By: Rachel Johnson Greer
Even though I officially left Amazon for the last time in 2017, to this day I reflect on what made Amazon special during my time there, and what Jeff Bezos’s true genius was as a leader. While many focus on Amazon’s massive success or its various product launches, to me his most brilliant achievement was creating a unique corporate culture that operated unlike any other company in the world. It made me so proud to be a part of it.
To me, what has made Amazon extraordinary isn’t just its gargantuan size or unparalleled success, but how it functions like thousands of small companies operating under one umbrella. This isn’t by accident – it’s by design, driven by a culture that Bezos carefully crafted in the early days through the leadership principles and a mindset of calculated risk-taking.
The Power of Autonomous Decision-Making
Even as a mid-level management employee at Amazon’s Corporate HQ, I had remarkable autonomy to make decisions and drive initiatives. Many of us did. In those days it represented freedom, responsibility, and ownership.
Amazon’s private label businesses, for example, weren’t launched because of a top-down directive that was handed down. The way it was told to me by Randy, the guy who launched AmazonBasics, was that he had done some private label work in a previous role, so his manager suggested that he try it out. They worked with their designated lawyer to trademark AmazonBasics, and started bringing in a few private label items in Consumer Electronics, with no bill larger than what a middle manager had authorization to sign for (so a $30k invoice was split into smaller chunks so it could be authorized) and the costs were billed against the general Consumer Electronics budget so no one would notice.
A few years later, it was big enough that I put together my budget and took it to finance and they were floored and asked why I was going from $0 to over $1M in compliance costs. I had to explain that the costs had been steadily increasing for years, but no one noticed.
That all came about because someone in the middle ranks saw an opportunity and ran with it. That’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that thrived in the Amazon culture Jeff Bezos built. Since then, AmazonBasics has become Amazon’s flagship private label brand, and while not much is known about exactly how much revenue it generates for Amazon, estimates are that it is over $10B annually, which is quite a feat for something some guy named Randy started.
While AmazonBasics is perhaps the biggest success story, the launch of Denali was a similar bottom up effort by a mid-level Amazon manager.
This autonomy was supported by a two-pronged approach: an aggressive hiring process that sought out people comfortable with making decisions, followed by an equally aggressive weeding-out process. The result? Those who remained could be given a goal and trusted to make it happen, without micromanagement.
The Two-Way Door Philosophy
One of the most valuable lessons I learned at Amazon was the concept of “one-way doors” versus “two-way doors” in decision-making. The philosophy was simple but powerful: if a decision is easily reversible (a two-way door), just go ahead and do it. This was revolutionary compared to typical corporate environments where every decision needs multiple approvals.
One caveat – if it is quite expensive to reverse a decision, then effort should be put toward determining whether or not it is a good idea to move forward financially.
What’s fascinating is how this mentality was not just encouraged but actively enforced by management. In most corporations, taking initiative without explicit approval often gets beaten out of you. At Amazon, it was celebrated. This created a bias for action that became deeply embedded in the company’s DNA.
The Power of the Written Word
Another unique aspect of Amazon’s culture that I genuinely appreciated was the emphasis on written communication, particularly the practice of writing papers to present ideas. As someone with a background in history, where rigorous written arguments are the norm, I found this approach refreshingly thorough.
While other companies relied heavily on flashy PowerPoint presentations, Amazon required detailed written documents. It was all about forcing people to think rigorously and justify their ideas completely. Writing a paper requires a level of detail and logical coherence that you just can’t fake with a few bullet points and graphs.
The best part of the white paper process – about which much has been written – is that it decoupled the concept from the person. Many people get super attached to their ideas, and think of them as an extension of themselves. Amazon’s white paper process was intended to allow senior executives the opportunity to review complex ideas and critique them in a relatively short period of time. Ideally, after this review process, the idea was much stronger for having been so thoroughly reviewed and criticized.
This type of review process is antithetical to how humans normally interact with each other, with a focus on social cohesion and harmony. Amazon deliberately encouraged this kind of aggressive criticism to help the best ideas succeed and rise to the top, regardless of the popularity of the manager or executive proposing them.
Being “Right a Lot”
One of Amazon’s leadership principles, “Are Right a Lot,” is often misunderstood. It isn’t about never making mistakes – it’s about how you handle being wrong. The true meaning was captured perfectly by Bezos himself when he said that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding and reconsidering problems they thought they’d already solved.
This principle expresses a balance between confidence and humility. The best leaders at Amazon are those who can make quick decisions because they understand the big picture, but who will also immediately back away from a wrong decision rather than stubbornly defending it.
The rest of the leadership principles have an element of yin/yang to them, like Bias for Action and Dive Deep. There should always be a healthy tension between your approaches, so that you don’t end up living in an echo chamber filled with all of the same voices and ideas.
By ruthlessly encouraging these principles and making them the guiding light in annual performance reviews, Amazon consistently got a level of leadership and performance from middle management that is unprecedented in other corporate environments.
The Changing Tides
Looking at Amazon today, I worry that some of this unique culture has been lost as the company has grown into a massive corporation. The entrepreneurial spirit and autonomous decision-making that made it special seem to have diminished in recent years.
Most notably, the Andy Jassy era appears to have broken one of the sacred unspoken contracts at Amazon: if you achieved an Exceeds Expectations in your most recent review, it was virtually impossible to fire you. The company would choose to move you before they would choose to let you go.
The arbitrary layoffs that were performed under Jassy have eliminated that trust, and probably most damagingly, made it clear to tenured Amazonians and new Amazonians alike that just being a high performing leader exemplifying the leadership principles wouldn’t be enough. You could still be sent packing.
But the culture that I was part of still endures in how Amazon alumni approach their work – just look at a recent LinkedIn post from long-time Amazonian Dave Clark, now head of a new startup called Auger, continuing to emphasize the importance of being “relentless problem-solvers” and “bold, gritty innovators” all these years later.
The Lasting Impact
What Bezos created wasn’t just a successful company – he built a culture that transformed how thousands of people approach problem-solving and decision-making. This culture, outlined in his famous 1997 shareholder letter, created an environment where innovation could flourish from any level of the organization. I think that’s so powerful.
In my early days at Amazon, there was a palpable sense that we were building the future together. While the company has evolved, Jeff Bezos’s legacy lives on in the countless leaders and entrepreneurs who were shaped by this unique culture. That, I honestly feel, more than any individual product, service, or innovation, may be his greatest and most lasting contribution to the business world.
Rachel Johnson Greer is a seasoned Amazon ecosystem expert with over 17 years of experience spanning roles at Amazon, independent consulting, and entrepreneurship. As founder of Azama Brands and CEO of Troveres, she’s a champion of ethical e-commerce growth utilizing deep expertise in data-driven Amazon strategies.