A Critique of the Amazon Leadership Principles, Part 1

Dennis Consorte
6 min readOct 12, 2021
What are your leadership principles? Source: Pexels

Amazon is measurably better at building customer loyalty and driving sales than most companies in existence. Much of this can be attributed to their leadership principles, which set the foundation for their decisions. These choices drive their algorithm, product development, and customer satisfaction methodologies. But no system is perfect, and the Amazon Leadership Principles are worthy of critique. Here they are, along with my feedback on what works, and what they might want to edit.

In this first part of a multi-part series on the Amazon Leadership Principles, I cover the first two of their leadership principles:

  • Customer Obsession
  • Ownership

Each section begins with a quote from the original document, followed by my critique. This is a work-in-progress and I acknowledge that my critique is subject to… critique. This is Medium, so please feel free to highlight those sections with which you agree or disagree, and leave your comments.

Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

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