teams The difficulty of telling the truth. He said: "You have to remind people that doing this is uncomfortable and inconsistent with our nature as human beings. We survive mainly by being social animals and friendly and cooperative."

He pointed out that even if It’s in science where “truth is told” and “there are very formal mechanisms”, and there are senior and junior scientists, so “human beings have a hierarchy and to a certain extent, seniority matters”.

He recalled a moment in Amazon's history when customers complained about long wait times after calling the company's service numbers, but metrics presented at the meeting showed wait times of less than 60 seconds. In one meeting, Bezos made a direct call in the presence of a customer service executive. The wait time for this call was over 10 minutes.

Bezos explained: "This is a clear indication that there was a problem with the data collection and we didn't evaluate it properly. You know, this set off a chain of events and we started to evaluate it properly."

He also cautioned that two factors can prevent us from finding the truth: compromise and stubbornness. In the former case, the two parties who disagree may simply have very different ideas about what the right decision is. He said: "There are a lot of mechanisms in our society and within companies to resolve these types of disputes. I think a lot of them handle it really badly. Compromise is a very poor way to reach an agreement."

When faced with stubborn people, Bezos said: "They are just engaging in a war of attrition. Whoever is exhausted first will surrender to the other party."

Bezos believes , avoiding these pitfalls requires being proactive. He said: "You have to seek the truth even if you feel uncomfortable. You have to get people's attention so that they have to accept your ideas and they have to work towards real solutions to the problem."

At Amazon, Bei South is known for his emphasis on speed, flexibility and effective decision-making. His former vice president and chief of staff Colin Brier revealed that Bezos never held separate meetings with his direct reports. Instead, he encouraged his direct subordinates to gather for four hours a week to make decisions together in order to learn to work together effectively, especially in times of crisis. Bezos’s business philosophy for Amazon is “Every day is a startup.” Day 1”, which means the company needs to operate at the speed and risk-acceptance of a startup, while also having the mentality of an entrepreneur

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