Don’t wait too long to reinvent
By: Michelle W.
Tags: Netflix, Company Culture, Amazon, AWS, Airbnb

So I stood up late last night to watch Andy Jassy live at AWS 9th re:invent keynote.

As we all know, Amazon Web Services is the world’s number 1 cloud provider, with more than 50% market share of this business. It’s an honour to hear directly from the CEO of AWS, what’s in store for the company and there’s no better person to share about reinvention than the man himself.

(Thanks to @prisca lee for that extra espresso shot and invitation)

Andy highlighted the 8 key elements for reinvention to happen in any company:

The leadership needs to invent and reinvent

Although they might sound the same, Andy highlighted that often these are two very different things that intertwine.

Invention is coming out with a new product or service from a whole cloth

While reinvention is simply reimagining on an existing concept

He went on to speak of Airbnb, Peloton, and Stripe inventing into their reimagination to becoming leaders in their own field

You need to be maniacal, relentless and tenacious about getting to the truth – knowing your competitors and knowing what’s working and what’s not working is paramount to reinvent your company

Often there will be people in the organization (who knows a lot) but will obfuscate data from you, so that you won’t get to the truth. One being for “self-preservation”; and therefore it is extremely hard to get that data, but it is quintessential as a leader to be relentless about obtaining and getting to the truth before you can successfully reinvent.

2. Acknowledging you can’t fight gravity

“We are going to change.”

You are much better off cannibalizing yourself than to have someone else doing it to you, period.

He spoke of success stories of Reed Hasting of Netflix Technology and Amazon’s marketplace self-cannibalizing to eventually emerge as leaders in their own fields.

3. Have talent that’s hungry to reinvent

Sometimes it is hard to ask people who have been in the organisation for a long time to reinvent. Not because they don’t want to, but it could be a tall order for them to rip up whatever they have built over the years only to rebuild them.

That also means they need to be re-trained and learn to un-learn and re-learn.

This is particular true in many old economy and old leadership who are reluctant to get up from their plush Herman Miller to disrupt their journey towards a peaceful golden parachute.

4. Solving real customer problems with builders

The idea of being Customer-focused vs product-focused

This will ensure your scarce resources of engineers are working on problems that really matters to the customers and not what your builders think are cool.

To me, this really epitomized Amazon’s sustainability in their business model.

5. Speed

Is a choice.

You got to build muscles to get to speed.

Without speed, you will not be able to reinvent when you need to.

6. Dont complexify

This felt like a build up for Andy to introduce AWS, but there’s truth to this point as well

Often times everyone would want a piece of you for their own benefits. Eventually it will be you, and you, dealing with the day to day, so choose what is best for you and don’t over complicate things unnecessarily.

7. Use the platform with the broadest and deepest set of tools

He shared how Aws as the market leader for PAAS and IAAS.

Partial advertisement, but hey this is a aws event, and also he has some really neat data to back his findings.

Aws is right up the curve against their peers in the Gartner Magic Quadrant 2020

8. Pull everything together with top down goals

That will force the organization to move faster than they organically otherwise would.

This will make everyone understand that they will not have many years to dip their toes in the water for.

Leaders need to set up the right mechanism to inspect whether the team is getting the right progress. And if not, getting the issues on the table so that everyone can solve it

If I could conclude Andy’s keynotes, it will be that change and reinvention comes deeply rooted from the culture of the organization. Culture is largely dependent on the people and often comes top-down before left-right. Through the company’s ethos, the hiring process, and the human-to-human interaction, working hand-in-hand for the greater of the company and people.