1. Knowing, beyond a doubt, what customers
want requires a zealous commitment to
metrics. And no one commits better than
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.
Here’s what a “culture
of metrics” has allowed
Bezos to do as a leader:
1. Keep all eyes
focused on the customer.
Amazon tracks its per-
formance against roughly
500 measurable goals, and
nearly 80% of those have to do with cus-
tomer objectives.
(Bezos also has a habit of keeping a
seat empty at the conference table to rep-
resent the customer, “the most important
person in the room,” he says.)
2. Allow for feisty debate, knowing
the best idea will triumph. Amazon
employees often debate about which of
the many metrics is worth
watching.
“If you can stand a bar-
rage of questions, then
you have picked the right
metric,” says Manfred
Bluemel, a former senior
market researcher at Ama-
zon. “But you had better have your stuff
together. The best number wins.”
3. Weed out customer turn-offs.
Because nearly everything is measured,
Inside Amazon’s ‘culture of metrics’
Leadership Snapshot
(800) 543-2055 www.ExecLeadership.com
Continued on page 2
As one of the most well-known women
in technology, Google VP Marissa Mayer
turned a few heads when she announced
that she doesn’t believe in burnout.
How can the woman who was hired
in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee, who
once worked 130 hours per week, now say
that she doesn’t really believe in burnout?
Avoiding burnout isn’t about sitting
down for three meals a day, getting home
at a decent hour, or getting eight hours
of sleep, she says. (Indeed, Mayer pulled
her share of all-nighters in her early
Google days.)
“I have a theory that burnout is about
resentment,” the tech maven says. “And
you beat it by knowing what it is you’re
giving up that makes you resentful.
“I tell people: Find your rhythm. Your
rhythm is what matters to you so much
that when you miss it you’re resentful of
your work.”
For some, the thing that’s important
might be a vacation, for others it’s movie
night, and some people may just want
eight hours of sleep per night.
When it comes to leading, Mayer
deploys her theory regularly. After notic-
ing signs of burnout in one recent college
grad, she approached him and asked
about his “rhythm.”
He replied that he had a standing din-
ner night with friends on Tuesdays. When
Google VP tells how to avoid burnout
Personal Productivity
VOLUME 27 • JUNE 2012
Get it done with virtual assistants.
Task services are the new office assis-
tants. You post odd jobs online for
personal assistants to bid on. Do it
either where your business is based
or on the road. Examples: TaskRabbit
and Zaarly.com.
— Adapted from “Hop to It,” John Brandon, Inc.
Real research shows. When mak-
ing research-based decisions, how
to tell when research is sound? Ask:
Where is the independent confirma-
tion? Are these fancy acronyms or
real outcomes? Does this approach
have a solid record of replication? If
a researcher won’t admit mistakes,
beware.
— Adapted from “Research Shows,” Douglas
Reeves, American School Board Journal.
New paradigm. Science writer James
Gleick thinks the basis of the uni-
verse isn’t matter or energy, but data.
The author of Chaos says physics
has started to think of the bit as the
ultimate fundamental particle. The
more we understand the role infor-
mation plays, he says, the more skill-
ful we’ll be.
— Adapted from “The ballad of the bit,” Kevin
Kelly, Wired.
Leadership Tips
Transforming Honeywell
New culture doubles profits...............2
How We Think About Strategy
Does your company matter? .............3
Make Faster Decisions
Stand-up meetings speed it up..........4
Power Questions
Use Socratic Method to lead..............8
INSIDE
Even a minuscule
0.1-second delay in a
webpage loading can
translate into a 1% drop
in customer activity.
Continued on page 2

2. 2 • Executive Leadership • June 2012 www.ExecLeadership.com
When David Cote took the reins at
Honeywell in 2002, the company was
still reeling from a series of unfortunate
events.
In 1999, Honeywell was bought by
Allied Signal, a company twice its size.
The newly formed company didn’t
mesh well. In 2001, the company’s plan
to be acquired by General Electric was
rebuffed on antitrust grounds.
Enter Cote.
Having trained under GE’s Jack
Welch, Cote began the task of forming
a new Honeywell culture. He started
by identifying 12 measurable behaviors
that he wanted to see within the busi-
ness—including customer focus, self-
awareness and championing change.
To allow those new behaviors to
take hold, he launched a new training
process, called “One Honeywell,” or
“One Hon.” Then he shook the earth by
launching the “Honeywell Operating
System,” or HOS, which is really a cus-
tomized version of the Toyota operating
system.
The new system has transformed
the company from one of the country’s
most messed-up firms to one of its best.
Managers say that without the focus on
continuous improvement, the company
wouldn’t be nearly so productive, or
profitable. Since 2002, the company’s
profits have doubled to $4 billion.
Every day begins with a 15-minute
or less shop-floor meeting, where em­­
ployees try to pinpoint problems and
possible improvements, which are sent
up to managers. The company expects
every employee to come up with two
implementable ideas for improvement,
per month.
That’s the sort of focus that has
helped improve every action taken at
the factory. For example, it used to take
42 days to make and deliver a toxic-gas
detector for clients such as Intel. Now it
takes 10 days. And whereas the process
used to occupy the entire factory floor,
now it uses only one-quarter of it. The
other three-quarters can be used for
making other products.
In other words, the factory makes
more stuff and generates more revenue,
using essentially the same head count,
square footage and energy consumption.
— Adapted from “From bitter to sweet,” The
Economist. ■
Honeywell thrives under new culture
Turnaround TacticsAmazon’s metrics
Continued from page 1
Bezos can tell when the site begins to
function in a way that will irritate and
turn off customers.
Bezos relentlessly conveys to his team
that even small issues are far from trivial.
For example, one of Amazon’s metrics
shows that even a minuscule 0.1-second
delay in a webpage loading can translate
into a 1% drop in customer activity.
4. Take risks. Because the data speaks
to him, Bezos feels more secure when he
takes innovative risks.
“We are comfortable planting seeds
and waiting for them to grow into trees,”
says Bezos. “We don’t focus on the optics
of the next quarter; we focus on what is
going to be good for customers. I think
this aspect of our culture is rare.”
Example: Synthesizing hundreds of
data points, Bezos came to believe that
consumers would want an e-reader that
could download a book in less than 60
seconds. The idea of the Kindle was born,
though Bezos left it to engineers to figure
out the technical challenges, a process
that took years.
Bezos didn’t waver. When one finance
exec asked how much he was prepared
to spend on the project, the CEO replied,
“How much do we have?”
— Adapted from “Inside Amazon’s Idea Machine:
How Bezos Decodes the Customer,” George Anders,
Forbes. ■
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How to avoid burnout
Continued from page 1
he missed it, he spent the rest of the
week feeling resentful.
So now, she knew that he couldn’t
miss a Tuesday dinner again. She knew
he’d be more productive for the entire
week, if he could make it to that Tues-
day dinner. It was that simple.
Another employee, who was run-
ning Google Finance and had a team
in India, seemed stretched thin. The
employee, Katie, had been running con-
ference calls at 1 a.m.
But when Mayer expressed her con-
cern, Katie said, “Don’t worry about
the 1 a.m. calls to Bangalore. I love my
team. It doesn’t bother me a bit. What
bothers me is missing soccer games or
having my child see me walk in late to
the recital.”
From then on, Mayer made sure
Katie was empowered to leave for the
things she loved.
What matters to Mayer? A one-week
vacation she takes every four to six
months. If she has to cancel a trip or
postpone it, she starts to feel resentful.
Lesson: Find your rhythm, under-
stand what makes you resentful, and
protect it.
— Adapted from “Marissa Mayer Offers Five
Tips for Young Women Entering Tech,” Matt
Rosoff, Business Insider; “How to Avoid Burnout,”
Marissa Mayer, Bloomberg Businessweek. ■

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