This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. So Colin Brier started working at Amazon just four years after it was founded. Back In spent twelve years at the company, part of the senior leadership team there, and this as the company grew from a domestic seller of books to a global
multidimensional powerhouse. And for two of his years at Amazon, Colin was chief of staff to Jeff Bezos, essentially Jeff's shadow, during which he spent each day attending meetings, traveling with and talking about business life so much with Jeff Bezos. He is co founder of Working Backwards. It's a company where he coaches executives. Collin's new book he co authored it with Bill carr Off, also a longtime Amazonian. This book just out today. It's called Working Backwards. Inside Stories
and Secrets from Inside Amazon. Colin joining us on the phone from Seattle. Welcome to Bloomberg. So nice to have you here, In. Congratulations on the book. Oh, thank you so much, and thanks for having me on the show. Turtle. It's so timely. There isn't a day, Colin, it doesn't go by that. We don't really talk about Amazon, to be quite honest, and we've talked about it a lot, especially with the news that Jeff was was stepping down a CEO. Um, let me start there. How did you
take that note? How did how did you see it? How should we see it? Well, you know, I was a little surprised at the timing, but you had to come sometime and how I viewed it. As you know, Jeff has been really preparing for this type of transition for a long time, even uh since the early days
of Amazon. He put a whole bunch of effort focused on how can I put in processes inside Amazon so other as Amazon grows in scales ten x d x, that they can still make the same type of high quality decisions quickly when Jeff isn't in the room, and uh, you know, so he's he's what he's coined. That term is called the invention machine. You know how Amazon hires, how they organized peep teams, how they write narratives instead of power point, and how they develop new products and
measure businesses. And he has been working and honing that and been a broken record on that invention machine internally at Amazon for for so long that I think that this transition with Andy Jossy taking over the Helmets CEO, you know, we're not going to see a ton of change, and certainly in the near term. And I know a lot of this is in the book and I want to get to it in a moment. Do you know Andy, though, And I'm just curious if he was there when you
were there? I do, And he started a few months before I did. He started in seven and I worked with Andy right actually right when I started in I started in the software team. He was in the marketing group and worked together on a couple of different projects. And then Andy was also Jeff's first technical advisor or shadow. He did that for about eighteen months, and so I was just second once. So I rely on Andy a lot.
Is when I moved into this new role working with with Jeff to get some good advice on how to be successful in that role. Well, Colin, how important do you think is it to kind of understand what makes Jeff tick? You know, this is a remarkable company on so many measures, um, whether you like it or not,
it's just hard to be ignored. And I just wonder how important is it that anybody who is in that CEO spot understand kind of the way Jeff approaches things, and especially for you know, you've spent a lot of time with him. Yeah, I think it is very important and it's uh, you know, not just how Jeff thinks. He inculcated that throughout Amazon, and so he really fostered a culture that was customer obsessed, not competitor obsessed, a long term thinking, you know, things beyond the next month
or quarter, quarterly results. You know, spirit of invention, and you also have to figure out with invention, you have to expect and you know how to handle failures inside the company. And then just being taking pride in the operational excellence. And what that means is that the details matter. And a lot of the detailed little details that you work on are you know, most people aren't going to see them, but they're incredibly important to making you know,
a company take and meeting customer promises. So andy, Um, you know he understands that as well as anyone at Amazon, and uh, and so incredibly important. If I write the CEO job description, it would be you know, understanding how Amazon works, being able to work in large teams and small teams, and by the way, bonus points, if you had built a new business from scratch from zero to ten billion dollars faster than Amazon did, and Andy did
all three of those. By the way, Amazon Web Services got from zero to ten billion dollars faster than Amazon dot Com the retailer. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable if you think about in terms of the growth. Um, we've got about forty seconds and we take a break and come back. If you had to say one reason that you think this company has been so successful, what would it be? Is it? Is it really just understanding that culture. I think it is what makes it take. So it's the
leadership for inspose, it's the customer obsession. And when you do that, customers are always a little bit restless. They're going to push you to do more and innovate you. If you offer two days show and they're going to want one day shipping pretty soon. So you know, Amazon always operates and develop innovates new ideas because they listen
to customers. You know, I do wonder too about the title, and I know you've got um your own company called Working Backwards, your co founder of it, and you work with a lot of executives and and coaching them and this whole idea of kind of working backwards um things. I'm a backtimer because of my years in broadcast. I'm causing back timing things in my life. But talk to us about working backwards and what it teaches us. The
it scored the working backwards process. First of all, it's what the process Amazon uses to take ideas and evaluate them and see if they're worth building and bringing to market. And then it's heart Working backwards really just starts from the customer experience and then working backwards from that and um, what what's different about how that process is from other companies. A lot of companies use what's called the skills forward approach. What are we good at um? And how can we
move into the market. There's you know, you can think of a swat analysis your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and threats. But what's not really mentioned with those two techniques is the word customer. So Amazon really just inverted it and said we are going to start from the first day we're looking at an idea and keep the customer in mind and then figure out how do we organize around that idea in order to deliver value for the for the customer, and that the two the props. They're the
tools that the working backwards process uses. It's a press release and a frequently ask question. And the press release it's just a one page press release. It's the first thing you write if you have an idea. If someone says, hey, I got this cool idea. UM, they'll say, great, go right a working backwards document And the first part of that is the press release. And it's harder than you
may think, especially when you're starting out. You have to clearly describe what the customer problem is, what the what the solution is, and why it's a great product. And if after reading that mythical press release you're not excited to buy that product or use that service, you go back and start over and write it. So this is an iterative process and the second part to frequently ask questions.
It allows you to address the tough issues up front and try to solve those as early as possible because it's cheaper when you solve those problems earlier. And the fact contains two components. One is explaining to the customer what is it, why should I use it? Why should I change my behavior to buy this product or why is it better than what's out there on the market.
But then the second part is the internal f a Q, which are the tough issues that the company is going to have to solve in order to solve these customer problems. It may need a new sales force, you know, direct salesforce or you partner a salesforce, or how can I build the product for bill of materials under two hundred dollars? What are the tough technical challenges that we have to solve in order to really solve this customer problem? And
again that's an inerative process. You don't move forward until you get those questions answered. That's really that's really fascinating in terms of how you think about things and approach it. So I love the title of your book, Working Backwards Insights, Stories and Secrets from Amazon. So if you'll indulge me a little bit, um and I think you've you've kind of answered some of these, but I'm going to go
there anyway, So give me one insight from Amazon. Well, one insight is uh that really that these these principles are they're easy to understand, they're hard to follow, especially when things are going really well or really poorly in
your business. And where where Amazon has created some of its most amazing inventions are where things are always going to be unclear and you have to move fast, but you rely on the leadership principles you know, primarily of customer obsession, long term thinking, and yet you're willing to be misunderstood and you figure out how can I invent my way out of this box? And then you know, working on the little details that matter so that you
know that is one. And then the other thing is that a lot of people think what Amazon does it doesn't apply to small organizations. These processes and principles. They work in small groups because that's where they were created for small teams, and they work across a number of
different industries. They've worked for streaming video, you know, moving digital bits to customers with Amazon Studios, creating devices like echo um you know in election devices, work with the e commerce business and B two B so they're tested and true across a number of different industries. And then
also size of company. So I have to ask you as we tease you know or introduced to you earlier, that you spent each day you were in meetings, you traveled with you talked about a lot of different things, business life, other things with Jeff Bezos of Amazon. What's a story that you can share with our audience. One story is that so we were every two years we had to go work in customer service at you in
the corporate department, and and Jeff's turn came up. And this is why I was working with Jeff and as this technical advisor. So Jeff and I we drove an hour south to Tacoma from Seattle where there is a customer service center and for two days we were a customer service agents and where at first they were training you had to read and read emailed some customers and respond to them. Eventually you would get to answer customer calls.
And there was one call in particular where the customer called and said I have this problem and I've ordered some lawn furniture and came damaged. And while they were looking the information up, the customer service agent put the customer on hold and turned to Jeff and said, I bet you it's this product and pointed to it on our website and your Thirty seconds later, the customer said, oh, here's my product number, and it was the one that she pointed out and Jeff's eyes went wide and said,
how did you know this? After the call and said, oh, it's happened quite frequently. And this is where Jeffie's he also studied other companies, He studied toilets and on cord and said, we need to give this customer service agents the ability to solve that problem right at that point in time. So you know, this is where it's unusual for CEO to go be a customer service agent for two days and then you know, come up. This is how customer obsession allows you to come up with internal processes.
And UM, I don't know how many times you've been on the phone with the customer service agent at another company where they know what the problem is, they just don't have the tools and the authority to solve it. And so what we did at Amazon is we push that decision making an authority down to the people closest to the customer. And what happens with that end encurd
is it stops that product from being sold. When the corporate person who is responsible for that lawn and garden thing gets notified immediately says we will not sell this product and ship with the customers. It's you know it's it's not up to our standards. You need to go fix it, all right, call be really quick about twenty five seconds. Is there a secret like does Jeff Bezos et tuna fish for lunch every day? Now? He sticks? He just is a very principle person and he's also
a great teacher. Whenever he'll come up with insights, but he'll he'll walk walk you back and tell you how we got to those insights, which is one of the reasons why I think Amazon is good hands moving forward. Well, this was so much fun, and congratulations on the book and really just an interesting way of looking at things. Colin, thank you again. Colin Brier, former VP at Amazon early on a senior part of the leadership there at the company.
His book is Working Backwards Inside Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon.