Amazon is a company well-known for its work ethic. This isn’t surprising, given the demands of making sure the company’s machinery seamlessly handles millions of transactions, from purchase to fulfilment to customer support, at a time.
LinkedIn has recently been abuzz with four, Amazon-inspired productivity hacks that any other company can try out. Are these initiatives that you can apply to your organisation? Let’s take a closer look.
Amazon office hacks you should know about
Amazon understands the importance of productivity facilitated through employee empowerment and the right mindset. Here are four workplace hacks the company created based on this concept.
1. The 2-pizza team
Blame Jeff Bezos for this method’s weird name, which refers to organising teams small enough to be satisfactorily fed with two pizzas – about eight people tops. The idea is to create small, agile and autonomous teams that can work efficiently, communicate effectively and have a strong sense of ownership over their work.
Essentially, the 2-pizza team encourages innovation and quick response to challenges and customer needs. It works in large companies and SMEs alike, especially as small, autonomous teams are proven to be more productive and can collaborate better than larger ones.
2. The institutional yes
Normally, any employee with an idea has to work their way through a crowd of sceptics before getting anything started. The opposite is true with Amazon, where the default response to any idea is a resounding “yes”. Any opposition has to write a one-pager as to why the whole thing is a bad idea, putting the burden of the work of shooting down a concept on the dissident.
This is applicable to practically any firm that values innovation. It promotes a healthy discussion and encourages ideation. Additionally, it requires opponents of any proposal to clearly explain their opposition, thereby facilitating clear communication and constructive criticism.
3. The future press release
Press releases are traditionally written after the fact. At Amazon, it is written well ahead of a project’s completion detailing all the deliverables that the public needs to see, and the projected publication date the team agreed upon serves as the deadline for these requirements. Basically, they first write down specific, clear-cut goals, doing reverse-engineering work to achieve the desired results.
In this regard, the future press release method gives the team a clear goal to focus on and align all their efforts. They won’t have to fumble their way towards vague objectives without any expected result.
4. The empty chair
Whenever Amazon holds important meetings, they place an empty chair representing the customer along the table. This assumes the customer’s presence, encouraging the team to tackle problems and discuss solutions with their clients in mind.
This mind-setting strategy is by far the simplest of Amazon’s four hacks. It only takes one piece of furniture to remind any team about the most important thing for the business – the customer or whoever they consider their most important stakeholder.
Final thoughts
Clearly, these office productivity hacks worked for Amazon, a company whose net sales were in the region of US$514 billion in 2022. That’s not to say that they only work in large companies – they are simple and doable, and only take a few changes to the usual office routine.