Jeff Bezos, Amazon.Com’s Founder
In your opnion, what makes a great leader? Is it a person who leads with upright priority for his staff, never misses a moment to communicate with his team and always values the advice of others? Or is it a sharp-witted leader who focuses on profitability, knows how to corporate and is brilliant in maintaining a good relationship with every business partner? The two mentioned stereotype seem consistent in the business world nowadays; however, the America’s best leader is neither of them. Jeff Bezos, founder of the Amazon. om, the leader who was named one of the best in America, is a man of surprise who fears no failure and remains stubborn with his goals regardless of all the critics and misunderstanding the world has given him. For all those reasons, our groups has chosen him as our favortie leader to present about today. Jeff owns many charateristics to be a great leader, most prominent among which is his ability to be longterm-oriented ; in other words, he is a visionary leader. He did not mind the slow growth in the first 4 years of operation and quick-buck has never been one of his objectives.
After 6 years of doing the business, the company finally made a profit and that was when Jeff Bezos said: “For the first four years of the company, we worked in relative obscurity. We always had lots of supporters and we always had lots of skeptics, and that’s still the same today. It’s just that the level of visibility is so much higher. If you look at the six years that we’ve been doing business, in exactly one of those six years we were not the underdog. ” “Sometimes we measure things and see that in the short term they actually hurt sales, and we do it anyway. Jeff was well aware that every company requires a long-term view and if a leader is going to take a long-term orientation, he has to be willing to stay heads down and ignore a wide array of critics, even well-meaning critics. Coworkers and chroniclers characterize Bezos as a visionary who on the surface is easygoing but keeps his employees on demanding schedules. He sets weekly management meetings with managers reporting on new products and pricing and taking on questions from the CEO.
Bezos has promoted innovative efforts among his employees through the Just Do It program, which rewards those who come up with and execute ideas that help the company – without first obtaining permission from their bosses. He has a vision which he is able to explain to his employees through what he has done and that is what makes his employees look up to him and commit themselves to the company. Another trait that makes Jeff Bezos so good a leader is that he is a paradoxical mix of stubbornness and flexibility. He once said: “If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon.
And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve. ” Jeff Bezos learned the importance of being goal-oriented. He never gave up and was willing to try new things when the old things weren’t working. He accepted his failures, and the failures of those working with him as lessons learned ( nhu bai hoc kinh nghiem) and moved on to the next strategy. Because of this determination to persevere and reach goals, people were willing to follow him and believe that he would keep working until he eventually achieved success.
His flexibility reflects in the way he handles tough decisions. Normally with decisions he seems to be fact-based. Bezos will make an extraordinary effort to study the numbers rather than rely on his team’s best instincts and judgments. However at other times, Bezos says, you can’t solely rely on facts because it would be too hard to test an idea, or too costly, or you can’t figure out how to do it. Jeff Bezos, Amazon. com’s founder, is a study in contradictions — analytical and intuitive, careful and audacious, playful and determined.
